It has been (and still is) lots of work putting this course together, but I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to teach (and learn from) the masses! Course starts tomorrow (Feb 17, 2014) at noon EST.
A huge thanks also goes out to my student collaborators who helped develop, review, and revise much of the course materials (and who will be taking the role of Community TAs on the course discussion forums) and to Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology who pretty much runs the show.
This course is also part of the Reasoning, Data Analysis and Writing Specialization, along with Think Again: How to Reason and Argue and English Composition 1: Achieving Expertise. This interdisciplinary specialization is designed to strengthen students' ability to engage with others' ideas and communicate productively with them by analyzing their arguments, identifying the inferences they are drawing, and understanding the reasons that inform their beliefs. After taking all three courses, students complete an in-depth capstone project where they choose a controversial topic and write an article-length essay in which they use their analysis of the data to argue for their own position about that topic.
