The Management | English @ SUNY Geneseo

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admin wrote a new blog post Maps! in the group Playground: 5 years, 4 months ago

Testing a map!
admin edited the blog post Session Proposal: Library Partnership in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 6 months ago

This session proposal has been withdrawn. Alan Witt, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Milne Library proposes a session for the Metagogy Unconference focused on building a course or curriculum with a library partnership integrated throughout. Preplan either lessons or projects so that a library session or series of sessions can be easily…[Read more]
admin wrote a new blog post Creating Dynamic Slide Shows in PowerPoint and Keynote in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 6 months ago

Prof. Kyle Matthews (Languages and Literatures) proposes a session in which he’ll share some techniques for building dynamic and interesting PowerPoint/Keynote presentations, either for use in class or as […]
admin wrote a new blog post Session Proposal: Self-Directed or Self-Constructed Majors in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 7 months ago

Dean of Academic Planning and Advising Celia Easton proposes a session on self-directed or self-constructed majors. A choice at many other colleges and universities (including SUNY schools, e.g., Binghamton), […]
admin wrote a new blog post Session Proposal: Interactive Quantitative Analysis with Jupyter Notebooks in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 7 months ago

Kirk Anne, CIT, proposes a “share a skill” session on using Jupyter Notebooks from Project Jupyter, an open-source project that supports interactive data science and quantitative computing in several programming […]
admin wrote a new blog post Session Proposal: Blended/Hybrid classes & labs: Using online time to improve in-class experience in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 7 months ago

Kirk Anne, CIT, proposes a discussion session on blended/hybrid approaches to teaching. Is it possible to use online resources to prepare students for a better in-class experience? Can we use pre-class online […]
admin wrote a new blog post Session Proposal: Build Black Lives Matter Resources in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 8 months ago

Emilye Crosby, Professor of History, proposes a workshop for building a set of Black Lives Matter information and teaching-related materials that could be used as an introduction for interested people; a starting […]
admin wrote a new blog post Session Proposal: Digital Tools and Projects in the group Metagogy: 7 years, 8 months ago

Joe Cope, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Inquiry, Discovery, and Development proposes a group show-and-tell session in which participants share examples of digital tools or projects that they […]
The Management wrote a new post on the site Metagogy 10 years ago

I’ve been wondering for some time what the “flipped classroom” might look like in English. The discussion-driven English classroom is already flipped by comparison with the lecture model. Instead of using class time to deliver “content,” the artful discussion leader treats the literary text itself as content, assumes that students have examined it on their own, and uses class time to put students to work solving problems that arise from that content — problems of contextualization, interpretation, analysis, etc.

What’s left to flip?

Here’s what: the authority to decide what problems to discuss, what contexts to explore, what interpretive paths to follow, what analytical tools to make use of.

Also: the work of discovering, assembling, and sharing information about a text’s or author’s contexts — work that the discussion-driven classroom can’t do without, work that the artful discussion leader traditionally tries to make more or less invisible by threading background information in here and there, dropping the occasional carefully researched historical fact (sometimes carefully researched the night before) or critical perspective as though he’d been familiar with it his whole life long.

There’s a lot to be said for the model in which the professor sets the agenda and provides the context — after all, she’s the expert. I don’t know whether flipping that authority and that work would represent an improvement.

But this semester, I’ve decided to give it a try and see what happens. Not for a lark, but because I can glimpse the possibility, at least, of certain gains: increased student engagement resulting from an increased sense of ownership; the opportunity to make agenda-setting an occasion for struggling, as a class, with the problem of how to frame a good interpretive question or which analytical tools best suit a given question; the opportunity to make their efforts at contextualization an occasion for struggling, as a class, with the problem of finding and evaluating the credibility of sources.

The class I’ve “flipped” in this way is ENGL 458, Major Authors: Dickens. As I’ve told the students on the main course page,

In this course, you’ll decide, as a class, which of these questions to ask — or whether it would be better to ask other questions altogether. And you’ll decide how best to answer the questions that you do ask.

Because this is your course on Dickens.

To see how I’ve tried to put this promise into practice, have a look at the syllabus.

Already, I’ve faced some interesting challenges. Twice in the last week or so, I went rogue, abandoning the carefully planned rotation of student reports and group discussion in favor of traditional, full-class discussion of issues I just wasn’t prepared to see us ignore. And the students’ research, which gets posted to the Nineteenth-Century Studies at SUNY Geneseo blog each week, hasn’t always been as thorough as I would have liked, or drawn from the caliber of sources I’ve encouraged them to find.

But, as expected, the research issues have led to conversations in class about credibility, credentials, and peer review. And I hope that my occasional hijacking of the discussion agenda has the advantage of highlighting my own passion about the issues I refuse to let go unaddressed.

I’ll see how it goes. And I’ll report back at the end of the semester.
The Management wrote a new post on the site Nineteenth-Century Studies 10 years, 1 month ago

Nineteenth-Century Studies is a space for students and faculty to explore all aspects of the long nineteenth century in England, the United States, and the rest of the globe.

It’s part of the English @ SUNY Geneseo network of sites, all of which are designed to build communities of interest, and bridges among those communities, within the larger community that is SUNY Geneseo.

There are lots of ways to use this site: for example, to share links, images, and video that you find on the web related to the long nineteenth century; to share reading suggests or ruminate on what you’ve been reading; to engage in conversation about texts assigned in courses at SUNY Geneseo.

There are no special rules, but there are some guidelines. Before you get started, you should have a look at the About page.

Nineteenth-Century Studies can be a home to course pages as well as a blogging platform. For example, it’s currently the home of ENGL 458-02 Fall 2014, Major Authors: Dickens.

The more courses that come to live here, the more we can all begin to make connections among the nineteenth-century’s various writers, issues, and histories.

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