Geek

A lot of stuff is interesting and even boring stuff can be made so.

What is a geek?

Experience in public speaking

• I took an amazing public speaking course when a grad student at MIT.
• I made good use of that and media training in first part of my career.
• I also speak a lot as a professor.
• I work on this craft despite—or because of—significant anxiety.

Meaningful

• We engage topics relevant to our lives.

Engaged

• Not the sort of class where “just get Prof’s notes and you’ll get an A.”

Active

• You will be working on:
  • outlines
  • speeches
  • self-reflections
  • peer feedback

Meta

• Meta means going a level higher and taking a bigger picture: how can we improve?
• Educational psychologists speak of meta-cognition: becoming cognizant of our learning.
• The syllabus is a Web page, with links to how to do everything and better.

Motivation

Public speaking is an essential part of personal, professional, and civic life. Even if you are nervous in front of others, effective speaking is a skill that you can learn to improve.

We will combine an introduction to the key elements of rhetorical theory with practical training and instructor/peer feedback, which is a central element of learning and improvement. Excellent feedback is both substantive and respectful, helping others hone their own skills.

Skills

• understand rhetorical situations and appropriate types of speeches;
• analyze a given setting before and during your speech, with a special emphasis on the audience and opposing views or contributions;
• effectively organize your speech and to find appropriate arguments;
• sharpen your understanding of the structure of arguments and their specific weaknesses;
• communicate clearly, persuasively, and effectively;
• gain confidence in speech and rhetorical situations;

“I have cancer”

Questions??

• Was this public speaking?
• What is public speaking?
• What makes for effective public speaking?

Public speaking

public speaking is the craft of speaking to a group of people (Gunn 2017, loc. 44)

craft emphasizes doing something; it is concrete and hands-on, and it is situational. (Gunn 2017, loc. 50)

[in] a civic model, … [it’s] understood as a component of a much larger democratic dialogue among communities, or “publics.” (Gunn 2017, loc. 47)

This course

• A space to develop and improve your speaking, where ever you are. We:
  • have an American focus, but can consider other cultural contexts.
  • are not too focused on voice, accent, and bodily presentation.
  • will all make mistakes—myself most of all!
• We are not COM1113: Professional Speaking: “an opportunity to develop presentation skills in a variety of settings and realistic business tasks.”

Assignments

• Impromptu speaking
• Introductory speech (with outline)
• Praise the unappreciated (with outline)
• Controversy speech (with outline)
• Debate speech (with outline)
• Self reflections

Text book

Barbara Tucker, Kristin Barton, Amy Burger, Jerry Drye, Cathy Hunsicker, Amy Mendes, and Matthew LeHew. 2019. Exploring Public Speaking 4.2, Communication Open Textbooks. [PDF, ePub, and Kindle formats are also available].

• This is my first time using this open/free book—and our section is different from most others.

Recording

• You will record your speeches on your device (laptop or phone) for self-analysis—make sure you have space.
• Should I use Zoom, record, and share?

Syllabus

It’s the Web!

• bookmark
• ⌘+f

Tools like Obsidian allow you to “make information your own.”

BTW: Posting Style

In emails, click the ‘…’ to see my response.

Please see my comments below. —Dr. Reagle
…

On Tuesday, Sue wrote:
>>> Michael Pollen argues agriculture is the new industrial.
>>
>>typo: it's "Pollan"  —Dr. Reagle
>>
> Thanks for noting that. — Sue
It's an easy mistake to make. —Dr. Reagle

Zip of PDFs

Course policies

Office hours

• email to schedule, and
• before/after class

Communicating

• You can post to our Canvas discussion thread for show & tell, follow-ups, critical thinking puzzles, funnies, etc.

Work in Google Drive

• FAQ