ENGL

UROP Sponsors New Opportunity for Academic Departments

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 17:25:34 +0000

UROP Sponsors New Opportunity for Academic Departments Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/10/2017 - 10:25

By Joan Gabriele and Tim O’Neil

What is research like in the arts and humanities? That’s a question students in several CU programs and departments will soon be able to answer thanks to new initiatives in Jewish Studies, Theatre and Dance, and English, which are supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)’s new Department Grants. With funding generously provided by the College of Arts and Sciences this year, UROP initially offered these new awards to arts and humanities departments to kick start the development of cultures supportive of undergraduate research, scholarly and creative work. Department Grants are now available to any department/program working to help majors understand scholarship in their field and provide opportunities for students to take ownership of their education.

This year, Department Grant recipients will host social events for faculty to share their work with students and initiate collaborations. Because Jewish Studies is interdisciplinary, faculty will come from several departments. English will host discussions with faculty on archival resources and material culture as well as how creative writers produce their work. Both will include field trips. Theatre and Dance will also revise their website to highlight opportunities for undergraduate engagement.

Jewish Studies students will delve into Holocaust denial literature and Jewish renewal manuscripts in Norlin library, working with the Archive Project Director and Chief Archivist. Faculty in Theatre and Dance will integrate research into the curriculum of existing courses. And English students will visit Professor Lori Emerson’s Media Archaeology Lab and Professor Adam Bradley’s Laboratory for Race and Popular Culture.

Students may emerge from these experiences with new ideas for career paths, their own independent projects (including honors theses), a desire to work in the archives, or assisting a professor with their research or creative work. Grant recipients will share their experiences at a symposium in Fall 2017 which will be open to all faculty. In anticipation of the upcoming grant deadline of February 17th, interested departments can get more information at http://www.colorado.edu/suep/urop/faculty

Off

Traditional

White

Students Nominate Emerson's Use of Media Archaeology Lab for Teaching with Tech Award

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:01:00 +0000

Students Nominate Emerson's Use of Media Archaeology Lab for Teaching with Tech Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/24/2015 - 10:01

Does new media correlate with technological progress? That's what students investigate in Assistant Professor of English Lori Emerson's Introduction to Media Studies course. To understand the extent to which technological media has progressed over the past century, Emerson asks her students to handle old computers, typewriters, record players, etc. at the Media Archaeology Lab on Grandview Avenue in �鶹ӰԺ. There, students, "Take things apart, and see what's going on underneath the hood ... I really believe that you can't understand how media work without using it. You can't understand without hands on access," says Emerson. She created the Media Archaeology Lab in 2009 and continues to direct it. The lab collects older word processors, sound equipment, and recording devices. Emerson cites that one such recent addition to the lab is a 1920s era Edison phonograph. "It works with a crank," she says.

In Introduction to Media Studies, Emerson teaches students about the history of computing and about the progression of media from past to present. She says that she helps students "... think about how things could work otherwise and could be otherwise--how to reimagine possibilities for computing." Emerson encouraged her students to bring their own media devices into the lab during their monthly visits there to compare the artifacts in the lab "... up against new media." Emerson says that spending time with older machines allows students to consider "... how long their computers and old cell phones could last ... Some old machines can do things better than our machines today." She says that she tries to challenge students to reconsider the value of older technologies and:

... think critically about old and new media of all kinds ... I get [students] to see that every new technology that comes out isn't necessarily better. One of the ways that I do that is bringing them into the Media Archaeology Lab.

Students in the Spring 2015 semester of the class enjoyed their time in the lab so much that they nominated Emerson for an ASSETT Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award. One student wrote that Emerson “... [centered] the class around forms of technology–new and old, visiting the multi-media archaeology lab, and using technology to teach.”

Emerson's students wrote blog posts to reflect on their time in the Media Archaeology Lab. Then, they wrote research papers and collaborated for final group creative projects. Groups' projects responded to topics that they talked about in class. One group created a sound art project about the sounds that old machines made in the lab. Another group created a typewriter art exhibit.

Off

Traditional

White

Gladstone's Digital Commons in Wordpress Supports Students' Engagement with Texts

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Gladstone's Digital Commons in Wordpress Supports Students' Engagement with Texts Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:00

CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of English Instructor Jason Gladstone enrolled in ASSETT's Spring 2015 Teaching with Technology Seminar to learn how to better support his students' engagement with texts in their Contemporary Environmental Literature and Media course. Gladstone created a Digital Commons space in Wordpress for his students to explicate various texts, and examine them more critically.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/298660543&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/soundcloud]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Problem. One of the major aims of an environmental literature course is for students to learn how different types of texts and media engage with a range of environmental concerns. An immediate goal of such a course is to introduce a range of such engagements to students. A longer term goal of such a course is to provide students with the capacity to assess such engagements outside of the classroom--in other words, to provide students with the capacity to ascertain how texts and media they encounter, “in the real world,” engage with specific environments and particular environmental concerns.

Accordingly, one of the key things an environmental literature course can do is to facilitate student’s active engagement in and collaborative responsibility for establishing, producing, and making use of the environmental contexts for the texts and media they encounter in the class. The “problem” I decided to take on in this ASSETT seminar was to think about how I could use technology to accomplish this goal.

The components of this problem are as follows:

Students search for information related to course texts/media.
Students compile and curate information related to course texts/media.
Students engage with information related to course texts/media.
Students engage with one another in relation to information on course texts/media.
Students build and share archive of information on course texts/media.

Plans for Implementation

Implementation. The particular course type I decided to design a solution for is a 3000 or 4000 level topics course in English. It would most likely be focused on “Contemporary Environmental Literature and Media” and would feature an enrollment from 2040 students. I will be using WordPress to produce a “digital commons” for the course. This digital commons will be an actively maintained online archive of student-produced “environmental contexts” for a set of the assigned course texts and media. I anticipate that the commons will be organized into three levels: (1) a single “commons” for the course consisting of links to (2) individual “sites” dedicated to the environmental contexts of individual course texts and/or media. Each of these sites will consist of (3) areas organized according either to the kind of information provided (i.e. historical, landuse, biographical, etc) or to the specific mediatype of the information (i.e. video, audio, text, organizational site, etc.). These areas will also include spaces for student annotations of the information they compile, and student conversation and about the compiled information.

Indicators of Success

Assessment Structure. In order to assess student participation in the production of the course’s digital commons, I plan to incorporate that participation into the assessment structure of the course. At the start of the semester students will be assigned groups, and each group will be assigned to a particular course text. Each group will then be responsible for building, maintaining, and presenting a site for their assigned text. The graded components of this assignment will have three parts (each designed to assess a different component of the problem).

In order to assess individual students' active engagement in establishing an environmental context for the course, each individual student will be responsible for uploading and/or linking to a designated number of sources (13?). Students will also be responsible for annotating and/or presenting these sources on their site.
In order to assess students collaborative responsibility in maintaining an environmental context, each student group will be required to present their site to the entire class during a designated class session. Ideally, these presentations will occur before the class sessions dedicated to a particular text.
In order to assess individual students ability to use the contexts they have generated, each individual student will be required to draw on the course’s “digital commons” to produce a final inquiry-based paper or project for the course.

Indicators. In order to assess whether or not the above problem has been addressed by my implementation of technology, I will need to work out a way of measuring students’ active engagement in and collaborative responsibility for establishing, maintaining, and using the environmental contexts for the course. In order to do so, I will need to:

Monitor and assess students searching, compiling, and curating of information related to course texts/media.
Monitor and assess students collaboration and interaction with each other in relation to the compilation and curation of information related to course texts/media.
Monitor and assess students' use of compiled and curated information in both in class conversations and out-of-class inquiry-based projects.

Overall, then, I will need to find ways of measuring and assessing the development of students’ dispositions towards and capacities to generate the environmental contexts for texts and media.

Off

Traditional

White

Students Nominate Ed Rivers for ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Students Nominate Ed Rivers for ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/08/2014 - 00:00

CU �鶹ӰԺ English Professor Dr. Ed Rivers says that he has not assigned his students to purchase textbooks in 15 years. Instead, Rivers is doing all he can to teach with technology. "I think they appreciate that," he remarks. Indeed, students nominated Rivers for a 2013 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award for his course English 4060 Modern Short Stories. Rivers has enjoyed access to classrooms in ATLAS, where he can also provide laptops to all students during class. "It's not only a monetary advantage, but I think it's an intellectual advantage because the laptop gives them access to the whole world."

Rivers says that with all students on computers, "Among other things, they work on research questions right there in class." He explains that if students are reading a piece of literature that makes reference to a painting or piece of music, or even a particular musical performance, then, with a computer in front of them, they can look up the painting or the musical performance immediately:

YouTube, in my opinion, is the greatest teaching resource that's ever been invented ... With computers, [students] can find out instantly what the music sounds like or what the painting looks like ... Then, once it's found, they can find out why [the reference] is there and why it's mentioned ... That couldn't have been done in the old days ... It breaks down that rigid classroom structure ... stimulates discussion and stimulates thinking.

Rivers also uses the computers in class to demonstrate best strategies in how to conduct scholarly research so that when reading a piece of literature, students can go, "... past the point of what you think it means, and then read what other people have said." Rivers expresses gratitude for the access to the computers that students can use in class: "I think it's a real privilege to be able to use that kind of technology," he explains. "I feel lucky to be able to." However, Rivers also says he wishes such resources could be available in all CU �鶹ӰԺ classes: "It's a characteristic that should be available in every classroom here ... It would be great if every class here could have that ... I think we should have them in every room," he says.

In addition to using technology in their learning, Rivers encourages students to create creative responses with original YouTube videos or podcasts. Students also spend class time working together in groups to write their own short stories. Every student having a laptop makes this process easier: "Instant revision--everyone can have a copy." Also, with everyone on computers, Rivers doesn't overlook the potential of online audience. He encourages students to submit their short stories for online publication. And they do get published--Rivers shares links to published students' stories with the entire class even the semester has finished.

Rivers has ventured out of the traditional English course realm even further, creating the courses English 3856-001 Multimedia Composition and English 4116-001 Multimedia: Sound. With access to ATLAS resources, students learn to put writing to music and/or video.

Rivers says that he first became inspired to teach with technology by a CU �鶹ӰԺ Faculty Teaching Excellence Program's Teaching with Technology summer seminar workshop in 2001. The workshop was under the direction of the current Faculty Teaching Excellence Program Director Mary Ann Shea. "That was a life changing event. It all started there," he says. Rivers explains that the summer workshop changed how he thought about teaching and how he shaped his career: "The seminar planted the seeds ... It gave my career a whole new direction--a whole new jolt of energy." Shortly after, Rivers also enjoyed an ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar. He says that he enjoyed the opportunity to learn alongside other colleagues.

Ultimately, Rivers wants his students to, "Look where other people don't look," and also to teach students how to be their own teachers:

My main goal as a teacher is teaching them how to do without me as a teacher ... I think the main goal of teaching is just a disappearing act ... like the Chesire Cat--to disappear gradually so that they are their own teachers.

Rivers plans to teach with the new CU �鶹ӰԺ College of Media, Communication, and Information.

"At this point, I don't think I'd teach any other way ... There's no end to it really."

Off

Traditional

White

Using Technology to Connect Outside the Classroom

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Using Technology to Connect Outside the Classroom Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/15/2013 - 00:00

Recently, ASSETT recognized teachers that displayed excellence in Teaching with Technology. Students were given the opportunity to nominate teachers whom they believe integrate and use technology in creative ways to enhance the classroom.

Krystal McMillen of the English department said that when she was informed she had received the award, it made her day. Her introduction to integrating technology into the classroom was teaching a hybrid class for the School of Continuing Education. “I’ve been trying to do more with technology [in my hybrid class],” McMillen says. “So I was honored and flattered to know that meant something to the students.”

In her History and Literature of Georgian England class, McMillen created a class blog that students were required to post on. “It took off and took on a life I wasn’t expecting,” she says. “We started it as a lark for one assignment and did what I was calling a ‘class museum exhibit.’ Everyone had to find an art image and do a close reading of it, basically write a museum panel and post it on this blog, so that it would be a kind of electronic gallery.” Students responded so well to this assignment that McMillen ended up using it for the rest of the semester. By the end of the year, the blog had over two hundred posts. McMillen says the blog was successful precisely because “students were able to, and wanted to, work with one another in an electronic forum.”

McMillen values technology in teaching because it fosters this kind of continued interaction outside of class. In order for it to be successful, however, it requires strong engagement from the students. McMillen saw this kind of engagement with her class blog. “I had students tripling the amount of required posts,” she says. If the students get excited and engaged with technology, the pay off is a community of learners who collaborate in the learning process. “It puts a lot of the responsibility towards creating our ideas on the whole class, not just on [the professor],” McMillen says. Creating this community also makes students’ motivations for class personal, instead of just external. This allows for a different kind of engagement for students, instead of just a professor standing at the front of the class delivering a lecture and spouting off information.

McMillen is excited at the prospect of integrating SPARC into her classes as well. She and her Literary Theory students are beta testing the site before its upcoming launch. She is excited about sharing knowledge with students and relying on this communal sharing of knowledge, especially around technology. “A lot of my students are as tech savvy, if not more than I am [and] that’s been the most useful things for me is to see what I can learn from other people,” McMillen says.

For professors who want to integrate technology into their own classroom, McMillen’s best advice is “trouble shoot, trouble shoot, trouble shoot.” Patience and honesty are also vital. “It’s been important to me to express [to my students] that this is a learning process and that there might be issues,” she says. “But the important thing is that we’re alerting each other of these issues, and trying things out together.”

Being able to engage with students outside of the classroom is an extremely powerful resource. “Fifty minutes is just not enough time to cover everything,” McMillen notes. “It’s impossible.” Using technology gives professors the ability to expand the reach of their classes. Connections and community can be fostered with these online resources, making learning more interactive and engaging for students. McMillen is honest with her students and stays in tune with what they want and what will help them learn. This level of respect is also what makes students want to engage with McMillen, both inside and outside the classroom.

Off

Traditional

White

Teaching with Technology: Benjamin Robertson

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Teaching with Technology: Benjamin Robertson Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/27/2012 - 00:00

For every major, there is a key set of skills that students are expected to obtain and refine over the course of their educational experience. In English, the two primary skills are writing and close reading. Close reading can be defined as the ability to look at a text, interpret the important information in it, and understand the deeper context that surrounds the writing. During the Teaching with Technology seminar series, Benjamin Robertson, an Instructor of English at the University of Colorado at �鶹ӰԺ, talked about the role of technology in teaching these skills in the classroom and how one must carefully analyze a tool before employing it in a curriculum.

As mentioned earlier, when students graduate from the English Program, they should exit with refined writing and reading skills. For Professor Robertson, fostering the technique of close reading is the objective of every class he teaches, a direct application of the Threshold Concept. The theory claims if you desire to become a part of a certain profession, you are expected to possess certain skills. If English majors want to excel in their field of study, they must be excellent at close reading. But in the process of attempting to reach the threshold of becoming an “English professional”, students may get stuck, an idea known as the Bottleneck Concept. Throughout his career, Robertson has continually searched for technology-based solutions to help students overcome this bottleneck of their profession. But before using a new device or tool, it is essential that one thoroughly examines its benefits and detriments.

Frequently, professors will incorporate technology into the classroom to solve certain issues, but these “solutions” end up creating problems in themselves. During his presentation Professor Robertson emphasized the importance of analyzing classroom tools before using these new methods. For example, Robertson incorporated wikis into his English courses to stimulate discussion about the course material, but he found that he ran into several issues. First, a considerable amount of classroom time was wasted as he had to explain how to use the service. Secondly, the amount of posts generated by the students was simply too much for one person to thoroughly read, comment, and grade. Although the wikis tool did foster discussion among the students, it created more problems.

For the past few semesters, Robertson utilized the discussion forum features on CULearn and Desire2Learn as a way to encourage conversation outside the classroom. He found that it is pretty simple to set up and he does not have to waste time explaining it to students, but it does not yield the effect he desires. Robertson found that sometime only a handful of students would respond, which limited the discussion and probably made certain students nervous about contributing to the conversation.

Also another method to engage students and develop critical reading skill is that Robertson requires his students to take at least one page of notes on the assigned reading before class. The information students gathered from the reading are then uploaded to Desire2Learn before attending class that day. This simple practice encourages students to pay attention, while also requires to engage in deeper thinking about the reading prior to the in-class discussion.

Despite the fact that Professor Robertson has not found the perfect approach for developing the skill of close reading in his students, one cannot deny that everyone leaving his classes will emerge as stronger students. Through the variety of methods he employes, Robertson prepares his students to overcome the bottleneck.

Off

Traditional

White

A New Era: Will Going Digital Change the World We Live In?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:00:00 +0000

A New Era: Will Going Digital Change the World We Live In? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/07/2009 - 00:00

Physical documents are coming online through Google Books and digital libraries around the world. The goal behind many of these projects is the idea the shift to digital documentation will lead to a new era: this wide-spread access to important information will cause leaps and bounds in research.

But this isn’t the whole story.

Jordan Stein, Assistant Professor of English, shares that having a database of accessible resources doesn’t make those resources valuable. “Digital archives make things available,” Stein agrees, “but to optimize them you still need to know what you're looking for, what they contain, how to search, etc.”

Stein, recipient of a Dean’s Funds for Excellence Award from ASSETT, delved further into these ideas while at the American Antiquarian Society’s 2009 Summer Seminar in the History of the Book. This seminar aimed to examine the complex relationship between book history and media history.

In addition to investigating the idea of access to digital archives, this seminar questioned the idea that books and libraries will become antiquated, replaced by digital documents.

Stein thinks not.

He shares that more important than knowing what to look for in a digital archive, is realizing what is missing. While not commonly considered, there is actually more to a book than the words it contains. Historians and typographers, among others, view how a book was published, it’s page size, and it’s binding as being just as, if not more important than the actual words on each page.

Following that line of thought, one of the driving points of the seminar, Stein shares, was that “digital technologies don't, can't, shouldn't, replace books.” But, Stein says, while digital archives are not the answers to all our problems, they can still be immensely helpful—especially to students.

“I’m really committed to making sure my students realize what kinds of resources are available to them when they do humanities research,” Stein impresses upon me. “I came away [from the conference] with a renewed sense that the kinds of interpretive skills we teach are still valuable—possibly more so than ever.” He realizes, though, that students will need to be taught the new ways of finding meaningful knowledge in a massive nest of possibilities.

While not teaching a class this fall, Stein has ideas to host a seminar on book history and media history, as well as creating a future course on advanced research methods for English majors.

As he teaches students how to become better problem solvers in an increasingly digital world, Stein reflects on the idea that digital technology can be an occasion for collaboration among humanities professors, students, researchers, and librarians. “What we’re working on," Stein says, "is only one part of the story of how digital archives can enrich the work we do.”

Written by: Kate Vander Wiede, Cu '09, ASSETT Staff

Off

Traditional

White

Ed Rivers: Integrating Technology, Multimedia, and English

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Ed Rivers: Integrating Technology, Multimedia, and English Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/22/2009 - 00:00

By integrating music, movies, still images, web design, and podcasting, English Professor Ed Rivers highlights technology’s power to communicate both content and emotion. Rivers’ inspiration for his Multimedia Composition course came from student projects. An increasing number of students wanted to use technologies such as music, video, and still photography to augment their real-world English projects. Soon, demand was great enough that Rivers redesigned the course to intentionally integrate technology and original creative work.

Rivers’ goal for the course was to help students “learn how to say more through a combination of media than any one medium can say alone.” These various media may include photography, podcasts, original music, movies, and websites. Students create original works by using all the media applications in Apple's iLife Suite plus professional-level applications such as Aperture (for photos), Reason (for music), and Motion (for animation).

Rivers’ teaching goals and style complement each other. His teaching goals are oriented toward practical, real-world communication, using techniques that will capture and retain students’ interest. For example, last semester students expressed interest in the creative medium of podcasting. Rivers responded to their feedback by incorporating podcasting into his latest version of Multimedia Composition. Students are also challenged to explore their creativity and originality.

Rivers has developed a template for teaching technologies. He identifies the essential components of a technology, and then uses his computer to lead students through the step-by-step development of those components. Students, in turn, either use their own computers or ATLAS’ computers to mimic what Rivers does. This learning by doing approach helps students quickly feel comfortable with the technology.

Rivers recently received an ASSETT grant through the Dean’s Fund for Excellence program. This grant will allow Rivers to purchase additional technologies, such as Final CutExpress, Logic Express, and Dreamweaver, to augment his Multimedia Composition course. Rivers is also developing an advanced 4000 level course titled Digital Sound. This course is expected to be offered in the Spring 2010 semester.

Off

Traditional

White

Project Bamboo: Advancing Arts & Humanities Through Technology

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Project Bamboo: Advancing Arts & Humanities Through Technology Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/11/2009 - 07:00

Since October 2008, Lori Emerson (English), Steve Bailey (A&H DATC), Yem Fong (Libraries), and Heather Wicht (Libraries) have participated in workshops organized by Project Bamboo. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Principal Investigators Janet Broughton (Dean of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley) and Gregory Jackson (Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, University of Chicago), Project Bamboo is an arts and humanities community planning project that spans eighteen months. Its goal is to develop an ambitious proposal to the Mellon Foundation to build a cyberinfrastructure for research and teaching that will take on the qualities of bamboo itself—material that is configurable, flexible, sustainable, and reliable.

Through a total of five workshops held across the U.S. and in Europe, the project has so far been attempting to establish common scholarly practices across the arts and humanities and to determine the technology challenges shared by a range of institutions (small liberal arts colleges to research universities), organizations (consortia to content providers), and regions. Since the project is resolutely community-driven, workshop participants have been working to more specifically define the mission and goals of Project Bamboo. For example, at the end of workshop two in October 2008, participants worked together to establish eight different working groups which have since been working separately to identify particular areas or approaches that should be considered for inclusion in the final implementation phase of Bamboo. While CU team-members have participated in most of the different working groups—such the institutional support working group, the scholarly networking group, the tools and content partners group, the shared services working group, and the scholarly narratives group—it has been particularly active in the Education Working Group.

Members of the Education Working Group are especially concerned with specifying how Project Bamboo can effectively support the Arts and Humanities faculty and staff in new and renewed research and teaching activities that both use and critique digital technologies. Members of this group are acutely aware of how a wide range of educational pursuits are open to digital innovation and renewal, extending from conventional teaching, research, and mentoring, to the cultivation of new tools, methods, and curricular goals. As such, the argument is that this emergent environment of innovation must be met with the self-critical awareness that characterizes the Arts and Humanities, plus an attention to new issues related to tenure and promotion that may attend. This group is also concerned that Project Bamboo maintain a sensitivity about an expanded notion of “text” in digital environments, and be alert to exploratory, collaborative, interdisciplinary, interpretive, creative and remixing scholarly and pedagogical practices involving digital tools and methods.

The next workshop will take place in April 2009 in Providence, Rhode Island. With the final workshop planned for June, these two workshops will be crucial for seeing whether it is possible for such a large and diverse community to create a coherent plan for the future of this cyberinfractures, especially as there have already been difficulties establishing commonalities across the Arts and Humanities as well as establishing a common language across Arts/Humanities and IT.

-- Lori Emerson, Assistant Professor of English and Project Bamboo member

Off

Traditional

White