Week 14 Discussion — Humor in a Toast, or Leadership in a Group?

Hook

A best friend's wedding toast gets the biggest laugh of the night, and a coworker's retirement toast gets an uneasy silence after one joke too many. A class project group either waits for one person to take charge or quietly shares the work. This week you learned the three criteria for a special-occasion speech, the four-beat toast, the reflective-thinking agenda, and the three families of group roles.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Should a toast or a tribute include humor? Some people say one light, affectionate joke shows the room you know the honoree and fits a warm occasion; others say a joke at a toast always risks embarrassing the honoree or shutting out guests who do not get it, so sincerity is safer. Take a position, support it with a real toast, tribute, award speech, or farewell you have heard or given, and use this week's terms, such as occasion fit, mood or tone match, and the specific-detail principle, accurately.

Option B: Does a small group work best with one designated leader, or with leadership shared as a function? Some people say a group without one clear leader drifts and wastes time; others say the best groups spread the task and maintenance moves across every member, so no one person has to lead. Take a position, support it with a real group, team, club, or committee you have been part of, and use this week's terms, such as task roles, maintenance roles, self-centered roles, and the reflective-thinking agenda, accurately.

There is no single right answer. A wedding, a retirement lunch, a team practice, or a club meeting can each be argued well in more than one direction. Describe occasions and groups by what happened, never by a private person's name, and share only what you are comfortable sharing.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 14 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. If the chatbot offers to write a toast for you or supplies a story about someone you know, decline it; only you can supply a true detail. Never paste or upload a recording of yourself or anyone else into the chat; describe what happened in your own words instead.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory Public Speaking
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you
ask questions that make me reason it through. Never invent a story, a detail,
a quotation, or an example I did not give you, and never write a toast, a
tribute, or a joke for me. If I describe a real person, keep the talk on what
happened at the occasion or in the group, never on judging that person, and
never ask me for a name.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Should a toast or a tribute include humor? Some people say one
light, affectionate joke shows the room you know the honoree and fits a warm
occasion; others say a joke at a toast always risks embarrassing the honoree
or shutting out guests who do not get it, so sincerity is safer. Take a
position, support it with a real toast, tribute, award speech, or farewell you
have heard or given, and use this week's terms, such as occasion fit, mood or
tone match, and the specific-detail principle, accurately.
Option B: Does a small group work best with one designated leader, or with
leadership shared as a function? Some people say a group without one clear
leader drifts and wastes time; others say the best groups spread the task and
maintenance moves across every member, so no one person has to lead. Take a
position, support it with a real group, team, club, or committee you have been
part of, and use this week's terms, such as task roles, maintenance roles,
self-centered roles, and the reflective-thinking agenda, accurately.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I judge humor by occasion fit and mood or tone match rather than by
  whether a joke is funny
- whether I ground my position in one true, specific detail from a real
  occasion or group
- whether I tell task roles from maintenance roles and name a self-centered
  role when I see one
- whether I separate leadership as a function from holding a title or talking
  the most
- whether my position holds up against the strongest objection

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Every message you send before the
summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 14 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — judging a special-occasion speech by occasion fit, brevity, and mood or tone match, choosing language that fits the room, and telling task, maintenance, and self-centered roles apart in a working group — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, describe the real toast, tribute, award speech, or farewell, say whether it used humor and how the room responded, and take a position on whether humor belongs in a toast or tribute. For Option B, describe the real group, say who made the task and maintenance moves, and take a position on whether the group needed one designated leader. Use this week's terms (special-occasion speech, occasion fit, brevity, mood or tone match, specific-detail principle, four-beat toast, small group, team, reflective-thinking agenda, task roles, maintenance roles, self-centered roles, leadership as a function) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, that one warm joke is the most memorable line in many toasts, or that a group with no named leader can stall for weeks. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. What you would do next time (one or two sentences). Name one concrete change to a toast you might give or to how you act in your next group, and the course idea it serves.

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 14 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com