3:15 a.m. Friday, today, as in a little while ago. Back from teaching my midnight class, College Writing I, 11:45 p.m. to 2:45 a.m. at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. I drove past Harvard and MIT on the way home. The lights were out. I only have a few minutes until Inside Higher Ed’s 4 a.m. deadline. Here goes.
Any students at midnight?
Yes. My section is full. Same for Pysch 101, which began Tuesday. Forty-seven students in all are enrolled in the two midnight courses. Four students are taking both courses. Two thirds of the midnight students are part time, same as at the college as a whole. The youngest of the 47 is 18, the oldest 59. Sixty-four percent of the midnight students are 18-22 years old, the so-called traditional college age. Nationally and at Bunker Hill, most students are women, but most of my midnight students are men. The national average age for community colleges students is 27. Languages other than English in my class this morning: Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Somali. The Russian student also spoke Ukranian and German.
Since the classroom had no windows, I couldn’t tell it was midnight. No one nodded off. This was just a regular class. Kathleen O’Neill, who taught the Tuesday midnight class, said that her section may even have been livelier than daytime sections. This morning we applied Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triangle, writing in class to read aloud. I sent them off with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and an assignment, from the Advanced Placement English composition exam, to analyze the rhetorical strategies Lincoln used to achieve his purpose. Students stayed after class to ask questions.
Click here for the full article. Source: Inside Higher ED, September 11, 2009 by Wick Sloane.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
REACHING STUDENTS, SETTING LIMITS
TORONTO – Practicality was a major theme at teaching sessions here at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Many professors expressed dissatisfaction with traditional teaching methods – and also discussed the need to find alternatives that don’t either take so much time that they can’t do their research or hijack the syllabus away from the material they would like to cover.
There was a general consensus that there are ways to better engage political science students -- but also that these methods take much more time and, in some cases, cost more money. Many of the ideas discussed here were attempts to challenge the traditional lecture format “without ruining your life,” in the half-joking phrase that was part of the title of one of the papers presented.
That paper, by Rebecca Glazier, assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, examined the use of simulations in courses. Some experts have promoted these simulations – in which students are assigned a role in some large global conflict on which they will then negotiate. But Glazier noted that these large simulations are very difficult for professors who don’t have armies of research assistants, since the students need assignments on their roles to play, coaching on key issues, and feedback.
Her solution is to use the simulation approach on a much smaller scale. She has a cast of five characters -- rather than hundreds -- and in a class of 25, she will have 5 simulations going on simultaneously. She can then give detailed “position papers” to the participants playing the various roles in a way she couldn’t with a larger simulation. A recent simulation was based on the Juba round of negotiations over the Ugandan conflict, and each group of five students included one student representing the government, one the main rebel group, one the United Nations, one an international non-governmental organization, and one a local NGO.
“We had all kinds of creative results,” she said, with interesting approaches to such key issues as whether there should be amnesty or war crimes trials, and what the political solutions should be.
Click here to read the full artile. Source: Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2009 issue.
There was a general consensus that there are ways to better engage political science students -- but also that these methods take much more time and, in some cases, cost more money. Many of the ideas discussed here were attempts to challenge the traditional lecture format “without ruining your life,” in the half-joking phrase that was part of the title of one of the papers presented.
That paper, by Rebecca Glazier, assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, examined the use of simulations in courses. Some experts have promoted these simulations – in which students are assigned a role in some large global conflict on which they will then negotiate. But Glazier noted that these large simulations are very difficult for professors who don’t have armies of research assistants, since the students need assignments on their roles to play, coaching on key issues, and feedback.
Her solution is to use the simulation approach on a much smaller scale. She has a cast of five characters -- rather than hundreds -- and in a class of 25, she will have 5 simulations going on simultaneously. She can then give detailed “position papers” to the participants playing the various roles in a way she couldn’t with a larger simulation. A recent simulation was based on the Juba round of negotiations over the Ugandan conflict, and each group of five students included one student representing the government, one the main rebel group, one the United Nations, one an international non-governmental organization, and one a local NGO.
“We had all kinds of creative results,” she said, with interesting approaches to such key issues as whether there should be amnesty or war crimes trials, and what the political solutions should be.
Click here to read the full artile. Source: Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2009 issue.
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