Reading the Room: A Rhetorical Literacy Toolkit
Conceptual Development
The concept for Reading the Room was prompted by a 2024 study of communication skills training programs. According to the research, these programs yield measurable gains in employee communication outcomes, but still leave substantial communication gaps. I was struck by this finding, but not entirely surprised. As a teacher of rhetoric and as an editor, I’ve watched students and professionals alike struggle not with language itself but with the prior question of what language is for: how it constructs meaning, positions an audience, and shapes thought. What’s really missing is the cultivation of rhetorical judgment.
The framework of this course is rooted in the classical rhetorical tradition, centered on Aristotle's three modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, and logos) and augmented by three practical lenses designed for professional reading and writing: (1) claim, (2) evidence, and (3) audience assumption. I positioned it explicitly as a professional heuristic rather than a comprehensive rhetorical theory to give learners an entry point into a tradition with a two-thousand-year history.
Instructional Design
The course was structured in five sections across 27 blocks in Articulate Rise 360:
A Note Before You Begin: A personal preface in which I establish the intellectual lineage of the framework, including an embedded TED-Ed video introducing Aristotle's three modes of persuasion.
The Hook: A before-and-after memo comparison that demonstrates the difference between competent writing and rhetorically effective writing.
The Framework: A tabs interaction that presents the three lenses, a sorting activity for rhetorical analysis practice, and a bridge block explicitly distinguishing the classical framework from the practical lenses.
Knowledge Check: A review of learner progress via four multiple choice questions with differentiated correct and incorrect feedback.
Persuasion in Practice: A reflection prompt, a downloadable Argument Mapping Template, and a further reading bibliography.
The action map below shows the relationship between performance problems, ideal behaviors, and learning activities:
Scenario Design
The branching scenario is the centerpiece of the module. Learners play the role of a communications consultant to Jordan, a nonprofit program director seeking legislative funding for an adult literacy initiative. The committee she is addressing is fiscally conservative and skeptical, reflecting what I view as a realistic and recognizable challenge in the nonprofit sector.
I scripted the scenario with the full branching architecture mapped on paper. It features:
Two decision points with three response options each
Nine distinct consequence screens
Three endings (full success, partial success, and failure)
The three-response structure is intended to keep learners engaged and motivated. Instead of a simple correct/incorrect binary (which has limited value), responses can be correct, partially correct, recoverable, and instructive. Every consequence screen pairs a narrative outcome with an italicized rhetorical principle, ensuring learners receive both experiential and analytical feedback at each branch. Consequences accumulate rather than converge so that sustained rhetorical judgment is rewarded across both decision points, not just at one.
Content and Visual Design
Written content
I relied on research and my dual experience teaching rhetoric and editing to craft the course material and assessments. Much of the content responds to real observed professional failures, as well as the limitations I found in similar modules. The four knowledge check questions include differentiated feedback for correct and incorrect answers, designed to assess application-level learning consistent with Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Examples of professional scenarios require learners to apply the three-lens framework in context rather than recall its definitions. The action map connecting performance problems to learning activities was informed by Cathy Moore's action mapping methodology.
Verified quotes from philosophers, literary scholars, and rhetoricians were strategically integrated, serving three important functions: to anchor the framework in its intellectual lineage, break up content-heavy blocks, and signal that the toolkit has genuine scholarly depth behind it. Female voices and voices from outside the Western canonical tradition were prioritized in the selection process.
The downloadable Argument Mapping Template was developed as a standalone professional artifact alongside the course. A single-page pre-writing tool built around the three lenses and the classical rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos, pathos), it is designed for use before any high-stakes professional communication. It functions equally well as a course artifact and as an independent professional tool, extending the toolkit's reach beyond the eLearning environment to professionals who may never take the course itself.
Visual design
I decided on a clean, minimal aesthetic aligned with the course's intellectual rigor: generous white space, restrained typography, and non-generic photography. The presentation should be legible and intellectual serious without visual complexity.
Extensions and Facilitated Delivery
Module 2 (Interrogating the Frame) has been fully scoped with a complete problem statement and a course outline. Where Module 1 teaches professionals to read and construct arguments, Module 2 teaches them to examine what arguments suppress, whose interests they promote, and what they make impossible to think (especially in the absence of words to express it). A downloadable Frame Analysis Checklist is planned as the Module 2 toolkit artifact.
The three-lens framework, the Jordan scenario, and the Argument Mapping Template are easily modifiable for a half-day facilitated workshop for organizational delivery. The workshop format would replace the eLearning interactions with small group analysis of real professional documents drawn from participants' own organizations and experiences. A consultant guide for facilitated delivery is planned as a third portfolio artifact.
The toolkit's three delivery formats—a self-paced eLearning module, a facilitated workshop, and downloadable job aids—were designed to serve different organizational contexts and budgets, making it suitable for policy teams, nonprofit leadership groups, academic writing programs, and corporate L&D departments.
Reflection
The hardest design challenge was distinguishing the classical rhetorical framework from the three practical lenses without creating cognitive overload. I solved it by introducing the classical tradition as foundational context, then I positioned the lenses as a practical extension of it, returning to the classical framework only in the reflection section. This prevented the two frameworks from appearing as competing systems.
The branching scenario was the most demanding element to design well. I consulted other eLearning courses that featured similar interactions, noting their strengths and weaknesses. I also researched similar scenarios to create the most plausible consequences for each decision. Scripting accumulating consequences rather than convergent branches required sustained attention and patience. My goal was to make every choice genuinely matter, which I find to be rare in professional eLearning.
As the first course I built, Reading the Room confirmed that a rigorous humanities-grounded framework can be translated into a professional eLearning experience. It also guided me in future design work, reminding me that such courses can be intellectually serious without being academically remote, practically grounded without being reductive.