Spring 2001 course enactment
This page is still under construction, and I am building it as I teach the course this semester. In the spring 2001, I implemented further revisions to the course designed to enhance the interdisciplinary approach of the course and to provide more opportunities for student interaction. I added a creative writing assignment on Egypt, where students assumed the role of an ancient Egyptian and attempted to analyze their view of art. Students presented these papers to the class, and several of them contained very fine analyses of the nature and role of art in Egyptian antiquity (see in particular that of student 22). I added an applied project to the discussion of mosques; the success of the Lesson with Pooh on Art discussion board postings in the spring and fall 2000 inspired me to attempt to have students predict, on the basis of their study of the Qur'an, what an Islamic mosque would look like. I got some very interesting designs from this project; students shared these projects with one another in class and then we discussed their ideas and compared them to actual mosques. In most cases, students very accurately predicted the structure of a mosque. I also added a group project on art as propaganda; student groups presented disciplinary materials that had previously not played a strong role in the unit on functionalism, including music, film, and literature. The discussions of aesthetic theories and also ethical concerns following these presentations were often quite intense.
Finally, I added an assignment on landscape gardens, in which students designed the perfect eighteenth-century garden on the basis of the materials on the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment they had studied.
Course surveys in both the spring and fall 2000 pointed to difficulties with the unit on rhythm in poetry; consequently, I expanded that unit to a full session and brought in a specialist on poetry to lead the discussion. Once again, I redesigned the first exam, dropping the multiple choice component of the spring and fall 2000 exams in favor of developing more thoroughly interdisciplinary essay requirements. In the second section of exam I, I also required students to analyze the aesthetic of functionalism through various modules of their choice, as opposed to focusing the analysis on particular modules. I believe the first exam now comes much closer to demanding the sort of critical and interdisciplinary analysis desired.
Students wrote several very excellent integrative essays on color. Several students also performed exceptionally well on the analysis of functionalism, but more students had trouble with this section of the exam than in the first section. Several students tended to list the various functions of structures, rather than to argue for them on the basis of evidence; these students also tended not to analyze the aesthetic of functionalism as a satisfactory or unsatisfactory view of art. On the whole, however, I had more students perform at a higher level of analysis than on the first exams in previous terms. Largely, this was due to my progressive refinements of the exam questions and the interdisciplinary approach of the course. The early assignment on Egypt which required role-playing and analysis of the aesthetic of functionalism from an Egyptian point of view seems to have prepared students well for the first exam.
Sample Student responses: student 13 | student 22 | student 6 | student 12 | student 4
I also restructured the second exam to focus on the board topics of the aesthetic schools rather than on a particular example of each.
During this term, I taught the course solo without the assistance of Dr. Farrar for workshops. I did, however, bring in several guest lecturers throughout the term in music, poetry, and other areas.
For a detailed chronicle of the unfolding of this course from week to week, one may review the theoretical narrative and course materials in the spring and fall 2000 enactment section, most of which I replicated during spring 2001, or consult the spring 2001 syllabus.
The links below contain materials on student learning and the results of surveys and other instruments.
Examples of Student Learning
What is an interdisciplinary class? Bulletin Board Posting assignment during the first week of class
What is art? bulletin board posting during the first week of class
Sample In-Class Group Discussion on Preferential Shapes
Bulletin Board Postings on Preferential Shapes assignment
Yoruba Ring Postings students describe their self-portrait using Yoruba Color Chromatics
A Poetic Journey through the Arts bulletin board posting on color, line, and shape
Sample Creative Writing Assignments on Egypt
Qur'an word search essay bulletin board posting on the "images" in Islam
Sample applied mosque assignments students tried to predict what a mosque would look like based on their study of the Qur'an
Group Presentations on Art as Propaganda
Midterm Exam I and sample student responses: student 13 | student 22 | student 6 | student 12 | student 4
Videotaped Group Skits on the Tao of Pooh
Midterm II and sample responses
Pooh's Lesson on Art bulletin board postings
Haiku And Zen Garden Assignment
Eighteenth-Century Landscape Designs
Student self-portraits
Assessment Instruments (other than exams and assignments)
Student focus groups -- end of the semester -- under construction
Spring 2001 survey instrument and student responses (under construction)
MERs spring 2001 (under construction)
JPI class means -- spring 2001