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REPORT ON TWO PROJECTS FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES |
| In January, I proposed
two projects for the spring semester of 1998. The first, a collaborative
webpage assignment for students and discussion leaders in Introduction
to Women's Studies (Women's Studies 201), was my first attempt
to involve students in creation of a website. The second was
the beginning of an ongoing project in which I will scan images
and store them for use in course presentations (my introduction
to Photoshop and PowerPoint), with the ultimate goal of being
able to teach students the use of presentation software. Project 1: Pedagogical goals I wanted students in Women's Studies 201, Introduction to Women's Studies, to learn about resources available on the Internet, to learn to evaluate webpages, and to participate in a collaborative writing project that would result in a webpage of our own. Technological strategies--Students, student discussion leaders (TAs), and I used a variety of applications in various steps of this collaborative writing project. I have provided here descriptions of the step-by-step assignments for students and discussion leaders, as well as a brief description of my role. Student assignment (excerpted from assignment sheet handed out in class): 1) Search the Internet for three sites about women, women's studies, or feminism. 2) Visit each site and evaluate it using the evaluation handout you received in class. (A copy of the evaluation sheet developed by Margaret Gardner for Sociology and Anthropology.) Also consider questions like the following: --What kinds of images of women does this site promote? --What kinds of ideas about women does this site promote? --If this is a feminist site, what kind of feminism do its authors advocate? --If this is a Women's Studies site, how does it reflect the principles of Women's Studies as you understand them? --Does the site discuss women's bodies, women's minds, differences between women and men, differences among women? Include your conclusions about the site in the description portion of your write-up. 3) Write up each site using the following format: title of the site[tab] url (address) of the site[tab] brief analytical description of the site (two or three sentences)[tab] the words "Of interest for:" followed by a list of possible uses for the site [tab] the word "Strengths:" followed by a list of the site's strengths[tab] the word "Weaknesses:" followed by a list of the site's weaknesses[tab] your name[return] 4) Submit your website evaluations by sending them in an email to ktomasek@wheatonma.edu and to your discussion leader. Discussion leader assignment: After students submitted their assignments electronically using the electronic discussion list WMST, discussion leaders completed the next steps in assembling these descriptions for posting to a webpage. Discussion leaders: 1) Retrieved the messages that students in their discussion groups post to WMST. 2) Cut and pasted the texts of messages from the students in each discussion group into a Clarisworks word processing file. 3) Checked the url for each site. 4) Cleaned up the format of each student's message. 5) Alphabetized all of the entries according to site title. 6) Submitted the entries to me in a Clarisworks file on disk. My intention was to compile all of the entries into a single Clarisworks file, alphabetize all entries, and convert this file into a Pagemill file in preparation for posting to the WorldWide Web. What actually happened: Students did a reasonably good job of finding sites and evaluating them. Discussion leaders needed extra time to do their assignment, which left me in a bit of a bind since part of my dissemination plan for this project was to ask the class if they would like to display the website at Academic Festival. I was left with little time to complete the webpage for Academic Festival. Rather than try to complete the entire website in limited time, I chose instead to create a prototype of the website for display. With the assistance of Shaoping Moss, I posted this prototype through a link on the Women's Studies Program's homepage, where it is still available for viewing. Discussion leaders attended Academic Festival and answered questions about the site. Assessment In January, I said that I would like to work with other members of the LTLC to compose a standardized assessment form that could be used for technological components of courses so that we can begin to track student response to such components on a campus-wide basis. I did not pursue this goal this semester, but I do think it would be a good idea to consider such a standardized form. I have no formal way of assessing the success of this project. I do, however, think that the project was a success because it gave students and discussion leaders an opportunity to learn about resources available on the Internet, to think about evaluating webpages, and to participate in a collaborative writing project that resulted in a webpage that adds to the existing Women's Studies webpage. Dissemination In January, I planned to invite the discussion leaders to join me in writing up a short article on this assignment for submission to a journal like Feminist Teacher. The discussion leaders and I have collaborated on a short article about their experiences in this course. After completing some revisions, I will submit this article for publication in Feminist Teacher. I will also complete the full version of the website within the next week. Project 2 Pedagogical goals In January, I proposed to begin to compile slides and other images to enhance my in-class presentations this semester, concentrating my efforts on preparing several slide presentations to accompany lectures for Women's Studies 201, Introduction to Women's Studies. Technological strategies I learned to use Adobe Photoshop and PowerPoint to scan images and make slide presentations. My plan was to store these PowerPoint presentations in my dropbox so that I could access them from any networked computer. I did not anticipate any difficulties learning the rudiments of Photoshop and PowerPoint, and I did not encounter any. I made three slide presentations over the course of the semester, and I found the scanning and slide making to be quite simple. The difficulties I encountered were with the computer in the Holman Room and problems with its either not being hooked up or not having a working connection to the network. The first problem- the computer's not being hooked up--occurred on the first day of classes, when I intended to show my first slide presentation as a way of beginning to engage students in thinking about our definitions of women and some issues that we would be considering in the course. I was unable to show these slides. The second problem--the computer's not having a working connection to the network--occurred about midway through the semester, when I intended to use a slide presentation to enhance my lecture on women's communities and alternatives to family. I stored this presentation in my dropbox, and I intended to retrieve it from the dropbox to show in class. However, when I arrived in class that morning, the computer's network connection was down, and I could not retrieve the slides. I was unable to show this presentation. These minor glitches taught me a few things. One was that I should have gone to the classroom early each day to make sure that everything was in working order. This was difficult because I was teaching another course that met in the hour immediately preceding the Women's Studies course. More importantly, I learned not to rely on network connections for retrieving my work. I was able to show a presentation that I created for the final day of this course. I saved it and brought it to class with me on a zip disk. Assessment On the whole, I would say that the results of this project were mixed at best. I did learn how to use the programs I set out to learn. I was not, however, successful in my main pedagogical goal, which was to use these presentations as a way to engage students in the course material. I do think that I learned a great deal about presentation software. I will be able to use the skills that I learned this semester to prepare presentations for other courses in the future and to teach students how to compose such presentations. Dissemination I do not intend to disseminate these presentations beyond the classroom. Once I have become comfortable with these skills and begun to teach them to students, I might write an article on teaching hi-tech presentation skills to history students. Such an article could be submitted to Perspectives, the newsletter of the American Historical Association, which regularly runs articles on pedagogy. |
Send questions about this page to: Kathryn Tomasek
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