Monthly Archives: August 2013

First day of class

from The Idea of a University, Cardinal Newman (John Henry Newman)

“It is a case of contract:—’I will speak, if you will listen:’—’I will come here to learn, if you have any thing worth teaching me.’ In an oratorical display, all the effort is on one side; in a lecture, it is shared between two parties, who co-operate towards a common end.”

“The result is a formation of mind,—that is, a habit of order and system, a habit of referring every accession of knowledge to what we already know, and of adjusting the one with the other; and, moreover, as such a habit implies, the actual acceptance and use of certain principles as centres of thought, around which our knowledge grows and is located. Where this critical faculty exists, history is no longer a mere story-book, or biography a romance; orators and publications of the day are no longer infallible authorities; eloquent diction is no longer a substitute for matter, nor bold statements, or lively descriptions, a substitute for proof. This is that faculty of perception in intellectual matters, which, as I have said so often, is analogous to the capacity we all have of mastering the multitude of lines and colours which pour in upon our eyes, and of deciding what every one of them is worth.”

 

[Source: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/article9.html ]

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Thinking about course texts and technologies

After teaching a course designed to introduce students to Shakespeare’s plays and to their film adaptations, I’ve been wondering how reading technologies shape students’ engagement with course materials.  On reflection, the traditional screening format for films or film clips (single focal point, lights off) might implicitly invite students to tune out or change their focus when our classes don’t explicitly discuss the assumptions that we bring when we begin reading or interpreting.

When we used electronic versions of the plays (eBook readers, tablets, and laptops), the change in format seemed to free students from the implicit authority of the printed text and spur conversation.  At the same time, many of my students have talked about how their study habits differ when they work with either electronic or printed course texts.  Some prefer to print even short readings because the medium changes the relationship between the student and the text.

How, then, do embedded video clips within a course management system differ from the same clips shown during a classroom session? How do they differ as modes of educational instruction with their own implicit interpretive maps?