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This fall I taught for
the first time English 298: Early Drama. The course attempted
to look at medieval drama from the point of view of a producer/director
(medieval or contemporary) as well from the vantage point of the
literary scholar. Students investigated the script, staging, costumes,
dramatic interpretations and literary effects of medieval drama,
culminating in the production of the complete "book"
that could be used to perform either a single medieval play or
a truncated "mystery" cycle that could be performed
by the Theatre Department. The "book" for the class
and all related materials were posted on the class web site designed
by me and Kyle Gilbert '00.
Student research and writing assignments were organized around
the theme of the development of this "book." For short
research assignments ("memos") students used the New
Catholic Encyclopedia and the Dictionary of the Middle Ages to
find out the material, theological, social and cultural background
of the plays. "Memos" were made available on the course
web site. Longer, argumentative assignments required students
to defend their recommendations for the many choices a director
or producer will have to make. For their papers they were required
to read and cite at least five of their classmates' memos in addition
to more traditional sources. In order to make their papers available
to the class, they were required to save the documents as html
and post these in the www folders in their dropboxes. I made links
to these files from various pages on the course web site.
Students divided up and translated approximately 500 lines of
Middle English for the script of the play. The script was then
stitched together (by the instructor) from the 17 separate files
and displayed on the web site. Links were created from specific
words in the script to the annotations that the students had prepared
to justify them. Set designs, costumes, blocking instructions,
etc. were also displayed on the web site. The site also acted
as a gateway to the class' electronic discussion group. The site
was used by the students as a visual aid for their "sales
presentation" to Prof. David Fox of the Theatre Department.
A.
Pedagogical Goals:
B.
Technological Strategies:
C.
Assessment
Assessment
by Students:
With their course evaluations I asked students to fill out a form
that asked:
Assessment by Me:
The "electronic book" was successful in that the project
allowed students to read each other's papers over the web. This
success only happened, however, because I required students to
cite each other as sources for their papers; the combination of
the technology with the old-fashioned requirement of a certain
number of sources for a paper worked very effectively. Using the
web eliminated the logistical nightmare of duplicating and handing
out each student paper to every student. Most of the students
also learned a bit about putting a paper into html form on the
web. In answer to the question "what aspect of technology
was most frustrating?" a student wrote: "putting the
papers on the web. I am computer illiterate, so I'm glad we had
to do it. I learned something." Students did not really spend
much time or effort formatting their papers specifically for the
web, though they did mention in class whose papers looked good
and whose were difficult to read.
Shaoping Moss' suggestion that the files themselves to be put
in the www folders in the individual student dropboxes made it
theoretically much easier to manage the cite: I only needed to
write links to each file rather than store each file in my dropbox.
However, students were not good about following directions to
name their files in a standard format. My work in creating a link
to each file, therefore, took much longer than it might have.
Also, because I did not have access to the student papers, I was
not able to make "quick fixes" to them and had to spend
a great deal of time emailing students and having them come to
my office for the fixes.
The electronic discussion was not a success. In a class of 17
there just wasn't the critical mass for actual discussion (as
there was in Prof. Tim Barker's ET Life course). Students dutifully
posted messages, but the real give and take happened in class.
While students did use the website for their presentation to Prof.
Fox, and I did scan and post some of their drawings, no one was
interested in recording a few lines of sound or MPEG video. Stitching
together the final "script" from the 17 different student
files (they divided up the translating and each did 35 lines)
was a nightmare for me, taking at least fourteen hours of computer
time spent formatting and creating various hyperlinks. There has
to be a better way, but I'm not sure what it is short of requiring
them all to learn a web editor so they can format consistently
and create their own internal hyperlinks.
Changes in future versions of the class:
D.
Dissemination plan:
The Early Drama web site is available to the Wheaton community
at http://acuinx.wheatonma.edu/mdrout
simply click on the Early Drama icon. I would be glad to discuss
ways of having students use the web to read each other's papers
at a faculty technology workshop or with interested colleagues.
I think I will work up at least a conference paper on the way
the class worked, since I believe the experience was very useful
to the students, who learned to take each other's work seriously
and learned how smart their colleagues were.
As a final note: I did not have a single complaint about grades
on any assignment for which students read each other's papers.
Apparently students were able to recognize where they stood in
comparison to their classmates.
Last updated
on 1/26/99; 1:50:29 PM
Send questions about this page to: Michael
Drout
or contact Wheaton
College.