Project LEAP

For those of you who attended the open meetings with Dr. Roger Casey, candidate for president, you heard him mention Project LEAP. LEAP stands for “Liberal Education and America’s Promise” and is an initiative coordinated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). The general principles behind LEAP are that:

Students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World

• Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts

• Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary
  and enduring

Intellectual and Practical Skills, Including

• Inquiry and analysis
• Critical and creative thinking
• Written and oral communication
• Quantitative literacy
• Information literacy
• Teamwork and problem solving

And all of the above should be practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance

Personal and Social Responsibility, Including

• Civic knowledge and engagement—local and global
• Intercultural knowledge and competence
• Ethical reasoning and action
• Foundations and skills for lifelong learning

All of which should be anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges

Integrative Learning, Including

• Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies

Which should be demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and complex problems

This link will take you to the website that describes LEAP. There are PDF files and other links to discussion about these issues and other learning outcomes for students.
Feel free to post comments here.

A Defense of the Lecture

This article was on InsideHigherEd.com. It is by Adam Kotsko, a visiting assistant professor of religion at Kalamazoo College. He defends the lecture and points out some flaws in discussion-based classes. What do you think? I’ll start off with my own comment in the comment section.

Writing Video Clip

To those of you who attended Suzanne’s Writing Workshop today on managing the paper load, this was the video to which she alluded. Hear from students themselves about how they react to our comments on their writing. Part I is HERE and Part II of the video (courtesy of YouTube) is HERE.

A Comment from the Rome class

I don’t have too much to post today (no time!) but I did want to share a comment from the Rome class.

For those of you who have been following my adventures in my Roman art class this semester, you know that I’ve been trying to make the course interactive every class period (I’m on a T/Th schedule). I’ve tried to make sure that there are different activities for each class where students apply the information they read previously into some kind of discussion/presentation/group activity.

When we were all filing in on Tuesday for class, one of my students said “Dr. McKay, what are we doing in class today?” That was so refreshing as the question was more about *what* they’d be doing in class, as opposed to just asking me about the topic du jour (which they have on their syllabus anyway).

A small remark, for sure, but it was very welcomed.

Roman Class Update

I’ve not commented in a bit on the Roman Art and Architecture class. This entry is first and foremost a shout out to Suzanne Seibert and her excellently run Writing Institute this past summer, of which I was a lucky participant. During those two days, we were asked to develop an assignment. Mine was a writing assignment/presentation in which students would describe “A Day in the Life of a Roman Citizen.”

To try to evoke the population of Rome, they had to choose an identity from a hat. In it I had placed more “slave” identities than patricians (as it would have been), as well as a few plebeians, freedmen and soldiers.

All in all I was incredibly pleased with their presentations (I’m grading the writing this weekend…). Some of them presented in groups — three soldiers commented on their life on the march; two plebeians talked about their slave; two slaves described their life in the domus. They understood what I was trying to get them to do: to put themselves into the time and place.

One student who chose “slave” decided to describe his life as a Roman gladiator…up until the moment of his great combat in the Roman arena. He left us all in suspense — we don’t know if he won or lost his battle!

The next phase of this assignment is the WIKI project. They will be reshuffled and each group will have to creat a WIKI Exhibition, in which they must select art that we’ve studied this semester that can evoke to a modern viewer what life was like in ancient Rome. They are responsible for text and images. Stay tuned!

Are Students the Problem?

I found this editorial from Inside Higher Ed. com to be very interesting. I know that at times I have found myself wondering “what is wrong with these students?” But is it really a problem with them? Not sure I believe all of the content or views here, but it got me thinking. Thoughts?