a college's academic program is creative and effective," check out this
Washington Post article. Cheers, Mr. G (via Mr. Burk)
----- Original Message -----
Charting New Courses To Make Subjects Click
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 8, 2007; B01
The intense exchange among students in Room 394 of Georgetown University's
Walsh building last week was of Descartes, how humans know they exist and
whether they are really nothing more than brains resting in vats. It was
standard fare for a course in philosophy.
But to prepare for the session, Prof. Linda Wetzel did something
unorthodox. She aired an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" --
the one in which Capt. Jean-Luc Picard finds himself living an alternate
life on a non-Federation planet. And during the discussion, Wetzel
referred to "data" not as a collection of facts but as "Data, our favorite
android," a character in the TV show.
This is Phil-180, also known as "Philosophy & Star Trek."
"It's got a better title than 'Metaphysics, Metaphysics and More
Metaphysics,' " Wetzel joked. "But seriously, the show can display the
philosophy, doing the job for you in a way that a thousand words can't."
Courses such as the one Wetzel designed, which frequently attract students
because they are unconventional, engage students in the learning process
better than traditionally conceived classes, educators say. But, they add,
there just aren't anywhere near enough of them.
"I think some courses are being designed better today, but to put that in
context, that means we've moved from 10 percent to maybe 25 percent," said
L. Dee Fink, an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma and an
instructional development expert. "There's still a massive percentage of
poorly designed courses."
Creating a great course takes thought, ingenuity and skill: activities
that spark different kinds of thinking and not just memorization; teachers
who care about the subject and interact well with students; and teachers
who have a good system of assessment.
Still, it is not a science.
"The act of putting together a coherent, interesting, up-to-date and
relevant course is something that cannot be reduced to an algorithm," said
Robert Halliday, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Utica
College in New York. "Some faculty are more skilled at it than others."
Effective courses cross over two or more disciplines, a recognition that
the tidy lines between disciplines that dominated teaching in the past
have been wiped away by modern science and thinking, educators say. Some
are created to appeal to non-majors of a particular subject, recognition
that undergraduates should be exposed to different ideas. Someone majoring
in English does not need the same level of detail for a physics course as
someone majoring in the subject.
Most often, the course is initiated by professors, but inspiration can
come from other sources. At Catholic University, some English majors who
enjoyed a "Rock and Poetry" course led by Ernie Suarez asked him to
develop a course on William Faulkner, and he obliged. At Trinity
Washington University, students wanted a course on the films of Spike Lee,
and they got one.
Still, too many courses are drawn up in the traditional mold, without
opportunities for student engagement. Critics say some professors don't
know how to design a course, don't want to learn a better way and, in the
name of academic freedom, are not forced to do so by their institutions.
Individual courses sometimes face a rigorous approval process, but many
institutions do not pay enough attention to whether their collections of
courses are effectively preparing students for the complicated world they
will inherit, educators say.
"In regards to a very thorough effort to figure out what we want our
graduates to be able to do and how do we know we are doing it, I think
there are very, very few institutions that do it in a serious way," said
Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University.
"It is at the beginning stages, and I would have to say that the so-called
leading colleges and universities have not been leaders in this effort,"
Bok added. "If anything, they have not shown as much interest as second-
and third-tier colleges. So we have a long way to go."
Wetzel's class and other seemingly unorthodox courses -- including the
University of Wisconsin at Madison's "Soap Operas and Social Change," a
look at gender roles -- are often derided by some faculty as lightweight
and by students as "easy A's." Some might be, but many, including Wetzel's
classes, are tough, her students say.
George Plitnik, a physics professor at Frostburg State University in
Maryland, said some students take his course, "The Science of Harry
Potter," a physics course for non-majors, thinking they can breeze
through. Some drop out after the first few weeks and move to an easier
section.
Those who stay learn about physics by examining concepts raised in the
Potter books. For example, a wizard's ability to "apparate," or move
almost instantly from one place to another, is tackled by looking at the
notion of wormholes, theoretical tunnels in space through which matter can
supposedly move.
It might seem silly to those outside academia that a student can take
"Baseball in American History" instead of "History of the U.S.," said Jim
Foster, interim provost of George Fox University in Newberg, Ore. But
history is a methodology, not just content, and the methods of historians
can be learned in the baseball course, he said.
A course titled "Detective Fiction" isn't exactly the equivalent of
"British Literature to 1660," but literary criticism is taught in both
courses, and that may be the "most important teaching goal, more important
than specific content," he said.
"One way of getting into what is going on in a student's everyday life is
looking at pop culture," Fink said. Wetzel and other professors "doing
similar things are trying to build a bridge between what the discipline
has in it and everyday life. To me, that's a good sign.
Wetzel said "Star Trek" was a factor in her decision to become a
philosopher. For many years, it was difficult for her to get students to
get their minds around Descartes' writings in which he questions the
existence of the entire external world. Getting them to understand the
concept through "Star Trek" helps.
"I took the course because my best friend is a Trekkie," said Jack Dealy,
22, a senior. "The course shows you that you can critically think about
something in a different way."
For a unit on personal identity, Wetzel will show the episode "Second
Chances," in which the character Cmdr. William Riker finds that a
duplicate of himself has been living on another planet.
Students say her approach, while seemingly different from the typical
philosophy course, teaches the same complex theme but in a more accessible
way.
"Professor Wetzel is less structured and has more fun with assignments,"
said Logan Rhyne, 20, a junior. "But the class is far from easy."
