I’m teaching a course this semester in the American Studies program at Georgetown University, generally known as CIV III. [I’m using the beta version of Jeremy Boggs and Josh Greenberg’s courseware plug-in for WordPress to run the class, and I really like the set-up. Hopefully, soon the plug-in will be available to the world.]
This is an exciting chance for me, because this was the actual course that really pushed me into academia. I fell in love with the time period — 1880-1945 –, and the wonderful flux of racial formation, immigration, citizenship, gender definition, and scientific and religious questions that mark this liminal period. As a student, I was silent for the entire semester when I took this class, and that was the last thing that I wanted from my own students.
There is all kinds of smart in the room this semester, and I really want these folks to actively engage with the material and one another. Hence, I’m doing a new kind of blogging assignment this semester. In the last few courses I’ve taught, I’ve asked students to keep reading journals, and last semester my students did this by blogging their reflections. Blogging each week is a lot of work for an undergraduate, and I found that the students spent so much time concentrating on drafting their own reflections that they didn’t actually interact with their peers or comment on one another’s posts.
So, this semester I divided the class up into groups. Each group is responsible for posting the initial reflections for two weeks during the semester. The students in the group each compose a 500-750 word reflection on the materials for that week. Then, the rest of the students in the class must respond to one of those four or five initial postings. This system seems to take some of the pressure off the students–each person is on the spot only twice a semester. And, if yesterday’s discussion is any evidence, it seems to promote a vibrant in-class discussion. Students come primed with an opinion about the readings and they have already interacted with one another in text form.