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Lan Yang, Ruotao Qiu Kristen Foster CO150.400 16 Dec.

2013 The Explanation of the Rhetorical Choices Our topic is about online education for college students, heres some question we would like to address. a) With the advent of distance learning, an up-to-date educational model, more and more qualification seekers have become participators of this kind of learning. According to a survey conducted in 2012, there were more than 6.7 million American students taking online courses in that year and the rate continues to increase (The Sloan). However, the exponential growth of online education has fueled debates about this issue. While some people embrace the creativity of this very original education model, others argue that it can never be taken as a qualified substitute for traditional methods of learning. The reason for us to write this open public argument is to convey its potential participators that they might be too optimistic about distance learning and in fact there are more detriments than benefits of it. b) Our purpose of this public argument is to convince those students who are considering taking online education that they should make decisions rationally when deciding to receive online education, because there are more drawbacks than advantages of this kind of learning. We chose this purpose because we

believed most people were too optimistic about distance learning, and they might make the decision to take online education following the major tendency while not aware of the shortcomings of this kind of education. c) Our claim is that there are more drawbacks than benefits of online learning. First of all, distance learning requires a high degree of maturity and commitment from students because it proceeds in the absence of teachers or tutors (Behzadi), and their learning effort might tend to be disorganized and harm their academic outcomes. Secondly, the lack of interaction with faculty numbers would prevent students from succeeding in online education. Moreover, online learning fails to provide its receivers competitive diplomas. We used reliable statistics, and previous study to support my reasons and claims. d) Our chosen public audience is students who are considering taking online education in CSU. We chose this audience because our public argument is correlated to the issue they are concerned about, such as academic outcomes and diploma. We know this group of people cares most about diploma since these contribute to their employment opportunities in the future. At the same time, they would like to acquire knowledge and skills to be competitive in the society. To meet our audience needs, we inclined to write my public argument that emphasized on their self-interests. e) We would distribute our open letter at Rocky Mountain Collegian, which will publish five days a week in Colorado State University campus. We choose to distribute our open letter in this way because people who will read this are college students and they are interest in different educational model and ways of learning,

some of them may consider taking online education. They are very likely to read our open letter since our topic is really related to the issue they are concerned about. Besides our target audience might be more likely to be convinced since our open letter will be distributed in school newspaper. "The Rocky Mountain Collegian" was founded in 1891and it is a daily newspaper representing the student voice of Colorado State University(Wikipedia contributors). f) We chose to present the information in an open letter. An open letter is a letter that is likely to be read by a wide audience, and make a larger number of people aware of its content (Wikipedia contributors). We decide to make the open letter look serious because the topic of it is an important issue for students to carefully think about. We choose double column, black typeface and MLA style to show our argument is serious. g) The one of the biggest limitations of my argument is that we cant include all of the evidence to support our point, since our open letter will be publish in the college newspaper and it is limited in length. Besides that, people outside CSU may not have a chance to read this.

Works Cited Behzadi, Zeynab, et al. "Characteristics of Online Education and Traditional Education." Life Science Journal (2011): 56.ERIC. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. The Sloan Consortium. Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States. The Sloan Consortium. 2012. Web.6 Oct. 2013. Wikipedia contributors. "Open letter." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 Jun. 2013. Web. 14 Dec. 2013. Wikipedia contributors. "Rocky Mountain Collegian." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Sep. 2013. Web. 14 Dec. 2013.

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