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Students wrote “letters” to an imaginary friend giving advice about how to succeed in the course. The work remained sealed until after grades had been entered. Here are a few excerpts that suggest that the targeted operations had entered the conscious of many of the students:
- “I suppose the first advice I’d have to you is to be daring. Make unusual fusions and connections of concepts and ideas. Professor Pace likes us to look at the assumptions and values underlying thought, at least in part because it gives us some degree of empathy for others. That is not trivial, and is a valuable skill even in our daily lives. Find differences among the commonalities and commonalities among the differences. This class has the potential for a sort of self-enrichment that few other courses have. Make use of the creativity allotted to you.”
- “Almost every idea about society (gender, nationality, race, class, etc.) is constructed.”
- “The readings will challenge your understanding of history and deal mostly with ideas instead of facts. Look at the values and assumptions of the authors.”
- “When given the chance, research the backgrounds of the writers you are reading. Much of the course deals with the assumptions various writers make in their work. Background knowledge helps make these assumptions clearer.”
- “When coming into this class, make sure you have the readings and assignments for the week. It is very easy to get behind and once behind it is very difficult to catch up around the times of the major assignments. Also, it is not only important to understand the readings themselves, but to realize the connections between the groups of readings: why are they similar? Why are they different? Being able to understand the connections of texts and thinkers will be vital in completing the papers and group work.”
Systematic comparison of on-line assignments early and late in the semester
I evaluated students’ ability to move beyond a literal repetition of the ideas in a text to achieve a real analysis by comparing questions involved the identification of assumptions in the fourth and eleventh week of the semester, using a scale form 1 (literal repetition) to 5 (sophisticated analysis of assumptions). The average score move from 2.3 in the first iteration to 3.5 seven weeks later, an increase of 34%. This learning was also visible in an analysis of a question from the fifteenth week of the semester, where the average level was 3.4.
Interviews with students about their experience of the course videotaped by third parties and later analyzed
Excerpts from videotaped interviews
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