What knowledge have you acquired in this class that you do not have the opportunity to display on the final?
What would you have liked to say on the blog, had the opportunity presented itself?
Feel free to post any closing thoughts, questions, observations here.
Deadline: Tuesday, May 10, 10pm.
22 comments:
In this class, I learned about different type of literary genres. Some of them were interesting and some were not. Overall I like the blog functioning as a place for the class to discuss the reading and things discussed in class. I learned how to stage some works and I found that interesting when we did that in class.
I know everyone is probably furiously studying and writing final papers, but I wanted to ask what you guys thought about our individual responsibilities for the Independent Units. Do activities like these where we are forced to go in front of our peers and facilitate discussion benefit us? I definitely think it helped me, even though most of the time leading up to the day my group had to lead class was spent wallowing in nerves about speaking in front of everyone. However, I am more than okay with just showing up to class and sitting in desks all semester while professors do all the lecturing. Maybe anyone else among the soon to be graduates has something to say about how this class was structured, in comparison with how the rest of our college classes were set up. I'm just curious.
I thought that the independent units were less beneficial for the people listening to the Wednesday classes, compared to a typical class where the professor teaches. Part of this, naturally, is due to the fact that our professors have degrees and experience in teaching, whereas we don't. The main issue with those classes (and, I guess, all discussion-based classes) is that, in order to be successful, they really rely on vigorous student participation, which is very hit-or-miss, especially as the semester drags on.
The true benefit of the independent units, though, came from when you had to teach the class. I know significantly more about working-class literature between 1740 and 1800 than I ever wanted to, thanks to having to prepare a bibliography, write blog posts, and present a lesson plan to class. Having to deal with the practical concerns of entertaining a classroom for 50 minutes also helped me empathize with how hard it can be to write up a lesson plan for multiple classes a week, especially when the material is very dry.
In all, the independent units are something I really liked, mostly because, on Kirstin's part, they're a complete leap of faith. Entrusting us with over half of the syllabus could be disastrous, but I think it worked out this semester and it was radically different than any class I've ever taken.
While I'm desperately trying to inflate my post count:
What did you guys think of the attendance questions? I think that having everyone write something at the start of class gets people's brains going and is really useful -- besides that, it's nice to not have the tedious 3-4 minutes of roll call that starts out some classes.
Would they have been more useful if they got graded (i.e., they'd be questions about the material, and if you didn't know, you didn't get attendance credit)? That's not what any student wants, but would that be more beneficial from a teaching standpoint?
As far as the individual group presentations are concerned, I would have to agree with RS to some degree. Having to present in front of the class led me to far more knowledgable about the topic of forgeries than I ever thought I would be. While our group presenting may not have been as wonderful a normal class with a teacher, that is what the surrounding classes are for. It was good to have the topic looked at from a standpoint similar to our own, since they came from our peer group.
As far as the attendance questions go, I think the attendance questions work best they way they were given. A graded quiz at the start of each class would have been very intimidating. While it may have forced more prepwork for class, I think it would have lead to more stress among the students than anything helpful. This was a great way to get conversations started, in a less stressful manner. Had it been strict questioning, less would have wanted to contribute is my guess.
I thought the independent units were a good aspect to the class. I liked that we had a responsibility to find out information on our own and present it in our own way to the class. I liked hearing what other people thought about certain topics in between what we heard from Kirsten on Monday's class and Friday's class. One thing I wish was done done less in the group presentations was small group work. I felt as though a lot of the time it seemed like busy work and a way for the presenters to not have to talk as much, which i do not feel was the point of them having the presentation and leading the class for the day.
One thing which I would like to say is that I definitely liked the fact that we were able to choose the last book we read as a class. Most of the time the instructor simply tells us what we have to read and we do not get a choice in it, but I feel as though having the choice made me personally want to read, rather than feeling like I need to because if I don't I will be penalized.
I also really thought the independent units were helpful. It was interesting to see how each group presented their information and what they focused in on. I particularly enjoyed the units that gave historical and societal background information surrounding their topic and chosen literary works. However, I do think that a digital component of the assignment would have been helpful (ie. powerpoint presentations that later could have been printed out to have as note references). For the final, I realized that much of the group presentation notes were not executed well in my own notetaking. I feel as though having this information could have been very beneficial to the class and, henceforth, to compiling our answers for the final exam.
I agree with Molly on notes, because as the semester went on the quantity and quality of my note taking slipped, so I know for certain when it came to picking a topic for the last class having a better set of notes would would have helped me so much more in the early stages of setting up my topic. Now I wish I had thought about this during my independent unit because an outline of our notes might have made for better class discussion. With power points, though, I'm glad when I don't have to bother with them because it adds more levels of stress and worry while making them, and having the lights dimmed down for such a presentation is always a great opportunity for a snooze, so that could really dampen class discussion.
Before the semester started did anyone else feel apprehensive about having to hand in answers to questions daily? I expected them to be a lot harder and less interesting than they ended up being, so it was a welcome relief to answer questions like "I've got nothing today...what are you thinking?"
for the last *paper* not class..
I have learned the white bear is will be kind of out of reach always. It is like an actual polar bear in my opinion. It's an endangered species, but it has managed to survive just like 18th century literature regardless of being unable to properly distingush where it fits abd why did it endure. It's also an exquisite creature, aethestically beautiful that we can just look at, just like we've taken some of the literature for its surface value.
I agree with what some of my peers states already. I too felt at if my knowledge in my field of study was most apparent. I think that I know more about the print culture in depth than any of the other topics. However, I think that the details about some of the other readings like the ones I incorporated into my papers were also taken in well. All in all, I love the freedom of speech that you seem to get from the blog. It appears that people are more prone to state their true opinions about a particular subject matter on here than in the classroom setting. I think that although I believe we gained more from having the teacher lecture, we all actually learned how to take a serious approach to analyzing eighteen century literature whether we initially like/want to or not
Question!
Did anyone decide to keep Shandy for their bathroom collection? :)
At first I was very hesitant about the blog due to the high volume of posts, but as the class progressed, I have found that the blog is a very unique and interesting way to engage the class and help facilitate a dialogue on these topics. I had no conception of what 18th century literature was, and now after taking the class I have seen the extent of literature during this time period. Some of the texts we read I did not find overly engaging, but novels like Tristram Shandy I had never heard about before, and was pleasantly surprised by how unique and different the text was. Thank you for a great semester.
In this class I was introduced to many writers that I have never heard of before. Maybe there is a reason have never heard of them but I always like meeting new people and reading new authors. I guess I just wish that we had more opportunity to not only praise the authors but maybe understand why they are not as popular. Also I think that religion and philosophy would have been an interesting topic to discuss, I believe during this time in history people began theories that opposed the church, which was uncommon before.
I've written this before, I think, but it's worth reiterating just how crazy Tristram Shandy is. I mean, I've studied postmodern texts in a handful of classes throughout my college career, and I think bringing in Sterne's novel as an example of a pre-postmodern postmodern text would have been really enlightening. That said, I do think that the inanity of the book runs the risk of making it either lose its usefulness as an educational text (especially when the answer to every "why?" question regarding the book becomes something like "because Sterne was trolling everyone") or making it a quotation mine that can be harvested every once in a while whenever someone wants to make a point. Despite Sterne's best efforts to baffle us, I still have a naive notion that a text can be an organic whole that's worth studying from start to end, and I wish it would have been possible for us to at least try.
Tristram Shandy is just so different from anything I've ever seen before, and given that this class is my 12th or so English class on this campus, that's a very good thing.
I kept up with the readings for the most part but I often fell behind. The same can be said for the blog. So on the last day of class when we had to go around and guess eachother's writer, character, literary or aesthetic movement or concept, I was very surprised at how good I was and other people were at guessing eachothers' cards. I was surprised at how familiar I was with so many of the texts and writers we read this year, even though there were so many. I think the reason I (and many others) managed to retain so much of the information that we learned this semester is because of the overall way the class was structured. Other people have specific mentioned elemenents of the class, but to me it was the combination of everything that we did. This class wasn't just Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but it was a constant classroom because of the structure of the blog, the way the group projects were spread across the semester, and the papers that were all very differernt from one another. It is the complete package of what we did this semester that made this class an accomplishment for me - and one that I will not soon forget.
After four years of taking English classes, I must say I am sick of writing papers. The one thing I can appreciate about this class (besides the MANY authors we came across who were truthfully quite interesting)is our writing assignments. The first one was interesting because it wasn't straightforward like most papers with "Write a thesis, give support". It was different. The second paper was also interesting because it helped us dig deeper with our individual units. Most paper I've come across require students to make a thesis out of a text they read. This wasn't the case for this class and I REALLY liked that change in pace. For the most part, the class was unique as a whole. It was well structured and organized and asked us to do something different each week. As David said, I liked that it was an ongoing process throughout the week. It helped me retain information about subjects a little better. Hopefully after graduation when 18th Century literature pops up over a dinner conversation I'll do it some justice.
This class provided me with a wealth of information on the process of writing, which is not discussed in other classes but examined fully in later 18th century literature texts. It is shocking that this period of literature is not as well studied since it introduced a variety of different genres and trends in literature. I now consider it the birthplace of all that came after it, as it inspired many writers to take up their pens and create.
As many people have said, I really enjoyed the structure of the class. I thought that it was very intimidating to lead a class but also a very interesting and fun experience. Even if we as groups didn't do as great a job as a professor would, each student-led unit still provided plenty of interesting questions and commentary on their particular subjects.
I still can't believe how fascinated I've become with the materials we read throughout the semester. I remember thinking very early on that I couldn't believe anybody would want to study this stuff, but then I started to realize that every day when I left class I felt like I was genuinely learning something new. Often in classes there are very obvious conclusions to be drawn from things we read, but we have to go through the motions and talk about it anyway. It seemed like the material in this class was more difficult to decipher a lot of the time and so it was great to get something out of every class.
The material covered in this class was very intimidating. Many times I would do the reading and gain little to no understanding on what was going on. Starting the class of with an attendance question that brushed the surface of whatever our reading was for the day really helped in making things less overwhelming. Also, though I definitely fell behind in posting blogs and did a bad job of keeping up with that aspect of the course, I was always on this gaining perspective from my peers and learning from their comments. Lastly, I think the paper assignments were definitely manageable and doable, though sometimes their open-endedness bothered me a little. I would also say that having the second assignment be about our independent study units was kind of overkill.
Well group presentations seem to be quite popular here, so I suppose I could hope on this bandwagon as well. I would agree the value of the presentations is not in the listening aspect while in class, but in the work put into the project while coordinating with the groups members assigned to you. I actually was able to learn a significant amount of information on my topic, much more than I would if just present in class to listen and casually participate.
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