I taught my first lecture course this past summer. Entitled The Margins of Medieval Society, the course explored the way medieval people defined and dealt with heretics, Jews, Muslims, slaves, the poor, prostitutes, homosexuals, lepers, witches, and criminals. The structure of the course lent itself well for the intensive, six-week, summer schedule and the students seem to have enjoyed it as much as I did.
I had wanted to teach this course since I took an independent reading course on the topic as an undergraduate, about seven years ago. I proposed it to the history department last Fall, and to my great excitement, they took the course. I was to give two-hour lectures, twice a week for six weeks. Since I believe that the best way to learn is through a conversation, I split each two-hour block into a one hour lecture, followed by a 50-minute discussion after a few minutes break. Students were assigned a mixture of primary and secondary sources to read for each class, and were required to come to class prepared. Twenty percent of their mark was based on participation.
Such an emphasis on participation can be daunting, of course, since it shifts some responsibility for the course to the students. If the class doesn’t co-operate or students don’t come to class prepared, the instructor is faced with a wall of staring faces and an uncomfortable silence. In order to get the ball rolling and get a sense of what students got out of the assigned readings, I created a wiki page for the course. Each topic we covered had a wiki page and students had until noon on class days (we met at 5 pm) to post their reactions to the readings on the wiki site. I would then log on to the site at some point in the afternoon and bold passages that were particularly interesting or problematic to guide in-class discussions. I got the idea from Jeff McClurken, an American history professor at the University of Mary Washington who used it as discussion starter in many of his courses and wrote about it in his blog. He had had success in promoting engagement with the course material and interaction among students by using a wiki page. That encouraged me to give it a try despite the fact that I had never used a wiki before.
I have to say the wiki surpassed my expectations. I’ll know more when I get the students’ evaluations but several students told me they enjoyed it. One student told me she checked the site on her cellphone a few minutes before each class to see what I had marked off and felt it was useful for preparing for discussion. After the course was over she thanked me for introducing her to the wiki. She is currently using it at work to collaborate on a large project with several co-workers.
Having to post on the wiki led students to read more carefully and organize their thoughts about the topic covered before each class. They also began the discussion before class. Some students posted more than once as they often responded to each other’s posts. By the time we began discussion in class, they had been exposed to many different takes on the same readings. That allowed our discussions to reach a deeper level in the short time we had at our disposal.
Why I chose a wiki instead of a discussion forum
Although Blackboard offers a discussion forum tool, I felt setting up a wiki through pbworks was much easier than creating an effective forum, and the layout encouraged more interaction among the students. Despite commonly-held assumptions about younger generations, many students are not that tech savvy so I felt a forum structure would be more cumbersome. At the very least, students might simply post their individual thoughts without consulting other posts. I wanted a simpler structure, where each student’s reactions were easily available to the rest of the class. I also wanted a tool that would be simple to set up and maintain.
After seeing Jeff McClurken’s site, I knew a wiki could be the answer. I had recently started using a wiki when I joined a committee that is putting together an online portal of resources on the early modern Mediterranean. The group uses a wiki on pbworks to manage information and collaborate on developing the site. Having had to use it for that work showed me how easy it was from the user perspective.
After seeing how the wiki worked in my class, one of my friends implemented it in her summer courses at the University of Texas. After getting similar results, she decided to use it in all her classes. I’m now in the process of setting up a wiki for the class I’m TA’ing this year. In that class, however, I’m not requiring students to post at the wiki ahead of time. I’m basically going to use it to post guiding questions ahead of time and assignment instructions. I’m basically interested in creating a course website that is more interactive than blackboard, where students can comment anything I post and ask questions publicly. After I finished setting up the wiki, I started having second thoughts. Perhaps in that case, a blog might be a better option. I’ll design one and compare the results.
Nothing like combining my love for new technology with my love for teaching!
