Classroom experiments

I don't post as much about my class on this blog as I would like to. Because it's open to the general public, I'm always afraid a student will find something I wrote and take offense - so I'm generally careful about what I write.

But, this I'm very excited about.

This year, I changed most of my paper assignments. The first assignment stayed the same (but will have to change for next year because the assignment was to write about why our country was so hesitant to elect a woman or minority as President).

So, I changed the second paper assignment. The students had to pair up and write a paper describing the election process and then re-engineer/re-design an aspect of the election process (i.e., campaign finance, the electoral process).

Then, because the paper topic lent itself to a presentation, I used that as their presentation project. I gave them some ideas of ways they could do their presentation that didn't involve a traditional powerpoint presentation. They could do a speech, present a bill to congress, do a play, etc.

They surpassed my expectations!

One group chose to present a bill to Congress. They even looked up the proper format of the bill (preamble, number the lines, etc), another group did a play inviting some of their friends to help.

I've now thrown out their third paper topic. I've always hated it. DH and I talked at lunch and created a topic that is more relevant to them, the student - but still fits the class.

For the third paper, they are going to write about some aspect of the culture of our university - for example, Homecoming, winter festival, etc and then they will compare the current activities to a period in time in the past (say 40-50 years). Then they will talk about how it defines the culture of our university. So, instead of doing a traditional documentation support, they will work in the archives and interview upperclassmen.

I think they will enjoy this more than writing about why our culture allows corporate crime.