Tim's+Lesson+Plan

Animal Ethics Blogging Assignment.

This assignment would be applicable for students in Ethics or in Intro to Philosophy. It involves four steps, three of which are blog posts. In Ethics, this assignment would map onto Course Objective 1: “Demonstrate critical ways of thinking about moral issues by clarifying ideas, demanding and weighing reasons, and evaluating the merits of alternative viewpoints.” At step one, students would post on their blog their initial thoughts on animal ethics. These initial postings would be shaped by questions for reflection, such as “Is it true or false that eating meat is morally permissible?” “Is an animal’s life ever more valuable than a human’s life? If so, how?” “Are animals on earth for man’s purposes? Explain.” At step two, students watch an online video presentation at [|www.meat.org] and read Scully’s article on factory farming at [|www.matthewscully.com]. Step three involves revisiting their blog and posting their reactions to both the reading and the video. This follow up post is more critical and reflective, and is prompted by questions such as “Describe Scully’s thesis.” “What is Scully’s ethical framework for this discussion?” “How, if at all, has your position been influenced by the reading and video?” At step four, students post one comment on a fellow student’s blog with whom they largely agree and one comment on a fellow student’s blog with whom they disagree. They link these comments to their own blog. The activity concludes with an in-class follow up discussion, where we highlight some of the best blog posts and articulate what we found useful about the assignment.

Grading Rubric: 5 points: Fully articulated responses, clear exposition, college level writing, demonstrated understanding of the reading. 4 points: Assignment is completed with one of the following errors: spelling/grammatical mistakes, lack of clarity in the exposition, fundamental misunderstanding of the reading. 3 points: Assignment is completed with two or more of the above-mentioned errors. 2 points: Assignment is not fully completed, but a good faith effort is attempted to produce some work.