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Students and teachers at Spokane
Community College, Spokane, WA, define their goals for their time spent in IDS 150,
Writing the World, during Spring 2004. Please click on a name to read more.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to find student responses.
Teacher Ideas
IDS 150 -- Writing the World
-- Discover more about yourself via the literatures and peoples of the world. What is
universal in the human experience? What is particular to a certain culture?
Can examining other cultures teach us about our own? Why are Americans referred to as
"Ugly Americans"? Is the Islamic world really so very different from our own?
What can we learn from studying life in China during the Cultural Revolution? The cold war
has ended, but is there any less tension in the world? Why do boat people and other
illegal aliens continue to cross our borders, knowing that for every one who does make it,
two to three die, become maimed in some way or are imprisoned? What does it mean to be a
stranger somewhere, an immigrant, an "other"? While we don't have answers
to each of these questions, we will explore the cultures of ourselves and others to try
and understand the differences as well as the similarities between us. The study of
Literature, coupled with reasoning*** in writing, may
give us glimmers into some of the questions.
Sign up for IDS 150 and then on the second day of
class we will determine which of the two literature and which of the three composition
courses you will gain credits for. We hope to see you there. Be aware -- we
will wander through unknown territory, use language not comfortable for us all, and see
images and sights that may dismay us--through this this we will grow in ways you may have
never imagined. Be aware -- Be prepared.
Until the next time, Jan and Carrie
Overview: This course is centered around the fundamental question:
"What is literature of the world and how does is compare to our own?" In
questing for answers, students must engage in dialogue with the poem, stories, dramas, and
themselves, recapitulating, we believe, the essential motors which make literature run in
the first place: conversation, collaboration and interactivity.
Therefore, the decision to utilize the World Wide Web as a pedagogical
tool is not by any means an arbitrary one. It emphasizes these very aspects. And as
students will learn by the end of the course, the introduction of Hypertext into the
discourse of literature produces an intriguing and engaging discussion of both subjects.
Course Objective: Build a website entitled, "Writing the
World."
This website will by no means be comprehensive, but it will serve the
Internet community well by articulating the essential elements of literature and literary
analysis. It will make available to students a methodology for approaching literature by
means of conversation, collaboration and interactivity.
By the end of the quarter students will:
 | Be able to conduct informed discussions, written or oral, about the
essential elements of a piece of literature.
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| Develop an understanding of how literary critics approach literary
writing.
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| Learn how to use Hypertext and Internet technologies.
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| Develop effective collaborative skills.
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Course work: All course work will be geared toward existing in our
website.
In order to construct our website, however, we must first devote some time
to defining our terms in regards to the formal elements of a poem, a story, or a play,
understanding how these elements coalesce into a gestalt.
With this in mind, course work will be as follows:
| Investigative work
 | Definitions of literary terms (no more than 1/3 page each)
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| Website reviews (no more than two sentences each)
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| Literary Analyses along with Literary Explication and Seminars
| Seminar papers in which students engage a specific piece of writing
chosen along the lines indicated in class.
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| Discussion of said specific literary work.
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| Midterm and Take-Home Final Exams
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| Book Projects
| Team members take ownership of a particular book and its novelist;
they teach the rest of us about their adopted author
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| Litwebs, presentations and research papers will be an outcome of this
project
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| Attendance and class participation
| Since this class demands collaboration, conversation and interactivity,
a student cannot perform these tasks if s/he does not attend class regularly.
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| Collaborative Work
| Poetry is a collaborative enterprise involving the contributions of many
people. So is learning. Computer-related projects also require collaboration. For these
reasons, projects for this class will often involve collaborative work in groups of 4-6
people. It is especially important that you meet all commitments to the members of your
work group, i.e., attending all scheduled meetings both in and out of class. I will not
look kindly on people who take these obligations lightly, and reserve the right to adjust
individual grades to take account of collaborative activity.
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A note on plagiarism. Plagiarism dishonors the student and the
college and will not be tolerated. It is grounds for expulsion. If you have any concerns
or questions regarding what constitutes an act of plagiarism, please consult me during
office hours.
Overall Note. A student might initially bristle at the word
"website" juxtaposed with the word "poetry." But rest assured, no
previous knowledge of the Internet is required for this course! The only skills needed are
the following:
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| How to type on a computer. How to save a file on a diskette.
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| The skills which you will learn are as follows: How to browse the World
Wide Web
Now that we have written our course goals. Please do your own -- they should be a least
a page in length, as we want to really understand your purpose for being here. If
you're one of those people who needed the credit, please go beyond that and think what
this class can do for you. We will be posting the student responses here...
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***(Reasoning, of course, has 1. purpose, 2. attempts to figure out and
solve a problem, 3. uses assumptions, 4. takes a stance or point-of-view, 5. is based on
authority (evidence, facts, figures, experience), 6.expresses itself through concepts and
ideas, 7. contains inferences and interpretations, and finally, 8. leads to implications
or conclusions.)
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