Gen Ed Intro Class Blues

 Every semester, our department offers a few "general education" classes, courses that students beyond the theatre major can take to fulfill one of their gen ed credits, in this case fine/performing arts. We offer these classes, on the on hand, we want students from every major to have some exposure to and perhaps participation in the fine and performing arts. It's part of the ideal of a liberal arts education, where you broaden yourself by partaking of studies in subjects you likely won't pursue a career in.

I taught our main course in that vein--Intro to Theatre--many times, mostly in my early career days. It's the class we hand to graduate teaching assistants and junior/adjunct faculty. That's too bad, really. I heard the a speaker from (oh, what was it) the National Science Foundation once reflect that gen-ed "intro" classes were misnamed. "We call it 'Intro to Biology' or 'Intro to Geology,'" he said (I paraphrase), "But in fact we should realize that these are probably the last courses in the sciences that students will ever take." The same applies to every gen-ed course: English, History, Sociology, Economics--and of course Theatre. This is our one chance to catch them.

It's odd, then, that large state universities like mine seem to do their best to make gen-ed credits as awful as possible. Each section is huge--a hundred or more people in a large auditorium. See, historically, the coin of the realm in the interdepartmental (and intercollegiate) scramble for resources is SCHs (Student Contact Hours). The more butts in seats per class, the better. Most arts courses for majors are necessarily small: a studio for clarinet or cello, a small acting class, an intimate study in advanced ceramics techniques. We'd be hopelessly underfunded, then, but for our super-big gen ed courses. These we have relied on to make up for our small numbers. Thus Intro to Theatre has often been in the top-ten highest enrollment classes at the university. We've had as many as 1,000 students in the fall semester across 5-6 sections of Intro. That's many times as many majors as we have.

Not that I'm exactly pleased about this. We often stock these classes with our least experienced teachers. (That's not to say they're bad teachers, our grad TAs and adjunct/junior faculty, just that--on average--they're less experienced, less supported, and less paid than other faculty.) Oh, there are exceptions. One of our best professors heads up our fall super-section of Intro; she's assisted by a bevy of grad TAs. Other departments have professors who specialize in these large-scale courses. But I do have to tell prospective PhD students that they'll likely find themselves the instructor of record for a class of 100 non-majors as one of their first TA assignments. That's not an ideal pedagogical scenario, but that's been the way of things for a while.

This semester, though, we've had a lot of trouble getting even to 100 students per Intro section. We're not exactly sure what's going on; nothing about the class has changed recently. But one big factor appears to be another arts gen-ed class: Intro to Fine Arts. That class has one instructor and over 1,500 students. It's 100% web-based. Rumor is that there's only one TA assisting the professor (I don't know if that's true). 

An undergrad who's taken the course had nothing but praise. It's apparently famous as "best course at LSU"--not because it's a quality course but because it's so easy. Cheating is rampant, that the class is ridiculously simple. Thus it's beloved. Thus it's sucking up all the students who might otherwise be taking Intro to Music or Theatre or some other arts course.

More tomorrow.

And then there

First Day of Classes spring 2025

 As always, I finish class planning not so much because I've completed the task but because the first class happens. What I have is what they get, barring some modifications.

I'm . . . OK with my syllabi. Both feel like very new preps, even as I've taught an earlier version of script analysis for over a decade now. Things feel risky, but also a little exciting? A lot will depend upon my discipline in keeping up with daily grading (or weekly in the case of the PhD class). Low-stakes writing works best, in my experience, when I demonstrate early and often that what they write--the ideas and questions they express--matter. Otherwise, students get the sense that it's meaningless busywork.

So: discipline. I have been good at that at points in the past, so I know I can do it.

I came home, crashed, and then had another coffee--much later than I usually do. I have that just-completed-a-huge-task burst of energy. I did the dishes, took out the recycling, cleaned the cats' litter boxes, and even found the old, old version of our programs comprehensive exams.

Comp exams, for those who don't know, are the ordeal exercise that PhD programs put students through as they finish their coursework and transition to dissertation writing. It's the pivot between "PhD student" and "PhD candidate," aka "ABD (All But Dissertation). 

No matter where you go, they're a bundle of anxiety, stress, and exhaustion. Historically--in this program and in others (like my own PhD program)--comps or comp-equivalent exercises were used to prove that the student wields an encyclopedic knowledge of the field. As we came to question that expectation, we shifted to the more-defensible-but-still-questionable metaphor of a mental rolodex of names, events, texts, and theories that any Theatre PhD should have at their beck and call. "If you're at a conference," we'd tell students as an example, "and someone presents a paper on rasas, you as a PhD should be able to link that concept to Sanskrit theatre." 

As I explained to my seminar this morning, we as a program and as a field are stepping back from that image of what a PhD in Theatre is or should be. As I've written about here, the model of "encyclopedic knowledge of world theatre history, literature, and theory" is a mirage. There's just too much. We now tailor comp exams more to a student's history of study. Have they retained info about the studies they've engaged in while in the program? Can they take a meta-critical perspective about these studies--comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and synthesizing them? Can they demonstrate the ability to do the research necessary to discover, evaluate, and assimilate new information?

I shared with them the very first comp exam I helped to grade here at this institution. It was spring 2006. The comp exam at that time consisted of a list of 100 terms from (mainly) Western/European/North American theatre history, literature, and theory. It murdered students. I mean, of course it did! Looking at it now, there are a few (a handful) that even I could only guess at. I'm not sure what that kind of test does except for demoralize someone. 

I'm glad we stepped away from that model. I'll be happy when our new curriculum gets approved and we can step away from even our current model. 

But what if anything should replace it?

Class Prep Week: finished. nearly finished. I must be nearly finished.

 A short post this evening. I've finished my contemporary theatre grad syllabus!

I'm not super-happy about everything, but at this point it's like we say with dissertations: a good syllabus is a done syllabus. 

We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Now on to the other two classes...

Class Prep: Mushbrain--but a plan!

 OK. I think I have a possible plan for the grad class. It's gonna be a combination reading/discussion group with a pedagogical focus. 

It meets twice a week--Mondays and Wednesdays. Most Mondays, I'll have them read a play paired with a critical piece (usually an article focusing on teaching that play and/or contextualizing/problematizing it). I have many, many more such pairings that could work than I have room for. I gotta cut down.

Most Wednesdays, there will be two presentations by students. Students will sign up for two of these presentations at the start of the semester. One will be a "keystone" presentation where they teach us a lesson on some especially influential or significant play, artist, movement, and/or event. Ideally, this will be one we've all heard of, perhaps from prior to 2000 (or at least prior to 2010). I'll have a suggested list, but they're welcome to do something different if they'd like. The other presentation for each Wednesday will be something else--a "hidden treasure" (I'll think of something else to call it). Here is where they can either suggest and have us all read a relatively recent play (last 20 years or so) that they think will become important--or argue for the recovery/recuperation of some artist/group/event that we (and most canon/class formations) overlook.

Additionally, each week, students will post a "sitrep" (Situation Report) on a blog they'll create just reflecting on their thoughts from the prior week.

The two big projects at midterm and finals will be some kind of annotated syllabus that they'll create--perhaps one for a general ed "contemporary dramatic lit" class and one for a special topics course of their own devising that generally deals with theatre/performance of the last seventy-five years.

The hard--hard hard hard--thing right now is, as always, what do I leave out? I have so much extra that i'm thinking of cutting down student reports in favor of just having more that I provide. I'm trying to take Jill Dolan's advice: assign less. I want the class to be rewarding, not a slog.

Perhaps I should do only one or the other rather than both on the Wednesdays?

Aaaand there's also the undergrad script analysis to get ready before Monday. But not right now. My brain=mush.

G'night!

Class Prep: Lots of Article Reading

 All day long has been me downloading scholarly articles onto my hard drive and into my brain in preparation for deciding what goes into my contemporary theatre seminar.

I've taught this seminar several times before, and I've never been exactly satisfied with it. It's technically a history seminar, but there's just no way to do justice to the last seventy-five years of global theatre history in fifteen weeks (fourteen, really, with holidays and whatnot). I looked over all my past attempts today. They stretch back to the aughts. I see I started with a doggedly chronological march through key eras. Then I shifted to a thematic focus. I shunted the march-through-history back to a "crash course" that took up the first few weeks. Students would absorb all that the standard theatre history texts had to say about the eras we studied. I'd give them a week or two to do that and then threaten them with some kind of test. The real test, of course, was me looking at their notes, seeing if they'd taken care to learn what they needed to.

I dislike that activity. It always felt necessary--Well, I can't have a history class without them knowing the basic history, right? You have to have a starting point to trouble, don't you?--but it caused such stress and tension for students. It's like their comp exams in miniature, even as it was supposed to help them prepare for said exams.

I'm trying to do away with that exercise this semester.

As I've mentioned previously, we're formally stepping back from the expectation of an encyclopedic knowledge of theatre history. This seminar--like all our era-based history seminars--is transitioning to a more modular, special-topics course. I've been approaching this course's planning as if it simply were one of those special topics courses. "What if you get a job at a college/university," I pitched, "and got assigned a course along the lines of 'modern drama' or 'contemporary theatre' or 'today's plays'? What do you teach?"

My aim was to attract students beyond just our PhD program. Currently there aren't enough PhD Theatre students in coursework to make a course work. (There's a general lull in applications to PhD programs in Theatre, but that's another topic.) I wanted to appeal to folk in English, Comp Lit, Womens/Gender/Queer studies and the like. As it happens, my class is half theatre grads (PhDs and--unexpected--MFAs) with a few outsiders thrown in. There's even an especially precocious undergrad there.

So: having promised a special topics course, how shall I deliver? I think I have a sufficient number of articles and plays to choose from. How do I arrange the course? What will their main assignments be? What do I want them to take from this course?

In my mind, I'm thinking that the main big deliverables from students in the semester will be teaching materials: perhaps an annotated syllabi--two or three, I haven't decided on; perhaps a portfolio of syllabus, teaching philosophy, and sample lesson; or perhaps a conference-length presentation/manifesto. I'll also try to do a lot of low-stakes writing throughout, perhaps via a weekly blog. The course is two days a week. I'd ideally like to do one day of case study--a play or playwright (or perhaps an event or topic) paired with an article (preferably about teaching said playwright/play/event/topic). The other day, after the first week or two, would involve students signing up to share (1) a keystone play/playwright/event--a play/playwright/event that influenced other work/artists; or (2) a hidden treasure item--an event/site/play/artist that they think could or should become a keystone. Maybe I should include an option of a hands-on lesson?

The other assignment will be weekly status reports (blogs) where they reflect on the topics given.

Different students are taking this class at different levels; some are pass/fail while others are fully enrolled. I'll have tiered expectations for each level.

Now: how do I structure the weeks? I have two days to decide!

Class Prep: Lots of Low-Stakes Writing

 So, after finally letting go of the need to absorb any more play scripts--it really is just procrastination at this stage--I sat down and reformatted my script analysis course (both sections). I've made the class both shorter and longer. I took out some of the play readings; there are now 11 instead of the usual 13. And I took out one of the four analysis papers. With this additional breathing room, I inserted at least a day between each play I assign. My thinking is that we'll discuss the play one day and then, on the following day, we'll use that script to unpack/explore some facet of script analysis. 

I've also both cut down and vastly expanded the amount of writing students do. A class I taught this last semester turned out to be one of my favorite courses I've ever taught. I structured the class around lots of low-stakes writing and responses. Students brought in "sparks" for the day's material. A spark could be a quote that stood out, a substantive reaction, a question--just about anything so long as it demonstrated a real engagement with the material. Occasionally, students were required to go beyond a spark and bring in a "rabbit hole report"--a bit of research about something the material for the day inspired them to look into. A few students (those contracting for an A) had to do at least one "lagniappe report"--essentially a longer, deeper rabbit hole report on some bit of extra material not formally assigned. 

What made all this work so well, I think, was the work I put in compiling each class day a list of some of the standout sparks comments/questions. I'd begin each next class by sharing these. I could see students light up when they recognized that I was reading their contribution. I think this practice gave students a sense that their reactions mattered, that the sparks weren't mere busywork. 

It was, of course, a lot of work on my part.

What I was doing, in the lingo of writing instruction, was creating a lot of low-stakes writing assignments. Students would get either "Satisfactory" or "Unsatisfactory" on these assignments. If they were Unsatisfactory, I'd let them know what the problem was and give them the chance to revise. They had to be in class to turn them in, and I accepted handwritten ones provided I could understand the handwriting. Nearly all of them were handwritten, which frankly cut down on any suspicions on my part that they were AI-generated. I also gave students a few minutes at the top of class to do these exercises. If the didn't read the material, they'd get a U and the chance to revise. (Revisions were more work, though, so as to dissuade them from just backlogging U's.)

What if, I thought to myself, I made my script analysis class more like that class? Every day would have some kind of low-stakes writing--some they could bring to class prewritten, some they'd write in class. And I could--would have to--again do the hard work of grading every day and compiling responses to share the next day. I'd also need to get students into the habit of bringing something to write with and write on every day. 

I'm still thinking through exactly how to realize this in a script analysis class. A lot of this class is going to be experimental--on my part particularly. And it's going to be a lot of work--though I may be able to grade again mostly on S/U status. 

But: I'm also thinking I may need to let go of contract/ungrading in favor of the simpler (less pedagogically responsible) numerical grading system...

And then, aside from that, I really need to get my grad class sorted! Lots of article-reading hours tomorrow. 

Class Planning: Lowering Expectations, Reading More Plays

 So--I'm  a little fried. Over the past few hours, I have skim-read a lot of one-act plays (how many? two dozen? thirty?), searching for pieces to complement the standard, old-fashioned one-acts I use to start my script analysis class with.

My standard starts are Trifles by Susan Glaspell (classic, naturalistic, fun), Overtones by Alice Gerstenberg (on-the-nose, but expressionistic fun), and Florence by Alice Childress (typically Childressian excellence regarding white representations of Black people in art).

The problem: this class I've taught for over a decade has historically involved four to five big analysis papers. I've been able to handle grading these largely thanks to the help of a graduate teaching assistant (TA). The class is generally well regarded--hard but good. In the last few years, though--COVID is the convenient watershed--my experience of the class has degraded a bit. Students are finding reading and writing much harder. I've dialed back my expectations on assignments, dropped from five to four analyses, and focused more on helping students revise work. 

I've also adopted an "ungrading" policy. Students contract for the grade they want (A, B, or C, with options for plusses and minuses in each). Assignments are basically "satisfactory" or "needs revision." Every assignment can be revised. In theory I like this arrangement better. In practice it's a lot more work for me and my TA. Add to this mix the pernicious influence of generative AI (LLMs like ChatGPT), and assessing writing in class just becomes orders of magnitude more difficult. 

On top of this, enrollment in the course has, semester after semester, grown, blowing out enrollment caps. I had over forty students last semester in a single class. That was a lot for my TA and to keep up with. This semester, I proposed two smaller sections. Both are full at 26 apiece. But for a number of reasons, there's no TA to spare this semester.

So: I screwed myself over. I now have 52 (at least) students and no TA help. There's just no way I can do the same amount of work I've been doing. I have to revise the class completely, which has made me no end of grumpy. 

In truth, though, the class needed a refresh anyway. I'd prefer to have done this refresh over the summer, but [shrug emoji]. And I hate that my refreshing/revisioning is going to be driven less by what is best for the students and as much/more by what is doable for me by myself.

My inkling at the moment: I'm going to slow way down. We'll take our time with individual plays, and perhaps read more of them. They'll do less outside work on them and do more work in class on them (lots of worksheets). I'll have only two or three big writing assignments, all with elaborate scaffolds/steps. I'm thinking of calling these steps "table read" (initial ideas/prewriting) "blocking" (prewriting/outlining), "dress rehearsal" (first draft), and "opening night" (final draft). 

I don't know if I can keep the ungrading component. I may need to retreat to the safer (though less pedagogically justifiable) waters of numerical grades. 

In a way, my reading more plays at this point is just putting off the inevitable, avoiding rethinking the class from top to bottom. 

But after tonight: no more lollygagging.