Reflections From the Classroom2008–09

Volume 11

Foreword 1 Dan Bernstein

The Evolution of a Term Project: Using Iterative Course Redesign to Enhance 3Student LearningAndrea Follmer Greenhoot

From Novice Toward Expertise: Movement on the Continuum 7Bonnie J. Johnson

Small Changes, Big Results: Incorporating Public Speaking into an Engineering Course 13Steven Schrock

Mapping Change: Using Inquiry in the American Literature I Survey 18 Sonya J. Lancaster

Helping Students Think Like an Academic Scholar of Religious Studies 23Serguei B. Dolgopolskii

Reflections From the Classroom editor: Judy EddyAssistant editors: Andy Anderegg, Perry Collins, and Meghan Kuckelman

A publication of the Center for Teaching ExcellenceUniversity of KansasBudig Hall1455 Jayhawk Blvd. #135Lawrence, KS 66045-7604Phone 785.864.4199 ◆ cte@ku.edu ◆ www.cte.ku.edu

CTE has a role in many different aspects of the teaching lives of KU faculty members, but our centralmission is to support a community of teachers who engage their work as an inquiry into student achieve-ment. In this issue of Reflections we highlight five examples of that individual work, targeted at enhancedlevels of student understanding. These faculty members examined their individual courses, but they arealso connected with colleagues through participation in our communities organized around teaching andlearning.All of this work is highly intentional, as these authors read and talked with each other and developed

thoughtful plans for innovation. In three cases, the work was carried out over multiple semesters, repre-senting a progression of ongoing inquiry informed by student success. In each case these reflections iden-tify how the author made contact with the work of other scholars in their fields, getting ideas from locallyvisible teaching, from web-based accounts of instructional change and student understanding, and fromformally published research in education and in the teaching of their own fields.Central to each person’s project is the identification of a challenge that can be studied and addressed.

What first appeared as unsuccessful student performance has transformed into a motivated search for goodideas that have been shown to help students learn. The challenges addressed by these five faculty membersinclude: building students’ writing capacity within multiple genres; helping students productively readprofessional articles and books; helping students practice the inquiry that informs the field being taught;finding a good balance among foundational knowledge, general principles and theories, and specific usesof the course ideas; and having students make high quality professional understanding accessible to non-specialist readers and listeners. Each project represented here contributes to more than one of these goals,and each author reveals her or his path of discovery en route to enhanced learning for students.More detailed accounts of these projects, and many more like them at KU, are found in the Gallery on

our web site (www.cte.ku.edu/gallery). There are 30 interactive portfolios that make visible the instruc-tors’ intentions, innovations in instruction, student projects and writing, frameworks for judging quality,distributions of student performance, and reflections on what the instructor will do differently in thefuture. Another five projects are completed and are in the process of being posted in the Gallery. Thisissue of Reflections serves as an introduction to the character and quality of the work of our KU col-leagues and as an invitation to read and use these observations in your own teaching. We offer manythanks to these authors and to all the others who generously share their experience with our teachingcommunity.

Dan BernsteinDirector, Center for Teaching Excellence

Foreword

1 Reflections

Reflections 3

The Evolution of a Term Project:Using Iterative Course Redesignto Enhance Student Learning

Andrea Follmer GreenhootPsychology

Cognitive Development focuses on the development of cognitiveabilities (e.g., attention, memory, and problem solving) betweenbirth and adolescence, with a heavy emphasis on the evaluation andintegration of empirical research in the field, the application ofcourse-related concepts to novel and meaningful settings, and theacquisition of critical thinking, information literacy, argument devel-opment, and writing skills. The course regularly enrolls 80 to 100students, most of whom are juniors and seniors. The course fulfillscurricular requirements for several majors outside of psychology, andabout half of the students are psychology majors. The capstoneassignment in this course is to write a paper framed as an advice col-umn in a parenting magazine, in which students respond to a hypo-thetical reader question (e.g., “Will breastfeeding my baby give heran intellectual advantage?”) with practical recommendations that arebased on empirical articles from the psychological research literature.The project integrates a number of the skills I want students to takeaway from this class: students must identify and understand psycho-logical research, evaluate and integrate diverse research findings,

When I arrived at KU in the Fall of 1999, my first teaching assignment was an upper-level undergraduate psychology course on cognitive development. I soon found myself facing a challenge that is familiar to many new facultymembers: how to connect with students at diverse skilllevels without lowering the bar. Over the last tenyears I have been making a series of iterative, adaptive changes to this course to better supportthe development of students’ skills, and I havebeen tracking, more and more systematically, corresponding changes in the quality of my students’ work. The results of my observations have been not only encouraging (students are producing more and more sophisticated work) but also informative—across multiple offerings I have been able to identify areas in which students continue to exhibit difficulties and target those in subsequent course refinements.

apply research findings to real-world situations, and write aclear, cohesive, and soundresponse to the question. During the first offerings of

this course, however, I foundthat students were having diffi-culties with each step of the termproject. As a result, I have madea number of changes across mul-tiple offerings in order to betterscaffold, or support the develop-ment of, the skills required forsuccessful completion of the pro-ject. These modifications involvebreaking the complex projectinto multiple subcomponents,adding some additional support-ing assignments, and providingguidance, practice, and feedbackto students at each stage. Thisiterative process of gradualimprovements to my course canbe broadly organized into threephases, and I describe each ofthese in the sections that follow.

Fall 1999 to Fall 2002:Simplification & scaffoldingBecause many of my studentsstruggled with all steps of theproject, my earliest efforts toimprove student skills involvedsimplifying the project so thatthey (and I) could more effec-tively focus on each component,and increasing the level of sup-port for each step. I began byreducing the number of articlesthat they were required to syn-thesize in their papers, and foreach topic I identified and locat-ed one article to get them on theright track in their search. Irequired students to turn in theirreferences early in the semester,encouraged them to submitrough drafts of their papers, andinvited them to revise their finalpapers for additional credit. Ialso developed a detailed grading

rubric for the final paper and dis-tributed it to students for themto use in editing their own work.The rubric describes four levelsof mastery for each of the majorcomponents of the paper, such asthe introduction and researchsynthesis, as well as particularfeatures of the writing, such assentence structure and transi-tions. Finally, I added in-classassignments in which the stu-dents and I collaboratively ana-lyzed a brief research article, toguide them through the stepsinvolved in evaluating and sum-marizing empirical writing.

Fall 2003 to Spring 2006:Efforts to improve data gatheringMany of the changes I madebetween 2003 and 2006 targetedstudents’ abilities to identify andevaluate empirical articles in thepsychological literature. I madesource identification a larger per-centage of the grade on the pro-ject (from 10% to 25%), becausestudents did not seem to be tak-ing this part of the assignmentseriously enough. I also askedthem to write a paragraphexplaining how the article wasrelated to the paper topic, toprompt them to contemplate thisissue as they made their articleselections. Furthermore, I askedthe psychology subject specialistin the KU Libraries (Tami Albinand later Erin Ellis) to conductan in-class tour of PsycINFO,the search database for scholarlywork in psychology.

These changes led to notice-able improvements in students’performance on the project.During this time period, moststudents selected appropriatescholarly sources, although theywere not always optimally rele-vant to the topic. Furthermore,students were producing solidanalyses and summaries of theirempirical articles. Nevertheless, Iwas still observing some studentdifficulties. The in-class PsycINFOtutorial was not meeting all thestudents’ needs, as the GTA andI were still meeting with 15-20%of the students individually to

help them find appropriate andrelevant articles using PsycINFO.Additionally, students seemed todevote almost all of their effortsto the summary and evaluationof individual articles; they con-tinued to have difficulty integrat-ing research findings and writingcoherent arguments about appli-cations of the findings. Finally,this simplified version of the pro-ject really did not represent thelevel of scholarly work I wantedto see in upper-level students.

Spring 2007 to Fall 2007:Additional scaffolding & aninstructional partnershipBeginning with the Spring 2007offering I made some additionalchanges, which included break-ing the project into additionalsubcomponents due throughoutthe semester and adding someadditional smaller assignments toenhance the skills involved in the

4 Reflections

I have made a number of changes across multiplecourse offerings in order to better scaffold, or support the development of, the skills required forsuccessful completion of the project.

project. But the most dramaticchanges were prompted by myparticipation in a pilot project,coordinated by Dan Bernstein ofthe CTE and Jennifer Church-Duran of the KU Libraries, inwhich faculty collaborated withinstructional partners from acrosscampus (in my case, the WritingCenter and the KU Libraries) toredesign their courses and toprovide more instruction andguidance to students. At thesame time, I increased the num-ber of articles students wererequired to synthesize in theproject, to see if I could leveragethis increased assistance to chal-lenge my students to produce ahigher level of scholarly work. Early in the semester, Erin

Ellis held literature search labs inwhich she guided studentsthrough the literature searchprocess in a computer instructionlab. She also offered a follow-upworkshop to assist students whohad additional questions aboutthe process. To free up resourcesfor the difficult task of articlesynthesis, I required students towrite summaries of their articlesearly in the process. I thenworked closely with Moira Oziasof the Writing Center to design apeer workshop in which studentsreviewed each others’ summariesand then debated and generatedcollective conclusions about theimplications of their research.Thus, students had an opportu-nity to give and receive feedback,and to see that empirically-sup-ported answers to real-worldquestions are not always clear-cut. I also included additionalsupporting assignments thatwere indirectly related to theterm project. For instance, stu-dents wrote two applicationessays using research outlined in

their text to address real-worldquestions, to gain experience inwriting about the applications of psychological research. Finally,the Writing Center identifiedtwo course-specific consultantswho were provided informationabout our assignments, and stu-dents were encouraged to workwith them throughout thesemester.

ResultsThere were several indicationsthat these course modificationsenhanced students’ informationliteracy, critical thinking, andwriting skills. After the additionof the literature search lab, notone student required individualassistance locating and selectinghis or her empirical resources thispast semester, and no one sub-mitted articles from inappropri-ate sources (e.g., popular media).Furthermore, I was veryimpressed with the insightful andconstructive feedback studentsgave each other during the peerreview process; most students

provided high-level commentson their peers’ writing mechan-ics, clarity, detail, and conclu-sions. The students were alsovery engaged in the analysis por-tion of the class period, and Iobserved several groups activelydebating the implications of theirresearch. Performance on theapplication essays suggests thatmy students may come into myclass with skills in applyingcourse material to real-worldquestions; more than half of thestudents received at least nineout of ten points on these essays.Grades on the final paper have

not changed dramatically fromyear to year, in part because myexpectations for what constitutes“outstanding” or “adequate”work have increased with thelevel of support I am providingto students. However, fewer stu-dents produced very poor work(i.e., D or F papers) during themost recent offerings. Moreover,comparisons of actual studentproducts from year to year illus-trate that the papers, particularly

Reflections 5

Timeline of course modifications

•Broke task into stages•Guidance, practice, feedback at each stage•Provided formal rubric of different levels of

mastery

•Library instruction•Source ID became larger part of grade

•Literature search lab•Article summaries and peer review•Peer workshop to generate collective

conclusions about research•Additional supporting assignments

•Course-specific writing consultants

1999 to 2002Simplification and

Scaffolding

2003 to 2006Improving

Information Literacy

2007Instructional

Partnership: Synthesisand Writing

the A papers, were clearer andmore sophisticated during themost recent offerings than theywere during previous semesters.In particular, following the thirdwave of modifications, Iobserved a much improved abili-ty to synthesize diverse researchfindings and draw appropriateconclusions. The typical synthesisin pre-2007 semesters consistedof relatively shallow comparisonsbetween the methods and resultsof the studies. In contrast, manystudents in the most recentcohort identified multiple pointsof contrast between studies andrevisited these contrasts at theend of the paper to show howthe findings build on each otherand have different, but interrelat-ed, implications for the real-world issue. This change is especially noteworthy given thatstudents were required to syn-thesis more research findingsthan in earlier semesters.

ReflectionsI am very happy with students’improved information literacyskills and the increased level ofsynthesis after the most recentphase of course modifications.Student work is more closelyapproximating the types ofupper-level work that I thinkshould be exhibited. Further-more, the students seemed toreally enjoy and appreciate thestaged approach to the term pro-ject. However, there are stillareas that need further refine-ment and exploration. One issueis that the writing consultantswere not heavily utilized; onlyabout 10% of the students visiteda writing consultant during themost recent course offering. Iwould also like to increase thesophistication of student prod-

ucts, by further increasing thenumber of required sources andencouraging students to providemore concise discussions ofempirical research that resemblethose found in a typical literaturereview. Finally, although theinstructional team approach washighly effective, this design maynot be practically applied to alarge number of courses. I amcurrently working with DanBernstein, Jennifer Church-Duran, Mariya Omelicheva ofpolitical science, and TereseThonus from the Writing Centerto develop and evaluate a sus-tainable instructional teamapproach. The new approachinvolves training graduate stu-dents (supported by a smallstipend) by apprenticeship withthe Libraries and Writing Center,to provide some of the coursedesign and hands-on studentsupport previously provided bythe units themselves. What isespecially exciting about thisapproach is that we are creating avaluable training opportunity forfuture faculty while simultane-ously upgrading the learningsupport to our undergraduates.

Fitting teaching inquiry intoprofessional lifeMy current approach representsan accumulation of many smallchanges that I have made acrossseveral years of teaching and“tweaking” this course, and thishas made the course refinementprocess quite manageable. Thereare several additional features ofthe course modifications thathave helped to keep the work-load at a reasonable level (inaddition to being intellectualvaluable to the students). First,like any form of planning, thedevelopment of grading rubrics

involved an early investment ofeffort that has more than paiditself off by reducing the amountof time the GTA and I spendevaluating papers and writingcomments. Second, the peer col-laboration workshop providedstudents with feedback on anadditional assignment withoutrequiring an additional evalua-tion step for the GTA and me.Finally, partnering with otherunits on campus enabled me tosignificantly increase theresources and support availableto the students without a signifi-cant increase in my own (or theGTA’s) workload. All in all, the iterative and

gradual process of courseredesign that I have describedhere has produced continuousupgrades in my students’ workwith relatively low “risk” andlow “cost.” The instructionalpartnership and scaffolding havebeen particularly successful ingetting more students to per-form well on a more challengingassignment. The next logicalquestion is whether CognitiveDevelopment students are ableto generalize writing, criticalthinking and application skillsdeveloped in this course to othercourses as well. Perhaps I willhave the data to answer thisquestion in a few years.…

For more information about Prof.Greenhoot’s work, see her courseportfolio at www.cte.ku.edu/gallery/visibleknowledge/greenhoot.

6 Reflections

From Novice Toward Expertise: Movement on the Continuum

Bonnie J. JohnsonUrban Planning

In Spring 2007, I taught UBPL735: Site Planning for the firsttime. Site planning is the processsomeone uses to determinewhere building(s), landscaping,sidewalks, parking lots, and signsgo on a particular piece of prop-erty. For planners there is anemphasis on designing sites thatbalance the economic, ecological,and cultural values of a commu-nity. Each individual property ina city is part of creating thewhole. Planners review site plansto make sure each property con-tributes positively to the whole. The course is one of the

methods courses in the master’sof urban planning graduate pro-gram. Students in this programspecialize in environmental plan-ning, housing and development,land use planning and urbandesign, or transportation. Eacharea of concentration takes stu-dents through a sequence ofclasses that covers theory andpolicy, methods, and implemen-tation. UBPL 735: Site Planningis one of the methods courses inthe land use planning and urbandesign specialization. It is a fairlynew course in our program, sincewe have long been known as a“policy” program rather than aphysical planning (building orcity design) program. However,while we continue an emphasison policy, over the years we have

gotten feedback from our alum-nae that applied skills like siteplanning are needed on the job.As a result, UBPL 735: SitePlanning has been offered forthe last several years.The first time I taught the

course, I had 11 planning stu-dents and one student each fromlaw, engineering, and architec-ture. Because my experience withsite planning had been as a pro-fessional planner, my greatestchallenges were rememberingwhat it was like to be a noviceand helping students developtheir skills on the way to becom-ing expert site planners. Thisclass proved to be difficult forme and for students, partly dueto an assignment structure thatfocused on discrete skills withoutallowing students to see the siteplanning process as a cohesivewhole and not allowing enoughtime for practice. A range oftechnical skill levels also madelearning software programs likePhotoshop difficult.To better understand site

planning and what makes anexpert, I interviewed ten land-scape architects. Landscape archi-tects create site plans fromscratch, while city plannersreview plans for compliance withcity codes. I asked the landscapearchitects what an expert siteplanner looks like, what skills an

Reflections 7

expert has, and what skills theysee lacking in city planners theyhave worked with in meeting citysite planning regulations. Oneinterviewee pointed out that cityplanners may not need to be ableto create a site plan, but they doneed to be able to recognize agood site plan from a bad one.While doing these interviews, Iquickly discovered that learningsite planning takes landscapearchitects years of education andon-the-job training to master. My attempt to teach all some-

one needed to know about siteplanning in one semester wasdoomed from the beginning andnot necessarily what city plannersneeded. Instead of attempting tocreate professional site plannersin one semester, I followed theadvice of one landscape architectand decided to train professional“site plan analysts” who have anappreciation for the mechanics ofsite planning and an appraisingeye for site design.

Learning goalsOne of the goals for the course isto develop an appreciation forthe process of site planning (seeFigure 1 below). A good process

brings together how the clientwants to use a site (program-ming) with the site’s carryingcapacity (inventory of biologicaland physical assets and limita-tions) and a city’s goals forfuture development (culturalinventory). While city plannersmay not need to create a siteplan from scratch, they do needto appreciate what goes into aquality plan and understand howa designer got to his or her finalproduct. By knowing the properprocess, a city planner can seewhere a designer gave inadequatethought, such as inventoryingexisting trees (biological invento-ry), or see where a designer tookparticular care, such as usingbuilding materials similar to his-toric buildings in the area (cul-tural inventory). The second goal involves

being able to spot a good or abad site plan. To do this, stu-dents should be able to answerthe following questions using theeye and language of a designer:1. What makes great places? 2. What makes great neighbor-hoods?

3. What makes great streets?I took the three questions

from an initiative by theAmerican Planning Association(APA) (the professional organi-zation for city planners) thathonors different locations acrossthe U.S. because they are greatplaces, great neighborhoods, orgreat streets. I thought thesewere timeless questions that siteanalysts should be able toanswer. These questions are pur-posely broad and allow opportu-nities for a range of technical andaesthetic exploration.After I decided on the two

overarching learning goals, Ilooked for ways of organizingthe course and setting priorities.I wanted to keep in mind differ-ences in thinking betweennovices and experts and how Icould help students move towardexpertise. I turned to the bookTeaching for Understanding,edited by Martha Stone Wiske(1998). In Chapter 6, “WhatAre the Qualities of Understand-ing?” Veronica Boix Mansilla andHoward Gardner describe fourdimensions of understanding:knowledge, methods, purposes,and forms. Mansilla and Gardner’s frame-

work defines each dimension

8 Reflections

Programming

Site Selection

Site Inventory

(Biological)

Site Inventory(Cultural)

Site Inventory(Physical)

Site Analysis

Concept Develop-

ment

MasterPlanning

ConstructionDocumentation

ProjectImplementation

Figure 1. Site planning process

Source: LeGro, James A., Jr. 2007. Site Analysis: A Contextual Approach to SustainableLand Planning and Site Design. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, p. 14.

along levels of understandingfrom naïve to master. The“knowledge” dimension focuseson moving beyond intuitivebeliefs and developing the abilityto move back and forth betweenspecifics and generalizations.“Methods” refers to a healthyskepticism about knowledge andthe ability to confirm or discon-firm assertions. The dimensionof understanding labeled “pur-poses” takes into considerationhow knowledge is accumulatedand its multiple uses and conse-quences. “Forms” includes howknowledge is demonstrated with-in different contexts. The formcan be written, verbal, or graphic(Mansilla and Gardner 1998,173–8). At a naïve level, studentsdo not take ownership of theirknowledge, and novices simplymimic what they have read orbeen told. Apprentices begin toshow how they can apply theirknowledge in new ways whilemasters are highly flexible, cre-ative, and cognizant of differentworldviews (Mansilla andGardner 1998, 180 –1).

Core competencies & assignmentsUsing Mansilla and Gardner’sframework and the interviewresults, I organized the coursearound five core competencies. Iwanted students to be able to:• Observe the world aroundthem

• Understand the site planningprocess

• Experience basic design princi-ples

• Use context• See different viewpointsTable 1 (p. 10) shows how

course assignments, topics, andguest speakers fit within theteaching for understanding

framework. Starting with theframework, I placed topics,assignments, exercises, and guestspeakers from the syllabus intothe table to make sure I wasstaying on track. The major project for the

course was creating a conceptualsite plan. This is not a final siteplan which would require learn-ing AutoCAD software andmuch more training than onesemester would allow. Over thecourse of the semester, I assignedmanageable pieces of the projectthat guided students through theprocess of creating a site planculminating in a completedposter. Students were working foran actual client (Camp Shalom, acampground and religious retreatin Linn County, Kansas) whowould use their posters to decidehow to improve and add to theirfacilities. The assignments fol-lowed the steps in LaGro’s dia-gram (see Figure 1 on p. 8):• Assignment 1—Complete aprogramming description(how the site will be used andby whom)

• Assignment 2—Site invento-ries/analysis (soils, steepslopes, views, local regulations)

• Assignment 3—Concept devel-opment (building and land-scaping materials)

• Assignment 4—Concept devel-opment (showing improve-ments on photo of site)

• Assignment 5—Draft concept• Assignment 6—Final posterincorporating all previousassignmentsStudents brought the steps

together in a final conceptual siteplan poster and also applied whatthey learned from their analysisof a housing development inLawrence using the “greatplaces” questions. In this man-

ner, their final projects broughttogether the two overarchinglearning goals for the course (theprocess of site planning and whatmakes a good site plan).Learning poster design aimed

to enhance students’ visual com-munication skills but also intro-duced them to basic design concepts: clear hierarchy, orga-nizing structure, typography,white space with a purpose, faraway and up close, color with apurpose, and triangulation. Thistied into the “forms” dimensionof understanding which empha-sizes “effective use of symbol sys-tems” and communication. I alsowanted the process of workingwith a client and producing aconceptual plan of their own toaccomplish other goals embed-ded in the framework for under-standing such as “considerationof audience and content” anddemonstrating knowledge.

GradingFor each of the assignments,grading rubrics were createdbased on criteria from eitherLaGro or the classic book SitePlanning by Kevin Lynch andGary Hack, along with theteaching for understandingframework. Because the take-home exam focused on the useof design criteria, practicing mas-tery of the performance genre ofwriting, and demonstratingawareness of the purposes ofknowledge, the rubric for theexam focused on how the “greatplaces” criteria were used, thequality of writing, and how wellstudents conveyed to their read-ers why the criteria was impor-tant. The rubrics for pieces oftheir final project like the pro-gramming description and siteanalysis used established criteria

Reflections 9

Table 1. Class topics, skills, and assignments inserted from syllabus

Four Dimensions of Understanding

10 Reflections

Knowledge Methods Purposes Forms

A. Transformed intuitive beliefs

A. Healthy skepticism A. Awareness of the purposes of knowledge

A. Mastery of performance genres

Connecting common sensewith the discipline–Intuitivebeliefs are questioned, butthey inform the discipline.

Can understand that knowl-edge constructed by humansand see how one can ask toomuch of single methods.

Look for why this knowledgeis important and why it isimportant in people’s lives.

Can move easily through dif-ferent means of communica-tion and create new protocolswhen needed.

What makes great places?What makes great neighbor-hoods?What makes great streets?- Start semester by asking

students to answer these questions.

- Have readings & classes on each question.

- Ask students questions again at the end in a take-home exam.

- Ask students to explain why their design creates a great place.

Engage experts from alliedprofessions: engineering, land-scape architecture, ecology,architecture, and experience ofa practicing planner.- Guest speakers from each

profession engage students and advise students ontheir projects.

Engage experts in what makesart & design of posters forvisual communication.- Use art museum resources.- Guest speaker on poster

design. Poster expert returns to critique posters.

Use examples of great places,great neighborhoods, andgreat streets.- Look at APA award winners.Use site planning process tounderstand its logic and whyit is useful.- Break final project into

pieces and allow for practice and feedback.

- Practice site design in class.

Learn written and visual com-munication skills.- Create programming

description handout.- Learn how an artist sees the

world and practice drawing skills in low pressure manner.

- Learn Photoshop and InDesign software.

- Engage expert in poster design.

B. Coherent and rich conceptual webs

B. Building knowledge in the domain

B. Uses of knowledge B. Effective use of symbol systems

Can move easily fromspecifics to broader general-izations.

Use of professional methods ina variety of ways or in new,upper level ways.

Realizing multiple uses & thatthey can create new uses.How to “see” the worldthrough discipline’s lenses.

Can use symbols as effectivecommunication tools and canuse them in creative wayswhen needed.

- Focusing on the “great” questions.

- Looking at APA award winners.

- Going through the design process in class (Fig. 1).

- Breaking design process into assignments.

- Having guest speakers on each step of the design process.

Model professional behavior.- Guests from allied

professions.- Landscape architects show

how to do a site analysis & a conceptual design.

Practice professional behavior.- Assignments correspond

with design process.- In-class exercises give

experience with meeting site design challenges.

Using technical knowledge increative ways.- Taking expert and technical

information and combining it with design principles.

- Seeing examples of final designs and how they evolved out of site analyses.

- Applying artistic design principles to actual sites.

Learn site planning symbolsystems.- Importance of scale and

north arrow.- Exposure to penmanship of

design.- Use of symbols in art.- Exposure and practice use

of symbol system used by site designers.

- Reading topography maps.

C. Validating knowledge in the domain

C. Ownership and autonomy C. Consideration of audience and context

Use of multiple methods ofvalidation which are open tochange.

Students feel authorized touse their knowledge and seeconsequences from differentpoints of view.

Effective communicationentails taking different viewsinto consideration & good lis-tening. Can use context toenhance communication.

Seeing the world throughallied professions.- Using knowledge from

different experts in site design.

Understanding client needsand wants.- Working with actual client on

real-world project.

Applying new knowledge.- Use of experts’ knowledge

in final project.- Use of client wants and

needs in final project.- Use of artistic and poster

design knowledge in final project.

Understanding biological, cul-tural, and physical attributesof sites.- Practice in class.- Use in assignments and final

project.- Engage allied professions.Understanding context.- Listening to client.- Visiting the site.- Doing a site analysis.

Based on Tables 6.1–6.5 (Mansilla and Gardner, 1998, 184–96)

from readings and lecture to helpstudents develop knowledge inthe domain and mastery of per-formance genres. The rubric forthe culminating assignment, theconceptual site plan poster,explicitly used the framework forunderstanding and evaluatedhow much students moved onthe continuum from naïvetétoward expertise (Table 2, p. 12).

Meeting overall goalsOn the first day of class I askedstudents to answer three ques-tions: What makes a great place?What makes a great neighbor-hood? And, what makes a greatstreet? At the end of the semes-ter, I compared their answersfrom the first day to answers onthe take-home test where theywere asked to apply APA criteriato a new housing development inLawrence. At the start of thesemester, on what makes a greatneighborhood, students wrote:• Sense of community• Walkability• Diversity of land uses• Parks and green spaces• Different architecture• Nearby store, restaurants, etc.• Pleasing to the eye• Comfortable• Unique• Good school• Peaceful road trafficIn their take-home tests they

wrote the following:• “According to Hinshaw(2008:6), ‘great neighbor-hoods offer many choices, theyaccommodate change graceful-ly, and they are socially andeconomically inclusive.’However, the neighborhoodgives you an impression thatyou are in an enclosure. Thegate at the main entrance tothis neighborhood portrays a

sense of seclusion and segrega-tion. The neighborhood thuslimits diversity by excludinggroups based on income (pricediscrimination).”• “With regards to the characterof the neighborhood, clearlygreat efforts were made inboth planning and designingthe development to reflect therural character of the area aswell as the site’s agriculturalpast. This can be seen in manyof the buildings’ gambrel styleroofs which mimic the stylingof certain barns in addition tothe presence of windmills andother such farm staplesthroughout the site. However,this would-be memorabledesign becomes muddled withthe inclusion of other architec-tural designs which appear tobe more typical of the largehouses on small lots found inmany subdivisions.”• “The single-family houses areall of similar mass, architecturalstyle and height, and themulti-family dwellings build asense of monotony by repeat-ing the same building style of atwo bedroom unit and a threebedroom unit.”• “Biking and walking trails con-nect residences, but do notprovide a link to other necessi-ties like grocery stores or cof-fee shops, for example.” Students did move further

down the road to expertise. Intheir take-home exams they wereable to describe what it was theyliked or did not like about the“different architecture,” realizingthat height, style, and mass playroles. Students also were able todelve deeper into concepts like“comfortable” by seeing the prosand cons of a gated community.Also, “walkability” became about

“connections,” not just a side-walk. Yet, the responses do seemto be at the apprentice stage ofunderstanding with the ability touse criteria but not to create newcriteria or “own” the criteria likean expert. Students are also atthe novice stage in terms of ahealthy skepticism, as they mayfind it easier to be hypercriticalrather than more discerning.When students displayed their

posters, I went around the roomand each student gave a shortpresentation about his or herdesign. I asked each one, “Whatmakes this a great place?” I wasdisappointed that only one ortwo could answer. Students wereable to apply criteria in the take-home exam, but they could not“own” it or internalize it in rela-tion to their own work. Students created posters illus-

trating design themes for theirfinal conceptual site plan posters.This interim step was intendedto allow students to practiceposter design and become famil-iar with InDesign softwarebefore the high-pressure assign-ment at the end of the semester.Before this first poster was due,an expert on poster design visit-ed class and showed examples.Students’ theme posters weredisappointing, because they wereso abstract that clients and otherobservers had no way of under-standing their messages. Theyhad forgotten to consider audi-ence and context. The postersneeded to be stand-alone piecesthat would communicate stu-dents’ messages even when theywere not around to explainthemselves. In the end, the finalposters were better communica-tion tools and showed students’progress toward effective com-munication and use of symbols.

Reflections 11

ReflectionsThe Spring 2008 semester wentmuch more smoothly than theprevious time I taught thecourse. There are still areas to beimproved in terms of timing andfocus, but those are much easierto handle with an overall frame-work in hand. The “teaching forunderstanding” framework isvery useful for establishing prior-ities and keeping assignmentsand classes on track. Site plan-ning is a huge subject that couldconsume several semesters. Toget the most out of students’time and attention, focus is para-mount, and that is where theframework is most useful.In Spring 2007, before I

implemented these changes, alandscape architect visited myclass and she walked studentsthrough an exercise in laying outa drive-through bank site in aninner-city setting. After the class,the landscape architect said,“Those were not designers.” By

changing the focus of the classfrom teaching design to teachingsite analysis, the learning goalsbecame more realistic and on tar-get for ultimately creating goodsite plan reviewers who know agood plan from a bad plan.As a new teacher, it is hard

coming to terms with the factthat no matter how hard youwork or how good your inten-tions, classes will not be perfectright from the start (or the sec-ond or third or fourth time … ).This class has been particularlyfrustrating in terms of decidingwhat to leave in and what toleave out. I settled on priorities,and then came the work of prac-ticing how to present and explaininformation. The framework forunderstanding helped with thepriorities and with thinkingthrough “how” to teach so stu-dents could leave the class withmore expertise than when theyentered. I now feel much morecomfortable with my focus in

this course. I look forward tomore practice and perfecting thecourse as I move further downthe continuum from novice tomaster site planning teacher.

ReferencesHinshaw, M. 2008. Great Neigh-borhoods. Planning 74 (1): 6-11.

LaGro, J. A., Jr. 2007. Site Analysis:A Contextual Approach toSustainable Land Planning and SiteDesign. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: JohnWiley and Sons.

Lynch, K., & Hack, G. 1984. SitePlanning. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.

Mansilla, V. B., & Gardner, H.1998. What Are the Qualities ofUnderstanding? In Teaching forUnderstanding: Linking Researchwith Practice, ed. by M. S. Wiske.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

For more information about Prof.Johnson’s work, see her course port-folio at www.cte.ku.edu/gallery/visibleknowledge/johnson.

12 Reflections

Knowledge

A. Transformed intuitive beliefsConnecting common sense withthe discipline—Intuitive beliefsare questioned, but they informthe discipline.–Answer question: What makes this a great place?

–Compare to answer given at start of semester; should inc. use design principles, APA criteria

B. Coherent, rich conceptual websCan move easily from specificsto broader generalizations.–Poster uses design principles: hierarchy, organizing structure, typography, color, triangulation

–Shows where ideas originate–Site design based on program description & site analysis

Methods

A. Healthy skepticismCan understand that knowledgeconstructed by humans & see howone can ask too much of singlemethods.–Handout of program description–Poster includes text & visuals–Use of hand drawing & computerrepresentation

–Poster accessible to avg. person

B. Building knowledge in domainUse of professional methods in var-ious ways or new, upper level ways.–Creative use of Photoshop, InDesign–Poster “breaks the grid”–Overall design achieves a “sensed quality”–engages all 5 senses

–Site design uses technical information in artistic ways

C. Validating knowledge in domainUse of multiple methods of valida-tion which are open to change.–Answer to great place question uses different kinds of resources (examples, has tactile quality & human scale)

Purposes

A. Awareness of the purposes of knowledge

Look for why this knowledge isimportant & why it is important inpeople’s lives.–Poster communicates this message to client & viewers

B. Uses of knowledgeRealize multiple uses & can createnew uses. How to “see” the worldthrough the discipline’s lenses.–Design principles for art evaluation used in site design

–Design principles for posters used –Design takes into consideration advice from allied professions

C. Ownership & autonomyStudents feel authorized to use theirknowledge & see consequences fromdifferent points of view.–Site design is creative but still meets client’s needs

–Site design draws on advice from other allied professions

Forms

A. Mastery of performance genresCan move easily through differentmeans of communication & createnew protocols if needed.–Uses Photoshop & InDesign in creative ways

–Uses drawing skills–Handout coordinates with poster in content & appearance

B. Effective use of symbol systemsCan use symbols as effectivecommunication tools & use themin creative ways when needed.–Uses established site design symbol system

–Uses own logical symbol system when needed

–Uses proper scale & north arrow

C. Considers audience & contextEffective communication considersdifferent worldviews & involvesgood listening. Can use contextto enhance communication.–Shows student listened to client–Design in tune with cultural, bio-logical, physical context of area

–Programming inc. government regulations & uses expertise of other allied disciplines

Table 2. Conceptual site design poster rubric (based on Four Dimensions of Understanding)

Steven SchrockCivil, Environmental and

Architectural Engineering

One of the courses I teach is CE 582, Highway Engineering.This is an upper-level designelective taken by students whoare in the general civil engineer-ing track. The students enrolledare typically seniors within oneor two semesters of graduation,although juniors and graduatestudents may enroll, as well. CE 582 is meant to prepare stu-dents for professional careers atstate departments of transporta-tion, city traffic engineeringdepartments, or private consult-ing firms that perform trans-portation engineering services. This course is the only under-

graduate course in transportationengineering offered at KU. Assuch, it contains all the compo-nents of an engineering designcourse, such as learning andusing computer-aided draftingsoftware. However, students alsomust be taught highway engi-neering fundamental principlesbefore they can get to the designproject. Specifically, course goalsinclude the following:1. Develop an appreciation ofhighway engineering as a profession

2. Develop an appreciation forthe planning, design, andoperation of highways

3. Introduce skills of currentsoftware used by highwayagencies

4. Develop teamwork skillsamong students

5. Foster a professional attitude6. Help students develop theirwritten and oral communica-tion skillsThe vast amount and nature

of the course material pose aninteresting dilemma: How do Ibalance the time I spend teach-ing both the fundamentals andthe design-specific content? Inaddition, these two portions ofthe course seem to have differentdefault approaches to studentlearning. Students are typicallyexposed to engineering funda-mentals by listening to lecturematerial and working throughcomputational homework prob-lems. By contrast, learningdesign project material requirespracticing hands-on computerlab work, technical writing, andpresentation skills. Students typi-cally have varied levels of profi-ciency in these skills, dependingon their previous coursework orwork experiences. Because most students are

close to completing their under-graduate programs, I believe thatit is also one of my duties to

Reflections 13

Small Changes, BigResults: IncorporatingPublic Speaking into an Engineering Course

14 Reflections

begin to prepare students for theexpectations of a professionalcareer and employment. One ofthe skills I consider extremelyimportant for engineers is theability to effectively communi-cate technical material in an oralpresentation. In fact, theAccreditation Board forEngineering and Technology(ABET) evaluates the KU Schoolof Engineering in part on howwell we impart the followingabilities to our students:1. The ability to use techniques,skills, and modern engineeringtools necessary for engineer-ing practice

2. The ability to identify, formu-late, and solve engineeringproblems

3. The ability to work in a team4. The ability to communicateboth orally and in the writtenword

5. The ability to understand thesocial and political impacts ofengineering decisionsWhen I taught this course in

2006, I required students towork in groups to complete aproject design for the Lawrencebypass. Each group worked onthe same problem but generateddifferent solutions. Their finalassessment was a group presenta-tion made to a board of profes-sional engineers. Students wereasked to present their project asif they were proposing theirdesign to potential employers.Although a few groups per-formed well, overall I was disap-pointed in the quality of the presentations. Their engineeringproposals were of extremely highquality, but in general, the slidesand public speaking skills werelow to mid-quality.My teaching goal in 2007 was

to help students improve their

technical presentation skills with-out sacrificing learning the conceptual and technical funda-mentals of highway engineering.In short, I wanted to add pre-sentation skills to my curriculumwithout losing any of the contentI normally cover. Specifically, theskills I aimed to help studentsdevelop included:• Effectively conveying informa-tion on PowerPoint slides• Eliminating physical distrac-tions while publicly speaking• Being prepared to defenddesign decisions orally (articu-lately and convincingly)

Final project & teaching planBoth times I taught the course,the goal of the final project wasto have students work in teamsto solve a real engineering designproblem and present their designto a panel of professional engi-neers. There were two assess-ment components: the oral presentation to the panel and a written report that described thedecision-making process groupsunderwent during the designprocess. The project—writtenand presentation componentstogether—was worth 20% oftheir final grade. All students in agroup received the same grade. For the oral presentation, I

assessed students on their abilityto stand in front of an expertpanel of professional engineers,present their design project,defend their design decisions,and in essence, convince thepanel that their proposed designwould be an efficient and effec-

tive improvement for the publicgood. Ideally, I would like thestudents to talk about their pro-ject with confidence and goodpublic speaking techniques, haveeffective PowerPoint slides, andhave a strong knowledge-base foranswering tough questions froman audience or panel.During the Fall of 2007, I

changed several aspects of mycourse in an effort to improvemy students’ public speaking abilities. Specifically, my goal wasto better scaffold the final pre-sentation to increase the qualityof the final project; to do so, I

aimed to make my expectationsfor high-level performance clearthrough a series of practiceassignments. Because I didn’twant to sacrifice engineeringcontent or course time, many ofthe changes were amendments toassignments I used previously,only I required students to spendsome extra time outside of classdeveloping their presentationskills. Thus, I didn’t alter thenumber of assignments from pre-vious semesters; I just enhancedexisting assignments to includedimensions of public presenta-tion. My goal with these smallassignments was to have studentsgradually build their skill setsand, over time, internalize thetraits associated with high perfor-mance. If students could identifythe characteristics of high-levelwork and also how to achieve it,I expected they would integratetheir knowledge and perform ata high level on the final project.

I didn’t alter the number of assignments from previoussemesters; I just enhanced existing assignments toinclude dimensions of public presentation.

Improving presentation skillsFirst, on an early homeworkassignment, I asked students toprovide me details about theirpublic speaking background. Inparticular, I asked them to reflecton their experiences preparingand giving presentations out ofthe context of a classroom, aswell as evaluate their perfor-mance and comfort in those pre-sentations. This survey stemmedfrom frustration I experiencedduring Fall 2006 when I incor-rectly assumed that because allstudents had completed therequired speech and communica-tions course, that they wouldhave the tools to be effectivepublic speakers. I hoped that byassessing their prior knowledgeand their comfort levels, I couldbetter respond to the needs ofindividual class members.Next, I shared with students a

video titled “Talking Science”that humorously illustrates rightand wrong ways to give a profes-sional science presentation[http://wrigley.usc.edu/spot-light/talkingscience_video.html].While the video was an exagger-ated look at what speakers cando wrong, I found that watchingit opened a dialogue among mystudents. Indeed, relative to myhaving lectured on the sametopic by enumerating lists of no-no’s (e.g. gum-chewing, etc., asI had the previous semester), thevideo invoked responses andspurred discussion among thestudents that ultimately coveredthe same material I would havecovered in a lecture.To teach visual presentation

skills, I chose to amend existingassignments so that I could buildtheir PowerPoint skills withoutstudents having to go out andresearch new topics or add other

work that the students would seeas “more for the sake of more.”For example, on one homeworkassignment I required studentsto present their problem solu-tions as PowerPoint slides. I thenselected slides that demonstratedvarious levels of performance andshowed them to the students(the author remained anony-mous), encouraging discussionregarding the strong and weakaspects of each. In addition, Iselected slides from the final pre-sentations from 2006 and hadstudents assess those, as well. Bythe end of the class session, theyseemed to have a strong sensefor what made a good visual pre-sentation with PowerPoint.Finally, I gave extra credit for

students attending transporta-tion-related presentations outsideof our class environment. Inaddition to having them summa-rize the content of the presenta-tion, I also asked them to evaluate the speakers for theirpresentation skills. I hoped thiswould help them internalize andultimately adopt the publicspeaking skills they found effec-tive as audience-members. Abouthalf the class opted to do thisextra credit assignment.

The final presentations: Nuts & boltsTo designate groups, I gave thestudents position announcementsthat described specific roles thata member would play in thegroup. For example, one of thepositions was for Team Leader,whose tasks—among otherthings—included emailing mewith an update each weekdescribing the progress of his orher group. Once students priori-tized their preferred positions, Idesignated the Team Leaders,

provided them the informationon student requests for positions,and had them assign members totheir teams based on studentpreferences. This way, studentswere not forced into any particu-lar team role and could choose aposition that capitalized on theirstrengths.I made it clear from the

beginning that students in thesame group would all receive thesame grade. My justification forthis is that in professional engi-neering environments, a productreflects the work of a designteam, regardless of the distribu-tion of input among members.Thus, the group grade reflectsreal-life work scenarios.For Fall 2007, I developed

explicit grading criteria (see page16) to evaluate design presenta-tions, and I shared this with stu-dents early in the semester sothey could see what traits com-prised a superior performance.As a class we developed expecta-tions for the deliverables (i.e.,design sheets). While these traitsweren’t formally included in arubric, the fact that the studentsthemselves determined thenature and quality of acceptablework made expectations clear toeveryone. I believe that one of the most

crucial aspects of project prepara-tion is devoting class time toaddressing student questions andissues. Each class period I devot-ed the last five to ten minutes todiscussing the class project; atthis time I answered questionsand checked in on the students’progress. I also reserved severallectures as “open” lectures.Because the project is differenteach year and students encounterdifferent topical challenges, as aclass we periodically rearranged

Reflections 15

16 Reflections

the syllabus so that I could teachthe material they needed to com-plete their project designs. Inthis way, students identified whatthey needed to know to solveproblems, prioritized it, and tooksome responsibility in re-order-ing the class material. Final presentations took place

in November 2007. The com-mittee of professional engineerswas comprised of nine registeredprofessional engineers: • Two transportation engineer-ing faculty from the CEAEdepartment at KU (same twoas in 2006)• One graduate research assistantfor the class (same as in 2006)• Three managing engineersfrom the Road Design Bureau

of KDOT (same three as in2006)• Two engineers from KansasCity area engineering consult-ing firms• The assistant director of publicworks for the City of LawrenceAfter each presentation, the

presenting group fielded ques-tions from the panel. In addi-tion, each panel member provid-ed written comments.

ResultsWhen I surveyed the class toassess prior experience with pub-lic speaking, many students inmy Fall 2007 class expressedapprehension at the idea of apublic presentation. This rein-forced my desire to implement

scaffolding activities to build stu-dents’ skills—and therefore con-fidence—for their final projects. I introduced students to qual-

ity slide-making by having themcreate PowerPoint slides as theirformat for handing in a typicalhomework assignment. Thequality of slides I received variedwidely, and I was able to selectslides that would be graded A, B,C, or D and compare them dur-ing a class lecture. I asked stu-dents to pick out positive andnegative aspects of each slide.The extra credit assignments

did not elicit as much reflectionon speaker performance as I’dhoped. However, students whoattended the extra seminars andmade an effort to describe the

CE 582 Fall 2007

Schrock

CE 582 Design Project Grading Sheet

Group members:

Presentation:

Written Report:

Comments:

Grade Value Criteria

20 Spelling, neatness, etc.

10 Grammar, sentence structure

25 Effective use of PowerPoint slides, handouts

15 Effective use of presentation time

10 Effective participation of all team members

20 Ability to answer questions

100 Total

Grade Value Criteria

20 Spelling, neatness, etc.

10 Grammar, sentence structure

20 Formatting—consistent use of headings, appropriate presentation of tablesand figures, effective use of tables and figures, etc.

20 Completeness—all necessary calculations shown either in document or appendices

10 Comprehensive discussion of design decisions

20 Insight—additional work beyond satisfying the minimum requirements of thedesign project

100 Total

strengths of the speaker weregiven full credit for their effort. The quality of student presen-

tations in both 2006 and 2007was very high. In the end, I gaveall student groups an A grade.The most marked improvement Iobserved in my 2007 class com-pared to 2006 was in the qualityof the PowerPoint slides. Thefeedback from outside panelmembers attests to the strongpresentation skills demonstratedby individual students, as well asthe collective effort of the group.

ReflectionsMaking a number of smallchanges to improve presentationskills paid off; overall my 2007students were better publicspeakers, and their visual presen-tations, in particular, improvedmarkedly. Consequently, I planto retain the additions I made tomy course (i.e. the video and thePowerPoint assignment).Given the high quality of class

discussions following the“Talking Science” video, I wasdisappointed that students didnot respond to the extra creditassignment with as many in-depth observations as I’d hoped.My sense was that studentsseemed to feel uncomfortablecriticizing the speakers. Nexttime I teach the course, I willcreate a rubric (or use the samerubric I use to grade their pre-sentations) for students to usewhen assessing speakers; this way,student discomfort can be allevi-ated because they can assess thepresentation’s quality usingobjective criteria. Similarly, Iwould like to have studentswatch a video of one of the stu-dent presentations from the pre-vious year and have them gradeit using my rubric. Using these

rubrics before they make theirown presentations will hopefullyhelp students more effectivelyinternalize the qualities of excel-lent oral presentation.One reason why I saw more

dramatic improvement in thevisual presentation skills com-pared to the oral presentationskills may be that students wereable to practice their PowerPointskills in the small assignmentsduring the semester. By contrast,although I’d had students cri-tique (as a class discussion) the“Talking Science” video, I didnot create additional opportuni-ties for them to practice theiroral communication skills. In thefuture, I hope to devise a way toincorporate practice speechesinto the semester.Overall I was impressed how

just a few small changes couldimprove student presentations.Combining a few assignmentsexplicitly devoted to improvingpresentations—along with anoverall awareness by students ofthe importance I placed on goodpresentation skills—helped stu-dents internalize the characteris-tics of high quality work.Importantly, I do not feel thatany content was sacrificed, large-ly because I did not create morework; rather, I accentuated thepresentation dimensions of exist-ing assignments. Furthermore, Iwas able to emphasize to stu-dents the importance of publicspeaking to their professionalsuccess by devoting class-time toskill-building, as well as havingprofessional panelists critiquetheir performance.

For more information about Prof.Schrock’s work, see his course port-folio at www.cte.ku.edu/gallery/visibleknowledge/schrock.

Reflections 17

Sonya J. LancasterEnglish

When I wrote a proposal describ-ing the course I wanted toredesign for a CTE FacultySeminar, I described my goals forthe English 320: AmericanLiterature I survey in the follow-ing way:In the survey courses forEnglish majors, there is atemptation to lecture to stu-dents and tell them what theyneed to know about eachperiod so that they can placepieces of literature into abroader context. I want stu-dents to be more active intheir learning, and I want touse the opportunity of expos-ing them to texts from a peri-od they often know littleabout (American literaturefrom its beginnings to 1860)to show them how literatureresponds to historical andcultural situations. I wantstudents to make connectionsin the course and analyzethem, rather than have memake connections for them.I know that students needmore help making these con-nections, because their evalu-ations of this survey coursereflect confusion over how itall fits together. I need tofind a way to help them makesense of the literature ofthese periods.

All of these goals demonstratestudents’ need to practiceinquiry, to learn to pose interest-

ing questions about what theyread, and to be open to explor-ing those questions through dis-cussion with each other andresearch. This is an account ofmy attempts to navigate changein my teaching and to chart theeffectiveness of the changes inmy students’ work.

“Here Be Dragons”—Foundon many ancient maps toindicate uncharted & potentially dangerous places

ENGL 320: American LiteratureI Survey is the first of twoAmerican literature surveys, andit is required for all Englishmajors. The class is ordinarilymade up of English majors whoare focusing on literature; thosewith a creative writing interest;secondary education majors withan English emphasis; and stu-dents who are majoring in the-ater and film, journalism, orother Arts and Sciences majors.The class typically enrolls 35 stu-dents. I chose to revise because it is

a course that I have taught andrevised several times with limitedsatisfaction. This course is a diffi-cult “sell” to its students, manyof whom have very strict ideas ofwhat genres can be consideredliterature (usually fiction, poetry,and drama). This is a concernbecause the class coversAmerican literature from when-ever one decides it began

18 Reflections

Mapping Change: Using Inquiry in the Literature I Survey

through the seventeenth,eighteenth, and early nine-teenth centuries. There is little fiction until the mid-eighteenth century, andmost of the early genres arenon-fiction: letters, diaries,autobiographical narratives,and such. Students remindme of the early cartographersand explorers whose texts are oursubjects in class: they see earlyAmerica through a twenty-firstcentury American lens, as themapmakers and chroniclers ofthe new world saw it throughtheir European imaginations.Where the early mapmakers seecannibals, dragons, and “paysinconnue,” the students see dog-matic Puritans, oppressors, andexploiters of land and people.

“Pays Inconnue”—Louis Brionde la Tour’s 1779 map of“L’Amerique Septentrionale”

The American Literature SurveyI offers a perfect opportunity tobroaden students’ horizons,expose them to more genres, andhelp them to inquire into theconnections between culture andliterature, focusing on the con-text in which the texts were writ-ten, along with their purposes,audiences, and genres, whichhelps students understand howauthors respond to their culturalmoments and conflicts in theirtexts. Reading the texts canencourage students to ask ques-

tions that will lead them to richdiscussions of the culturalmoment in which a text was pro-duced. Students can be encour-aged to look for places whereinterpretation is difficult, thosecenters of gravity or gaps in atext that could be fruitful for fur-ther research and discussion.

Charting a course

As I revised this course, I taughtit twice: in Fall 2007 and Fall2008. In Fall 2007, I developeda paper assignment for thecourse that asked students topractice inquiry, defining inquiryand describing the students’ taskas follows:Inquiry is a questioning stateof mind. It is the search forquestions to pose withouteasy answers. These ques-tions are ones that delve intowhat a text is doing ratherthan saying, that require oneto tolerate complexity andnuance. Inquiry asks readersto think about what ourreadings of a text say aboutus as readers—how a reader’sreadings can overshadow

descriptions of what the textsays. Readers are encouragedto examine our entrenchedbeliefs and how to try tobracket what we know inorder to think about textscreated in the past.The willingness to prolong

the exploration of a topic tofind the most satisfyinganswers is essential toinquiry. Research, in thiscase, is an open rather than aclosed process. This meansthat through research, youdiscover more interestingquestions and avenues ofexploration instead of start-ing with what you thinkabout a topic and findingresearch that supports yourthought. The key is to post-pone judgment for as long aspossible and to find out asmuch as possible before com-ing to conclusions.This paper should chroni-

cle your exploration of yourtopic, delaying your thesis(or your conclusions) aboutwhat you have found untilthe end. It should be a map

Reflections 19

American

of your exploration of yourtopic. We will practice thisprocess in class, and you arefree to discuss it with me andyour groups. We will also talkabout how to research thequestions you ask.When I taught 320 in Fall

2007, in addition to creatingsmall group discussion opportu-nities to help students practiceinquiry, I had students discussthe texts in group blogs onBlackboard. They were to brain-storm interesting questions toresearch for their inquiry papersby discussing the readings withtheir classmates on the blogs,and to encourage this, I stipulat-ed that the inquiry questionsthey posed for their papers hadto come from the blogs. This didnot work as well as I would haveliked for several reasons:• I formed the groups for theblogs based on students’interests (similar majors, out-side activities, etc.), but thesegroups did not have any rela-tion to the discussion groupsthat worked together duringclass time. As a result, stu-dents did not form a bondwith their online group mem-bers and they did not reallydiscuss; instead, they justposted topics about whichthey thought they might wantto write.

• The students did not haveenough direction and practiceat coming up with questionsthat would lead to fruitfulinquiry. As a result, the papersthey wrote were not as suc-cessful as they could havebeen.

• While the students were veryactive in their groups in class,it was difficult to get them topost often enough and sub-

stantially enough to the blogs.The blogs themselves werevery uneven, some being quiteinteresting and fruitful, othersmostly summarizing and para-phrasing from the text.To remedy these problems

and better scaffold the learningactivities, when I taught the classin Fall of 2008, I replaced theblogs with discussion preparationassignments. These ten assign-ments took the place of amidterm and were designed tohelp students question theirassumptions about literature inthe time period we were study-ing. Students completed theassignments about once a weekduring the first half of the semes-ter. The assignments provideddirection in how to practiceinquiry and feedback from meand the group members withwhom they discussed theirresponses in class.

Sample discussion preparation assignments

Assignment 3: Choose one of theimages (art from the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries depict-ing “America” as a woman) fromthe “Images of America” websiteand discuss it rhetorically. Whatdoes it reveal about the assump-tions, biases, values, of the cul-ture that produced it? Whatwould it mean for its audience?How can we read these imagesin a way that reveals attitudestoward the New World duringthe periods represented? (2 ½–3pages).Assignment 7: Read JaneTompkin’s article “‘Indians’:Textualism, Morality, and theProblem of History” andrespond to the following topic (2 ½–3 pages): Jane Tompkins’article looks at historical writings

rhetorically, focusing on theviewpoint of the author and thereader, their cultural assumptionsand positions, in a post-structuralway. Use her methods on a pas-sage from Briton Hammon’saccount and a passage fromMary Rowlandson’s narrative.Choose a passage from each thatallows you to explore the culturalassumptions you make aboutHammon and Rowlandson andtheir experiences to highlighthow much of one’s interpreta-tion of a text comes from one’sassumptions.

I also made some changes tothe inquiry paper when I taughtthe class again in Fall 2008. Ichanged the way I prepared stu-dents to write their inquirypapers by showing them exam-ples of inquiry papers and havingindividual conferences over theirtopics and how they mightresearch them. This last changewas particularly necessary,because I noticed that the choiceof a good topic seemed the bestindicator of success on the paper.I encouraged students to makeconcept maps and bring thosewith them to the conferences. Ialso changed the due date forthe inquiry paper and made itdue at midterm rather than hav-ing a floating due date (beforestudents had been able to decidefor which of three units theywould write the inquiry paperand for which of the three theywould write the close readingpaper) as the texts in the firsthalf of the semester lend them-selves well to inquiry, while textsin the second half of the courselend themselves better to closereading.

20 Reflections

Reflections 21

You have to walk it to map it

My original inquiry paper assign-ment for Fall 2007 had the fol-lowing list of criteria:A successful paper will include:• A question derived fromthe discussions on yourgroup blog

• A narrative that takes thereader through your explo-rations of your question

• The narrative should havelogical transitions and beeasily followed

• Research should be wellchosen and integrated

• The thesis should bedelayed, and your judg-ments or answers shouldcome at the end

• Effective introduction andconclusion

• Clear, concise academicprose

• Proper MLA documenta-tion and works cited page

It was easy for me to deter-mine what I wanted students toachieve in the paper, but it wasvery difficult for me to create arubric to assess their achieve-ment. I did not create the rubric

until the summer of 2008, so Iwas not able to use it on thepapers from Fall 2007. To createmy rubric, I began by looking atsuccessful student papers fromthe Fall 2007 course and workedto describe what made them suc-cessful. Some traits of successfulpapers I focused on were: thecomplexity of the research ques-tion, the organization in terms ofa narrative leading readersthrough research, and a conclu-sion that ties a topic back to thetext that prompted the inquiry.

Inquiry Paper Rubric

The questionthat promptsthe inquiry

The narrativeof the paper(its organiza-tion)

Quality ofresearch andintegrationinto narrative

Conclusion(delayed thesis)

Clear, con-cise academ-ic prose

MLA docu-mentation

Developing

The topic may leave roomfor exploration, but be aquestion with a fairly obvi-ous answer.

Form of the paper is a the-sis-driven academic essaywhere the thesis is present-ed in the beginning and theresearch supports the the-sis. The argument is knownto the reader and writerfrom the beginning.

Research comes mostlyfrom wikipedia and otherInternet sources, or from asingle article.

No clear connection of thetopic back to the text, ordoes not clearly show howresearch changed or in-formed student’s reading ofthe text. Thesis may be pre-sent at the beginning ratherthan the end of the paper.

Has errors and stylisticproblems, particularly repe-tition & lack of conciseness.

All sources are not docu-mented correctly.

Competent

The question is interest-ing but might have oneclear path of explorationand research, or is astraightforward questionthat is easily answered.

The paper begins with aquestion and presents anaccount of the informa-tion from the research ina straightforward manner.

A mixture of Internet andscholarly sources, mostlymore general historicalmaterial.

Conclusion presents ajudgment or comment onthe original text, but itmay not be fully devel-oped. The conclusioncould be more generaland not explicitly relatedback to the text.

Few errors or stylisticproblems. Sentence struc-tures complex and varied.

Some formatting errors incitations or works cited.

Exemplary

The question reveals the complexityof a text’s context or how a textachieves its purpose rhetorically. Thequestion will lead the writer toinquire deeply and may lead to newquestions. The question can lead tomany avenues of research.

The paper is a narrative that takesthe reader through the research,explaining what is learned at eachstep, including how the writer followsdetours but is able to finally reach anunderstanding of the topic’s relationto the text.

Scholarly articles and books that givea deeper analysis of cultural events.May also use other primary texts.

The conclusion presents an under-standing of how the text can be readdifferently in response to the explo-rations the writer has undertaken. Ithas a larger significance in terms oftexts or in terms of the text’s culturalcontext.

Complex sentence structure andword choice complements content.Style helps convey paper’s meaning.

All sources are correctly documentedand formatted.

“Recalculating”—What myGPS says when I do not follow its directions

The results of my inquiry paperrubric (see below) showed thatstudents in Fall 2008 did a goodjob choosing questions toprompt their inquiry, so I thinkthat the conferences I had withthem when they were decidingon their topics were helpful. In Fall 2007, the class had

five sophomores, 13 juniors, and16 seniors. In Fall 2008, it had14 sophomores, 14 juniors, andsix seniors. When I recorded stu-dents’ achievement in 2008, Idivided them up according tothe level of the students. Then, Irealized that the sophomores andsome juniors were having signifi-cant problems with the narrativestructure I asked them to employ(exploring the topic during thepaper and delaying the thesisuntil the end, and returning tohow the conclusions affect the

student’s reading of the text). Idid not feel it was fair for thesophomores to be disadvantaged,so I allowed everyone the oppor-tunity to revise the paper. In thefuture, I will provide more sam-ple papers, discuss the organiza-tion of the papers, and have students read and comment ondrafts of each other’s papers.Revising this course led to

these changes in my teaching:• I will continue to constructrubrics to assess major courseactivities, because articulatingfor myself and my studentswhat I expect has been so use-ful. It is an unbelievably diffi-cult thing for me to do, but Iam hopeful that with experi-ence it might become easier?

• I have created rubrics forother papers I have assigned,and these have helped medescribe the qualities I lookfor in literary analysis. I will beteaching a methods course next fall, and this work will

help me focus on how scholarsanalyze literature so that I canteach students to analyze, too.

• As I compile informationabout student progress, I willbe able to see improvementsand continue to identify fac-tors that could prevent stu-dents from being successful sothat I can counter them.Like the authors we read in

American literature who struggleto describe their worlds, and thestudents who read texts andstruggle with the difficultiesthese descriptions present, a lotof my revisions of this class are aresult of trial and error. As I nav-igate possibilities for revisingcourses and changing the ways Iteach, I value more and more theprocess of mapping the changes,finding clearer indications ofwhat I expect of my students andhow I can help them achieve thegoals I set for them.

Prof. Lancaster will have a portfo-lio in CTE’s Gallery in Fall 2009.

22 Reflections

Inquiry Paper Response Matrix

Less than acceptable Developing Competent Exemplary

(no clear question) 2 1 3 8

1 4 9

6

(no clear thesis/ 1 4 5 4

organization) 2 2 6 4

1 5

(research not cited) 1 1 4 8

1 6 7

1 5

8 2 4

5 7 2

1 5

1 4 9

14

6

3 3 8

3 11

6

Question that Sophprompts Juninquiry Sen

Narrative Soph(organization) Jun

Sen

Quality and Sophintegration Junof research Sen

Conclusion SophJunSen

Academic Sophprose Jun

Sen

Citations SophJunSen

In several courses that I teach, Iam attempting to transform stu-dents from passive consumers ofinformation to active producersof knowledge. While informationis easier to learn, the process ofcreating knowledge is more diffi-cult and novel to students. Thisnarrative covers several semestersand reflects the process of myinquiry and teaching as Iattempted to guide students todiscover and engage in the schol-arly process of knowledge cre-ation in the academic study ofreligion. The puzzle I am tryingto solve is how to build both acourse and course work structureso that it models, reflects, andthereby teaches academic proto-cols of studying religion.To contextualize my overarch-

ing goal across semesters, a briefexplanation of the process ofknowledge production in thestudy of religion is required.There is no one universal proto-col of academic study of religion,but speaking in very generalterms, in the academic study ofreligion, scholars bring a particu-lar methodology to studyingboth primary and secondarysources. Whereas normative (inparticular affiliated or lay) studyof religion focuses on the reli-gious norms illustrated by a textas seen in the lens of its institu-tionally approved interpretation,

and often also entertains a linearunderstanding of the chronologyof events and the historical pro-gression of beliefs, an academicstudy of religion is analyticalrather than normative. Itrevolves around asking andanswering questions with argu-ments developed from a carefulstudy of primary and secondarysource material while maintain-ing the difference between thetwo. Of critical importance insuccessfully producing knowl-edge as an academic would bethe ability to read and interpretand evaluate primary sourcesabout religion and to formulateand advance arguments basedonly on such evaluation. In otherwords, at an appropriate level,students should be able to ana-lyze primary sources critically, tocreate evaluative statementsabout them, to review secondarysources about the same materialin a critical way, and to identifydifferences in methodology andreasoning between their interpre-tation and that forwarded by thesecondary sources. When I first began teaching at

KU, I assumed that studentswould understand the differencebetween the academic and nor-mative (affiliated) study of reli-gion with just passing mention inthe first class, and that the supe-riority of an inquiry-based

Reflections 23

Helping Students Think Like anAcademic Scholar of ReligiousStudies Serguei B. Dolgopolskii

Religious Studies

24 Reflections

approach to studying religion byasking questions as opposed to asimplified, lay version of histori-cal approach based on chronolo-gy alone would be obvious tostudents. My experience quicklymade clear that this was not thecase, and in subsequent semes-ters I made more and morechanges to my courses in orderto improve students’ abilities togenerate knowledge.

Two changesI modified my teaching in severalways in an effort to engage stu-dents in the actual activities ofknowledge production, eachreflecting the personality andacademic level of the course.Changes also had larger impactson my course design as I discov-ered the extent of support stu-dents needed to engage withcourse materials in the way Iwanted, and ultimately tobecome engaged in the produc-tion of knowledge. I madechanges in two areas: the struc-ture of the course, and theassignments/activities I askedstudents to complete.Changes in course structure:

When I first mentioned the dif-ference between the normative(affiliated) and academic study ofreligion, I found that simply stat-ing that there was a differencewas insufficient to produce achange in student beliefs andbehavior related to the study ofreligion. The first step I took wasto provide time and structure toexplore the difference betweenprimary and secondary sources.This was difficult for students. During the Spring 2007

semester of my course REL 107:Living Religions of the West, Ispent the first class period dis-cussing the academic study of

religion in detail. I hoped that bymaking the distinction betweenthe academic and normative(affiliated) study of religionexplicit, students would recog-nize what I was expecting themto do. I did not notice a signifi-cant improvement in studentperformance, however. Manystudents continued to want meto tell them what to knowinstead of attempting to criticallyengage with the course materialsin a way that would produceoriginal knowledge. In order to better help stu-

dents understand the scholarlyapproach to studying religion, Ithen decided to change thecourse structure to better reflectthat process. Thus, during the

Summer 2007 term for the sameREL 107 course, I divided thecourse into two parts: a study ofprimary sources and a study ofsecondary sources. I did this inhope that this structure wouldmore clearly help studentsunderstand differences betweenthe two types of sources, andalso the differences in how theyare used. This was a difficult stepfor students, but also insufficientto move them toward beingmore critical in their thinking. Irealized that I was bringing moreto the discussion than just anappreciation of the differences intypes of sources. I had my acade-mic method of inquiry whichguided my behavior. Thus, Irealized I also needed to makethe method obvious and includeit in the course structure.

I next taught REL 107 duringthe Summer 2008 semester, andfor that offering, I added a thirdsection to the course structure:an opening unit on the methodof scholarly inquiry. I explicitlytaught and modeled how schol-ars approach the reading andinterpretation of texts and theconstruction of arguments. I dis-cussed the importance of dis-agreement as a signal for deeperstudy and further questioningrather than stronger attempts atpersuasion. I wanted students toappreciate the importance ofevaluating the ideas and argu-ments made by the authors inthe texts, rather than focusing ontheir own personal reactions tothe text.

Changes in assignments:In addition to changing thecourse structure to reflect ascholarly approach to studyingreligion, I also wanted to engagethe students in scholarly activitieswith my class assignments andprojects. I initially began by ask-ing them to complete discussionquestions/responses to readingsto be submitted to me by email.The level of thought exhibited inthe discussion questions was notwhat I wanted, however, and theprivate dialogue of email did notseem to produce the level of in-class discussion I desired. During the Fall 2007 semester

I decided to make the readingresponses public, so that theentire class could see eachresponse. I also discussed select-ed responses in class. There was

I discovered the extent of support students neededto engage with course materials … and ultimately tobecome engaged in the production of knowledge.

Reflections 25

initially resistance to this: first,because of hesitations aboutbeing cited in public, and secondbecause of students’ belief thattheir peers’ discourses were notimportant. I addressed theseissues by keeping answers anony-mous and by creating a cultureand expectation for sharing (e.g.,I told them, “This is how it’sdone in Russia”). Even so, stu-dents tried to remain passive.Students wanted me to talk—totell them “the truth”—so I againhad to make explicit the impor-tance of dialogue and discussionas an active part of the academicprocess. I continue to makereading responses visible and amnow exploring using promptingquestions to guide students inthe creation of their responses.In my upper-level courses, I haveeven incorporated panel-type dis-cussions of reading responses in afurther effort to support studentsin engaging in a scholarlyapproach to studying texts.An additional problem I have

faced is that working withancient religious texts introducesthe dilemma of relevance—beingable to see how the work appliesto today’s world, or rather to thestudents’ experiences of thatworld—versus authenticity, or anability to approach an ancienttext in its own right. Rather thanme providing relevance, in mycourse REL 602: Topics inReligion: Introduction toTalmud and Interpretation, dur-ing the Spring 2008 semester, Iintroduced the idea of scripts ofTalmudic discussion—letting thestudents stage these discussionsin environments and languagesof their choosing. Doing thatwork let students meet the textat the middle ground betweenthe text and terms of experience

which were more familiar andthus more relevant for students. During that course, students

were placed in small groups andassigned excerpts from primarysources of material. They wereasked to imagine themselves asone of the members of the origi-nal intended audience of thetext, or as one of the people par-ticipating in the legalistic-theo-logical discussions surroundingthe creation of the text. Then,they wrote a script to reflect thedialogue that might have takenplace at the time of the creationof the source. After the scriptswere written, the groups actedout the scripts in front of theentire class as a starting point fora discussion of the text. To fur-ther engage them in the activity,I asked the groups to come to ameeting of one of my lower-levelclasses and act out the scripts forthe students in that class. Translating the original text

into a new context allowed thestudents to explore the problemsand issues of the original writers,often through staging them incontemporary settings, such ascoffee shops or car trips toChicago. It allowed them to seethat the creation and interpreta-tion of works like the Talmudwas active and involved a dynam-ic logic (dialogue and the actionsof those compiling the texts),rather than a remote and abstractargument. It also highlightedthat primary texts were the cre-ation of people who themselveshad reasons and opinions shap-ing their decisions and language. I found the scripts to provide

a useful window into the think-ing of the students, helping mesee which students were criticallyengaging with the texts andidentifying not only the informa-

tion conveyed, but also the argu-ments and logic of the text andthe likely biases and perspectivesof the text’s author. Studentsalso seemed to enjoy the activity.Discussion following performanceswas good. I plan to continueusing script-writing activities inthis and other courses.

ResultsThere are two primary placesthat I look for evidence that thestudents are beginning to criti-cally engage with the coursematerials and produce originalarguments: the reading respons-es and the final paper project(both the proposal and the paperitself). Both types of assessmentsoffer the students an opportunityto engage with primary and/orsecondary sources in a scholarlyway, and I am looking to see atwhat level they do so. The rubricI use to evaluate their ability togenerate scholarly knowledge islocated in Table 1 (see page 26).While the actual grades studentsreceive are based on more gener-al criteria (Completion, Is thework informational or argumen-tative? Does the writer presentonly original texts, or also criti-cally engage with them?), thisrubric represents a more sophis-ticated account of what I wantmy students to be able to do. As I made more changes to

my course structure and teachingapproach across semesters, morestudents began turning in discus-sion questions and papers indica-tive of their critical engagementwith the texts. More papers andreading responses were handedin, which suggested not only thatstudents understood what Iexpected of them, but also thatthey were doing it.

ReflectionPresently student grades arebased primarily on very generalevaluative criteria, but I wouldlike to base grades on the morespecific evaluative rubric present-ed below. Now that studentsbetter understand my expecta-tions, and I have provided moreopportunities for them to engagewith and practice the scholarlyapproach I want them to use, Ifeel I can start expecting a higherlevel of work from them.I still face difficulties with the

lower-level courses; students inthose classes are often surprisedby the level of my expectations.They often believe they knowbetter what a 100-level course

should look like, and they canresist being asked to do so muchwork. I also struggle becausesome students appear to be satis-fied with learning only how towrite a good discussion question,or a good paper that supports athesis-statement established evenbefore research begins, but theyare not engaging in scholarlyinquiry which requires reflectionon why they should write orthink a certain way. A teaching goal I have now is

to recognize where students arein their learning process. If I canfind ways to meet students wherethey are, I can better help themreach the goals I have for them.I struggle knowing how to reach

middle-level students and amcontinuing to strive to find addi-tional ways to foster their criticalengagement with course materi-als. I want to help all studentsrecognize the relevance of thetexts and to identify and evaluateauthors’ arguments rather thanjust agree or disagree with them.I hope to expand the activitiesthat I have seen create suchengagement (script-writing andacting them out, panel discus-sions, polemical discourses, etc.)across all my courses.

For more information about Prof.Dolgopolskii’s work, see his courseportfolio at www.cte.ku.edu/gallery/visibleknowledge/dolgopolskii.

26 Reflections

Table 1. Overarching rubric for evaluating student work

Paper/presentation proposals for final papers will be graded based on academic correctness of the argumenta-tion and writing, not on truthfulness or falsity thereof. Proposals and papers presenting an informed, deliberate,and original argument will yield more credit than papers focusing on collection and/or analysis of information.

Argument outlines should show exactly and under which methodological assumptions your primary and sec-ondary sources are used in your argument. The outline should clearly show to which methodology you sub-scribe and/or which methodology you re-negotiate in your work. Failure to do so may diminish your credit forthe proposal by as much as one letter grade.

A "C" paper shows the writer’s opinion on the subject and provides a body of evidence from primary and sec-ondary sources to support it. (For example, “I have an opinion, it is mine, but is also supportable by textual evi-dence and by ‘other’ authorities in the field.”) The “C” paper has methods, primary sources, and secondarysources in it, but the methods and sources are merely idling there. In a “C+” paper the writer not only showsher opinion but also argumentatively disagrees with another opinion, provided of course that there are meth-ods and sources in place in some way.

A "B" paper shows the writer’s ability to form a (perhaps only rudimentary disciplined) independent interpreta-tion of a primary text, to compare that interpretation to that which is found in secondary sources, to find andexplain any difference, and take an argumentative stand between the initial interpretation and the one in thesecondary sources. The writer argumentatively disagrees with another opinion only after having fairly under-stood and explained that opinion. A "B+" paper will also explain the difference of opinions or conclusions interms of methodological assumptions the writer and his secondary sources have used.

An "A" paper will show the writer’s ability to use a certain methodological approach in her initial reading of aprimary text, to engage in an argumentative exchange with secondary sources, and to conceive a methodologi-cal solution might have applied but for some reason did not. The writer can understand and negotiate severaldifferent views, and rather than simply adding another one to the mix, learns from limitations of previousunderstandings.

A simplified version of this rubric is:C: The writer shows her opinion and argumentatively disagrees with another opinion, provided of course thatmethods, primary sources, and secondary sources are in place, in some way.B: The writer argumentatively disagrees with another opinion only after having fairly understood and explainedthat opinion.A: The writer can understand and negotiate several different understandings, and rather then simply addinganother one to the mix, learns from the limitations of these understandings that she reveals.