What I learned this Semester

I believe that I have learned a lot through this course throughout this semester. Throughout the course we were taught many different types of arguments and how each argument can be used successfully. I feel like all these different types of arguments will come in handy one day, I'm just waiting for the day to bust out my mad argument skills!!! I think something important I learned during this semester was the concept of "bad appeals to authority." Bad appeal to authority is when people believes in a claim made from someone else who doesn't have much knowledge on the subject. I think its really important to know about the concept of "bad appeals to authority" because by knowing what is real and what isn't we can see through all the bs in our lives. Another thing I think was important to learn was the fallacy of appealing to emotion. This fallacy can be used to manipulate peoples emotions to get them to either accept an argument.

Favorite Part / Least Favorite Part / Class Improvement

There were a lot of things that I liked about this class. This is my first online class, and I really liked how I was able to "attend class" in the comfort of my own home. I thought it was pretty cool that we were able to show how much we learned through our blog post. Another thing that I liked about blogging is that we didn't have to worry about grammar and punctuation as much as I would for other classes. Being able to read my classmates blogs was also a good thing about this class. If I needed something to supplement my learning, i would read my classmates blog to see if they knew what I didn't know.

My least favorite part was actually having to meet up with my group in person. The reason why I had to take an online class this semester was because I was to busy to go to school. This is the only real complaint of this class. I really didn't mind meeting up in person, but I felt like since this was an online class, all work should have been done over a computer / laptop.

Class Improvement - One thing that I think should be changed for next semester is the Comm 41 homepage. There are way to many blog post on the homepage which ends up lagging when trying to scroll down to see older post. There should be multiply sections on the home page instead of having all the post posted on the first page.

Chapter 14

One important concept that was discussed in Chapter 14 was the idea of "generalizing." People generalize things everyday and it is commonly used daily. Generalizing is how we use our experience to understand things that happen in our lives. What happened before will most likely happen again until we experience a change. The more we experience something, the better our generalization becomes because we have more examples to draw upon. General claims that is the conclusion is called the "generalization." Plausible premises about the sample are called the inductive reasoning. To see whether a generalization is good or not, we must look at the generalization as an argument. "Strong arguments with plausible premises will be the best since there will be the possibility that there is an exception to a generalization (Epstein pg.280)."

Example of generalizations

"La Vic's is alway busy on Friday and Saturday nights from all the college students who are trying to get a late night snack."

Generalization - Yes
Sample - Every time I have been to La Vic's at night, it is alway busy.
Population - Anyone who has gone to La Vic's on a Friday or Saturday night.