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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Most syllabi require each and every student in a class to do exactly the same tasks; read the same texts, do the same assignments, take the same tests. This is doubly and triply the case in super large classes. In 1992, at Virginia Tech, I created a postmodern syllabus which was interactively rich and informationally diverse...in contrast to the sameness of activity and the sameness of content found in most pre-modern and modernist pedagogic practices. At Virginia Tech, in a course of 585 students, rather than one and only one pathway through the learning process, there were 585 pathways...each student could select from a 10 item menu and thus, create her/his own format with which to master the content of the course...
Menu items included two tests; one of which was obligatory. Students had to spend 100 points out of two hundred on the mid-term. The final exam could be avoided by spending the other 100 points on other menu items including movie labs, field assignments, book reports, soap operas [5-10 minute socio-dramas performed in class....and so on.
Thus I use a complex point menu to accommodate a variety of learning/writing/expressive styles...from objective tests to creative music and dance...as long as it embodies the basic ideas/concepts/theories of the class at hand.
And, in order to move students to less popular menu items; items which require more work and more integration of class content, I often use a profit margin; for example, students get 200 points to 'spend;' they have to spend 100 pts on objective tests...b8t can spend points on such menu items as movie labs, field research, dramaturgical analyses, special projects, soap operas and such.
For example, I 'charge' 20 points for the first movie lab but make it possible for a student to earn up to 25 points...just to break the ice...after the first movie lab; I set profit margins for other items on the menu not moving the students to investments.
I gave an assignment on The Drama of the Holy for Spring Break and restricted it to 20 students [of 95] who have not yet spent more than 20 points.
One student, Bill, wanted to do the assignment...he has already spent 160 of 200 points...I told him, No.
He wrote back and offered to buy the assignment at 20 pts and accept a two-point penalty for taking...first time I ever had a student offer to buy assignments knowing s/he would take a loss.
You might want to use this market socialist scheme for your own classes. If so,
you are welcome to download syllabi from Teaching
Sociology section on these pages.
TRYoung