Project Summary
As a historian, I find it essential that students be able to grapple with the complexity of the past to better understand the present. However, as Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Elizabeth Dawes-Duraising contend, “to thrive in contemporary societies, young people need not only to develop insights and modes of thinking that are informed by a variety of disciplines but also to integrate these forms of knowledge effectively.” Thus, given the prevalence of historical films and the historical importance of film, I chose to facilitate a black film history honors option in James Madison College. The course was designed to investigate if students could blend both film studies and history to develop a deeper understanding of African American history and use these skills to grapple with contemporary social and political issues.
This project was completed in conjunction with participation in the IIT Fellowship in James Madison College.
Six-Step Outline
Teaching and Learning Goal: What skill or ability do you want students to acquire? What behavior do you want to change? What knowledge do you want to test? What assumptions (either students’ or the instructor’s) do you want to test? Focus on only one such goal.
Black film history, of course, is more than just a film or the context surrounding the filmic text. Thus, I want students to be able to synthesize historical and film studies methods to come to a more complex understanding of African American history.
Teaching Question: Adapt the teaching and learning goal to a specific course. Make this question narrow and focused so that it can be measured.
Course: Honors Option for MC 366: Film & Nation; Question: Can students successfully integrate history and film studies?
Assessment Technique: What instrument are you going to use to collect information? Is it simple enough that you know how to analyze the results? Will the information it provides answer the teaching question?
I plan to use the assessment guidelines written about by Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Elizabeth Dawes-Duraising. Their three-pronged framework outlines how to assess student work for interdisciplinarity. I will apply this framework to the student discussion posts, in which they write about the readings and film. While the framework can (and, I believe, should be) interpretive and somewhat loose, I still trust that it can be applied to my data.
Classroom Practice:What assignment or activity are you going to use in the class to try to test the question? When are you going to do it? Who will conduct it? Will it be graded? Will it be anonymous or will students sign their names? How long will it take? How will students know what to do with it? Who will explain it? How will the relationship between this assignment and activity and the course be explained?
Many James Madison courses value the place of discussion and debate in the classroom. Following this, the honors option will make it clear that both of these were important parts of participation in the group. Students will not only communicate in class, but will be required to communicate with me and each other through online discussion posts (which they are free to comment on and further question their peers). Therefore, to test the question, I will use the students’ online discussion posts (which will not be anonymous). The posts will be due on an ongoing basis in the class, as the honors option runs from February to Mid-April.
Summary of Results:What does the information you collected through the assessment instrument tell you about your teaching question?
The student posts did not necessarily demonstrate interdisciplinary work. In some posts throughout, there were interdisciplinary reflections, but overall this was not the case. The results show that the teaching goal was not met.
Conclusion:What have you learned? What surprised you? What would you do differently? What implications does this have for your future classroom practice?
The results are more a reflection on my teaching methods than they are on the students’ ability. Thus, in the future, there are a few things I would change to facilitate my teaching goal. For example, I would spend more time on how to conduct film analyses and have students watch the movies ahead of time (rather than spend the short amount of time together watching clips). I would change around some of the readings, spending more time aligning them with overall course goals.
Artifacts: Data, Assessment Instrument, and Findings
The data used for this project was the online student discussion posts. The 7 students were required to post five total posts each, but participation online was uneven. The final post count was 22. The data was assessed for interdisciplinarity using the three-pronged framework created by Boix-Mansilla and Dawes-Duraising:
- Disciplinary Grounding: History; Film Analysis
- Integration of Insights: “new model, perspective, insight, or solution” OR Complex Explanations, Aesthetic Reinterpretations, Practical solution
- Critical Awareness: Understanding purpose; Knowing means and limitations of efforts
I found that the posts were not demonstrations of interdisciplinary work on the part of students. However, there were brief moments of in the students’ reflections and thoughts that demonstrated the possibility. For more detail on this, see the poster presentation given on this project for the IIT Fellowship.