Principle 1 Principle 2 Principle 3 Principle 4 Principle 5 Principle 6 Principle 7

The 7 Principles

How Well Does English 301 Fulfill the 7 Principles of Effective Undergraduate Education?

1. Encourage contacts between students and instructor.

I know that historical texts can be difficult to read and to “get into,” and I also know that the amount of reading that a literature survey course requires can be overwhelming if a student doesn’t “keep up” with the reading. I have learned that success in this course requires that students use what they are learning and that they get feedback on their response to each reading. So the course content was divided into “two classes” per week, each with reading assignments, a required response essay, and a post to the discussion board. I responded to the individual essays and took part in the discussion threads.

I didn’t want people to feel lost or just disappear if they had trouble with the course content or if they had technology problems. So the first section of my syllabus gave them this information: English 301-50: British Literature I J. Dietrich j.dietrich@louisville.edu Office: 205 Gardiner Hall. 852-2245 Office hours: TR 2:30-3:30 (eastern time zone)

Contacting Me

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the course material or about the course requirements. (Questions about any problems of access to the site should go to the Delphi Center at http://delphi.louisville.edu/ , which handles the delivery of courses, but notify me as well as soon as you discover you are having problems with the technology.) I will reliably keep my office hours, and, in addition, I am easy to find in the office many other hours as well. I will respond to email within 48 hours and will usually be able to respond much more quickly than that. When I have to be traveling to professional meetings and cannot know if I will have access to my email, I will let you know that in advance.

My students did contact me, often by email and once by phone (the conversation began with “I know your voice, Dr. Dietrich!”). It helped me immensely to hear from them: I found out what they didn’t understand and when they were going to miss deadlines for reasons of technology (“my computer connection isn’t working, but I am using the computer at the library now”) and reasons of family (“Our daughter was born last night.”)

In addition, my colleagues at the Delphi Center told me that my students would find it easier to relate to me if they had some idea what I looked like. So the first lecture of the course was videotaped. English 301 Welcome

2. Develop Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students.

Preserving the “class discussion”—a primary pedagogy in the humanities—in the online format was a very high priority in English 301. The Discussion Board feature allowed the students—and me—to share our responses to the twice-weekly reading assignments. Students were required to post once on each question and were invited to post again in response to another student’s comment.

The first Discussion Board assignment, the introduction, gave me and the students a way to get to know each other. It read, “In about 50 words, introduce yourself to the rest of the class. You might tell what you are studying, why you are interested in this course, or what you like to read.” Students also included, even in this first post, questions to each other. One told where she was living and added, “I would love to know if there is anyone else from my neck of the woods out there.” Another concluded her intro post with “I hope to learn from everyone this semester. Thank you.”

From reading the responses on the next fourteen discussion board questions, I could tell how well students were understanding the readings and also what they wanted to “talk” about. Most important, however, was the role of the Discussion Board posts in bringing everyone into the discussion. In a physical classroom, in a seventy-five-minute class, I have time to call on only a few students for answers to each question; some who want to volunteer may not be called on; and those who are too shy or too unconfident to volunteer can be outside the discussion for most of the semester. In the online course, however, everyone must post, and time is no problem. People who might be very reluctant to speak in class can compose a note on their own schedule and send it off to the Discussion Board.

3. Develop Active Learning Techniques.

My goal in teaching literature is to give students practice in reading and interpretation so that they can go on reading all kinds of literature, from all the historical eras of English, on their own. So I designed my course with relatively short lectures. The lectures can contain complex information, however, because students can re-play them until they feel confident that they know the material. The lectures don’t tell students what the literature “means”; they are intended, instead, to provide a context for the reading and to suggest ways in which texts shaped their culture. Example inlecture 4

The key element in the course is the student’s response to the readings. You can see from the syllabus that the readings drive the lectures and the other assignments.

Students then respond in two ways: 1) with a post to the Discussion Board and 2) with an essay or a paraphrase of a difficult poem.

The two essay tests and the final exam all were designed NOT to be “tell me what I told you” exercises. Rather, they asked the students to formulate a thesis and substantiate it by finding examples in the literature.

I was trying in these tests to give students some room to pursue their own interests within the structure of the course. So they had a range of literary works from which to choose their examples, and they had some room to write about themes that interested them. My hope is that the experience of writing these three major essays teaches students what kinds of questions they can ask of literature.

4. Give Prompt Feedback

Interaction with the students is the heart of a course like English 301. It enables the professor to see what skills the students are using as they read historical literature and to see how well those skills are developing. Traditionally, class discussions have been the preferred pedagogy for such courses. When the class discussion goes online through Discussion Boards and Response Essay assignments, the instructor’s role as monitor of the discussion can be maintained by prompt responses to posts and to the essays.

My goal was to respond within 24 hours to students posts and to respond in a way that guided them to a better post. Here is the first Discussion Board assignment and some examples of my responses to students’ posts:

Assignment: “Identify a kenning in Beowulf. Find an example that isn't mentioned in the lecture and that no one else has posted yet. Give the kenning and its line number.” Sample of responses to posts:

• “Yes--and this is one we are so used to that it hardly sounds like a kenning any more.”
• “Are you using a different edition by any chance? I cannot find the phrase you cite in line 207” and then later, after the student had corrected the line number: “Yes, exactly. (Thanks for help locating the line.)”
• “Good--"whale-road" is a classic kenning.”
• “Yes--this one is so familiar we hardly remember that it is a kenning. Good.”
• "Hell-dam" is a good example of a kenning, but it refers to Grendel's mother.”
• “Good--yes. (What a great expression for the roiling ocean!)”

I was usually able to respond to students’ twice-weekly essays within 48 hours. My goal was to guide them toward better reading, more historicizing, and clearer writing. Here is one such assignment and a sample of responses:

Assignment: “In an essay of approximately 150-200 words, indicate what new ideals The Courtier introduces into English culture. Support your thesis with at least two quotations from the text.”

5. Emphasize Time on Task

Like many humanities courses, English 301 covers a great deal of literature, over a number of centuries. A student who falls behind in the reading will have a difficult time catching up and will also have a more difficult time connecting the literature to its time period. (Simply reading the works in chronological order helps reinforce the developmental patterns that the course emphasizes.)

The course was designed, therefore, to require twice-weekly essays and twice-weekly posts to the Discussion Board. If a student was not sending in essays and posts, I e-mailed to ask what had happened.

Beyond the assignments, however, I wanted to be sure that students took advantage of one of the great strengths of online education: the ability to replay the lectures until they are confident about knowing the material. So I included this advice in the syllabus: “Tools and Advice about the Lectures" I strongly urge you to make use of the Glossary feature under Tools. It includes definitions and identifying information that should be helpful to you as you study this material. Under Course Documents I’ve also posted supplementary material.

"One great advantage of online instruction is that you can listen to the lectures more than once, and I strongly urge you to do that: go over the week’s lectures until you know the material.”

On the course evaluation, one student noted this strength of online education: “It seems I learned so much more, perhaps because I was able to do it in the quiet of my home. I will do it again and would recommend it to others in my similar situation.”

6. Communicate High Expectations

Although there is a great deal of factual content in English 301, I want students not merely to learn the facts but to learn to use them in meaningful ways. I don’t want the course to be an exercise in “tell me what I told you.” Rather, I want it to give students a chance to take ownership of the material and use it to answer questions that have meaning for them. For this reason, the three longer essays allowed students choice in the literary works they would write about. I also want the course to teach students general critical thinking skills and ways of reading literature that they can apply to other texts and in other courses. The essays they wrote in response to each reading assignment were intended to give students practice in asking three basic kinds of questions about the literature: “what literary techniques do you see in these texts?”; “how does this reading differ from earlier readings in form or content?”; “what about this text ties it to its culture?” I wanted to show them a variety of approaches but also repeat each approach often enough that students could internalize it and feel confident about using it.

The syllabus announced in its Course Description and Course Objectives that the course would cover a great deal of material and ask students to master a number of high-level skills.

Course Description

We will read a selection of the writings of English-speaking peoples from 660-1733. We will focus on the ways they constructed their views of the world and on the role of writing in that construction, paying particular attention to changing cultural values.

Course Objectives

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to do the following: 1) interpret the major works of English literature, ca. 660-1733; 2) recognize and explain the significance of the writers and the works to the development of major literary traditions; 3) relate the works to their specific time of composition and explain the historical and cultural context of the works; 4) identify the meter, rhyme scheme, and poetic form of any given poem from the period; 5) define and use the literary and cultural terms appropriate to the period.

Likewise, the Course Requirements and Grading section of the syllabus told students exactly what criteria I would use in grading their work: “In computing your semester grade, I will drop your two lowest scores on weekly essays and paraphrases, and also your two lowest scores on discussion board posts. Criteria for grading the daily essays will be these: accuracy of reading, quality of thesis and support, quality of the writing. Criteria for grading the posts will be these: quality of the idea, clarity of expression, and originality (don’t just duplicate an idea someone has already posted.)”

The introductory lecture gave me an opportunity to emphasize to students that the course would cover a lot of territory and would challenge them, and it also gave me the opportunity to encourage them:

I want you to get from this course the information and the skills you need to go on teaching yourself about literature, from all periods. The assignments and tests, therefore, are designed to lead you to do such analyses on your own, not just to give back information from the lectures or textbook. So, think of this as a skill-building course. I will be asking you to work hard, but I promise you that the material is worth the effort. And even though we won’t be meeting in a regular classroom, this course is set up to be very interactive. Let me know what you’re thinking. If you have a question, ask it. If you have a comment, contribute it. I know from experience that this course is a lot more fun and is a better course when we have the benefit of everyone’s thinking.

Learning is a trial and error process. So getting things wrong is a step in the process of getting them right. When I learn a new computer application, I spend a lot of time getting things wrong before I get them right. And if I weren’t willing to be wrong, I wouldn’t get to being right. So I will never make fun of any honest attempt to answer a question. Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Taking chances is the way we learn things. I will tell you when you are wrong, but I will respect the effort. And I ask that you respect each other in that way as well.

7. Respect Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning

The online format of English 301 enabled a variety of learning styles: learning from lectures; writing to learn; testing ideas in group discussion; practicing a set of skills repeatedly throughout the semester; and seeing the same cultural processes (e.g., creation of identity) demonstrated in the visual examples as well as the texts.

My colleagues in the Delphi Center provided the technical expertise to make the lectures run as text below each of the visual illustrations and to progress as I read the lectures aloud. In this way, students could hear the text, read along with the narration if they chose, and also see the visual illustrations. They could hear the proper nouns pronounced and also see how they were spelled.