Modes of engagement activity

This is an activity that can help students recognize and participate in different modes of scholarly engagement. You can do it orally in a group, as an individual or group writing activity, or as a precursor to identifying and characterizing modes of engagement in a course text, or in their own or their peers’ writing.

Start: what is a claim? Ask students for examples of a claim. Then, what are some ways to respond to a claim? Ask students to generate some modes of response. (Simple agreement; agree and add evidence or criteria for evaluation; agree and amplify/broaden/extend the argument; stipulate and pivot or refocus; disagree and offer a counterclaim; refute the premise or the terms of the claim; rebuttal / anticipatory rebuttal etc.) Your first pass at this might be something totally unrelated to the course, purely to understand the idea – start with a silly claim like “Bananas are the best fruit.” This can be an opportunity to distinguish between scholarly modes of engagement, even regarding a silly claim, and the behaviours of, say, internet trolls, which we want to avoid both in our writing and in classroom discussion.

From here, you can ask them to analyze a course text or to review their own papers — what kinds of claim are in evidence? How do the authors position themselves in relation to others’ claims? Etc.