It is that point of the semester when the assignments are coming in fast and furious. I handed back a test on Monday (from last week), and had papers come in on Wednesday and another short written assignment handed in on Friday. Monday of this coming week is another exam. I replaced an assignment that fell through with another different one, essentially on the fly, that is something I think will probably go really well and will be used again the next time I teach the class. It is already time to take stock of successes and failures and add things into the syllabus for next time so I don't encounter the problematic incidents and remember what worked in other classes.
Some observations on successes and failures below the orange swirly gig.
From earliest to latest -- on Monday the test got handed back. I have learned that dropping one of four tests takes some of the panic out of the first exam getting handed back, on both the part of the students and on my part as well. It means that students can look at the first test as an opportunity to learn how to take an exam in this introductory level class, and it also means I do not need to make up missed exams for students who have legitimate excuses for having missed one exam (then there are the students who buy cheaper plane tickets and have to leave before the exam that comes just before fall break, and it isn't a problem for me as I have already built one dropped exam into the syllabus. I wish I could do it with all my classes, but it doesn't work in timing. But this one class I am really happy with. There were a few students who were really worried and (frankly) some of them should have been, but after the first trial run I think they will be fine. They will learn how to have studied or at least what didn't work this time through, and can correct in the future.
(Then of course there was the student who came up to me after class to insist that the exam was "A+ work" because there were enough answers that were correct to get full credit. I ask them to tell me the slide identifications (title, period, etc., for works of art) and to cross out the answers they don't want me to grade. But this student had included answers for every blank, without regard to how many answers had been given -- I tell them I only grade the first 30 answers they give me (there were at least 90 possible answers). I clearly tell them that I won't take their BEST 30 answers, but their FIRST 30 ones so they need to indicate which ones they want me to mark. This student did not do that, which was fine -- I am used to having students sometimes misunderstand the directions first time around no matter how many times I go over them. But what surprised, and kinda amused me, was this person's insistence that this exam, in which a third or so of the first 30 answers were incorrect, was A+ work. I didn't point out to the student that A+ work generally means beyond perfect, as I really didn't come up with anything TO say. It was just enough for me to point out that I had gone through the grading rubric with students in class, and everyone else had followed the directions. Besides, if I had thought about it, it really was a bit snide to say something like that in quite the way I now think about saying it. I always come up with the things I should say after the fact. At least this time it was things I shouldn't have said so ... yay?)
The other frustration this week was that there were a lot of papers that came in on Wednesday in which student research was pretty much limited to what they could find on Facebook. I have told students not to use Wikipedia through long years of experience, not to use school or university student project webpages. However, I do not limit myself to negatives -- I give them an example of a good submission for the assignment and also give them a list of appropriate types of research sources (not limited to online sources). But it has not been until this year that students have used Facebook pages to research topics, and so it hasn't occurred to me to specify that they are not appropriate scholarly resources. And the use of Facebook was ubiquitous in this set of papers. Wow.
But there were really good things this week as well. The local tourism director from the chamber of commerce emailed me about coming to my museum class to talk with them about tourism and cultural programming in a small town. She is really happy to do it, and is pleased to be able to work with five students who want to design walking tours of the campus and community that can be uploaded and coordinated with the CofC. The students are looking into using QR codes printed on a map so that people can hear podcasts or watch videos or just call up info on their smart phones. The codes can be placed in a sign, then, or printed on a brochure, or on the next map that is printed of the town. A couple of the students are interested in a ghost tour and one of the others wants to construct a tour around those buildings in town that have been entered into the National Register of Historic Places. So these projects are potentially attractive for the tourism programming that is done in town.
At the last moment, as I was constructing my syllabus for this class, the possibility came up of curating and hanging an exhibit of art by disabled artists in our region. So I added it to the list of projects the class would do. Unfortunately the students who wanted to take the class and for whom this was their focus dropped the class, and the venue I thought had been arranged for the show had not actually ever been arranged. So I gave up on the project. But I never got around to removing it from the syllabus so the points remained, essentially attached to a "special community-focused project."
That leads to my most fun experience this past week (I get kicks out of my students, very often, even when I get frustrated with them, in case you couldn't tell). I replaced the disability show with another assignment this week, one that was given in class on Thursday and will finish next Thursday. It was designed in collaboration with my collaborator, the librarian who oversees the university's archives and our small museum (not the gallery, but the museum that is in our visitors' center which also serves as the admissions office building). She and I are presenting a workshop at a state conference soon titled something like "Let's give it a try" which describes our philosophy of developing museum studies opportunities for our students. She and I have long talked about having students develop loan exhibits in a box that can be checked out by local school groups (and home schoolers) like are available from a variety of museums like the Old Statehouse Museum in Arkansas, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Morris Museum in New Jersey, and a whole bunch of others, including some truly fine collections from local museums in the U.K..
Our library has such a case that came to us for Lincoln's 150th birth, and she brought that suitcase loan case to class on Thursday, and the students looked through it and got to play a bit with it, and we gave them the choice of working to prepare a case on World War I, one on "rural life," or one on 19th century toys and games. Very quickly they split themselves with one third wanting to work on the toys and games one, and two thirds wanting to work on WWI. (The latter was specifically requested by the library, as we are heading into the centenary of the war and they figure they will be asked for programming to support the anniversary). I presented several options for them to get objects for the boxes -- there are a lot of "junk shops" in town where they can get clothes that can be resewn and there are dollar stores throughout town. I also pointed out to them that papers could be included for little or no cost (photocopies of propaganda posters, for example, or of advertisements from Sears and Roebuck catalogues). It didn't occur to me that they could also look up auctions where you can find older items for good prices, but a colleague mentioned it to me today when I saw her at the farmers' market. But the students didn't need any more suggestions, I think -- they were off on talking about making rag dolls, buying jacks at the dollar store and providing students with copies of children's picture books. We are going to the WWI museum in Kansas City in a few weeks and this will give them a chance to think ahead. That museum has an interactive "Design your own propaganda poster" computer game, and we mentioned this to the students. I think they are looking to make something similar with a magnetic board, which will be fun and easy for school kids to play around with. The teacher then can take photographs of the results and post them on (yup) the school's Facebook page.
So both good and bad things this week, and none disastrous ones, which is good. I am looking forward to next Thursday when the loan boxes will come in from students in the class. Thinking ahead to that makes me happy.
So what assignments are you trying out this year that seem particularly promising? How do you keep your students from doing research in places that really are not good enough without figuring out every possibility and telling them no, no, and no? What have been successes and problems so far? It is the end of September. It is time to look around and take stock before heading into the holiday season (which, for me, starts with Halloween).