From Faculty Academy 2007 Wiki
From Virtual to Real: Three Literature Courses Share Ideas through Web-Based Discussion
- Elizabeth Lewis (Modern Foreign Languages, UMW)
- Co-Presenters: Jim Gaines and Scott Powers (Modern Foreign Languages, UMW)
When Jim Gaines, Betsy Lewis, and Scott Powers realized in the fall semester 2006 that the literature courses they were planning for the next spring all had some pretty interesting and important points of contact, they decided they should try to get their classes together in some way. They wanted to create a forum that would foster a dialogue of comparison and contrast, allowing students to gain perspective into the specific literary themes and traditions of their class and also helping them learn about similar issues in other contexts. This was accomplished through a web-based discussion site that was set up on Drupal, where students were able to share with each other their ideas from their readings, images, even sound clips, and could comment on each other’s posts as well, all of which culminated in a face-to-face dinner and conversation. This presentation will talk about how web discussion was used to facilitate the face-to-face dialogue as well as to enhance learning in our respective courses.
