Adapting an honors pedagogy to a general studies travel course.

Adapting an honors pedagogy to a general studies travel course. During a three-week January term, twelve general studies studentsfrom Mount Mercy College In 1957, the College became a four-year institution and awarded its first bachelor’s degree in 1959. The college received accreditation as a baccalaureate institution by the North Central Association in 1960. in Cedar Rapids Cedar Rapids,city (1990 pop. 108,751), seat of Linn co., E central Iowa, on the Cedar River; inc. as a city 1856. The second largest city in Iowa, it is named for the surging rapids in the river. , Iowa, enrolled in Culture andNatural History of Belize The history of Belize dates back thousands of years. Before European contactThe area now comprising Belize was originally inhabited by the Maya. The Maya civilization rose in the Yucat��n Peninsula to the north, spreading to Belize between the 16th century BC and the 4th and adopted the entire country of Belize astheir text. Two main objectives of the course were to give the studentsan immersion experience in another culture and to fosterinterdisciplinarity and multiple perspectives. The City as Text[TM]pedagogy suited these objectives perfectly. Before the ten-day travel portion of the course, studentsfamiliarized themselves with the CAT methodology. On the first day ofclass, they were presented with a blank map of Belize and asked to fillin what they knew in terms of geographical features, biotic biotic/bi��ot��ic/ (bi-ot��ik)1. pertaining to life or living matter.2. pertaining to the biota.bi��ot��icadj.1. Relating to life or living organisms. zones, andhuman impact. The students, who had received no instruction on thesetopics, were stymied by their lack of knowledge. Because of theirfrustration, they were immediately receptive when they were put intosmall groups, assigned one of these topics, and given thirty minutes inthe library to find out everything they could about their topic.Motivated to overcome their earlier ignorance, students researched withgusto and returned armed with facts and details. The blank map was projected anew onto the chalkboard, and studentswere invited to fill it in. The first group began hesitantly, sketchingin the physical features they had been sent to research. Then, with someexcitement, the group in charge of biotic zones came forward andsuperimposed their sketches over the landforms. Immediately, therelationship between, say, cloud forest cloud forestn.A tropical forest, often near peaks of coastal mountains, that usually has constant cloud cover throughout the year.cloud forestand mountain range became clear.By the time the group in charge of human settlements added theirinformation to the mix, students were already synthesizing anunderstanding of how the pieces fit together: how landforms, rainforestdensity, or weather patterns invited or limited the growth of towns,farms, and industry. Finally, students added cultural practices to themap and began to see how physical geography physical geography:see geography. affected settlement bydifferent ethnic groups, which in turn affects cultural practices suchas religion, cuisine, and folk art folk art,the art works of a culturally homogeneous people produced by artists without formal training. The forms of such works are generally developed into a tradition that is either cut off from or tenuously connected to the contemporary cultural mainstream. . Because students had been assigned to work on a specific andlimited topic, this portion of the course simulated interdisciplinarityas each student became an expert on one aspect of the geography ofBelize Belize is a small Central American nation, located at 17��15′ north of the equator and 88��45′ west of the Prime Meridian. It borders the Caribbean Sea to the east, with 386 km of coastline. but needed to rely on the expertise of others to understand thebig picture. Knowledge was not handed down from one student to anotherbut constructed in the conversation that occurred as all the studentsworked together to create an integrated map. At the end of the class,the learning was reinforced by a brief lecture that related what we hadlearned to the places where we would be traveling in a few days:students had much more at stake when they knew they would be living inthe rainforest and villages they had just mapped. Students alsocompleted a journaling exercise that asked them to reflect on thelearning process they had just used. In other preparatory work, students wrote an individual researchpaper on a focused topic that we would be covering while on the groundin Belize. Topics included questions about biology, ecology, farmingpractices, economy, ancient Mayan civilization, and contemporarycultural practices. The wide range of topics ensured a multifacetedconversation about the place we would be visiting; the depth to whicheach student researched his or her topic ensured that the class wouldhave at least one resident expert to consult when we were in the fieldconducting our explorations without the benefit of libraries or evenInternet access See how to access the Internet. . While we were in Belize, each student-expert taught theclass through a brief presentation prior to the related excursion,speaking about Mayan civilization prior to our visit to the Mayan ruinsat Xunantunich or about symbiotic relationships prior to our firstsnorkel snorkel,tube through which a submarine or diver can draw air while underwater. When in use, the top of the snorkel tube extends above the water surface into the air. in the coral reef. More importantly, however, the student-expertwas responsible for answering questions that spontaneously sprang upwhen we visited the site. By relying on the student-expert, the otherstudents gathered information through the CAT method of listening inaddition to mapping and observing while we were in Belize. Whenever wecould, we also listened to native residents and guides, but these werenot always available, so the student-experts provided a continual andreliable source of information. Thus primed, students journeyed to Belize, where they entered aprofoundly alien environment. They had acquired a limited text-bookknowledge of the place, but nothing could prepare them for theexperience of this wholly other culture, climate, and environment. Welanded in Belize in the late afternoon and spent our first night in ajungle lodge, with geckos chirping in the thatched ceiling, leaf-cutterants filing across the doorstep, and the blackness of an unlit forestpressing around. The disorientation disorientation/dis��or��i��en��ta��tion/ (-or?e-en-ta��shun) the loss of proper bearings, or a state of mental confusion as to time, place, or identity. the students felt in this situation wassalutary, pedagogically ped��a��gog��ic? also ped��a��gog��i��caladj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy.2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. speaking, for it shook them out of theircomplacency as students. Surrounded by the unfamiliar, they had to lookat things in unfamiliar ways. As an experiential-learning method, CATmakes students step outside their conventional classroom paradigms, andat no time is it easier to do this than when they are experiencing analienation from what they know. Outside their ordinary habits ofthought, the students respond to the call to figure things out forthemselves, using the tools of mapping, listening, and observing. Forinstance, a visit to a rainforest farm was not a passive tour but ahands-on opportunity as students asked questions of the farmer; plantedcorn; and tasted sugar cane, cacao, ginger, and coconut. Later, touringthe rainforest with a Mayan guide who had studied with a shaman,students asked about the medicinal properties of plants and sampledleaves, saps, roots, and even live termites as they made observationswith all their senses. Students transformed their disorientation into aneed to find out, make sense of their surroundings, and synthesize anoverall picture of the place. Each day's activities were revisitedin journal entries where students reflected on how their interactionwith their environment influenced their ways of seeing. Using the CATmethodology, students experienced rainforests, coral reefs, Mayan ruins,farms, villages, and towns as we traveled around half of thisMassachusetts-sized area. Near the end of the trip, students were put in groups of three,given large sheets of paper and markers, and asked to revisit thefirst-day exercise of creating a map of Belize. Whereas on the first daystudents filled in blank Absent limitation or restriction.The term in blank is used in reference to negotiable instruments, such as checks or promissory notes. When such Commercial Paper is endorsed in blank, the designated payee signs his or her name only. maps with conventional features, after eightdays of CAT explorations they now free-formed conceptual maps that wereastounding in their diversity as well as their ability to articulatewhat the students had learned. Students not only drew from observationsmade during the trip but were influenced by their areas of expertise,both in their assigned topics and in the knowledge they brought fromtheir various majors. So, for instance, a group containing a biologystudent and an economist pointed out how different growing zonesstimulated economic opportunities such as citrus groves on the savannahsversus tourism in unfarmable areas. Some nursing students, acting ontheir own initiative since we had never formally covered the topic inthe course, focused on the different health-care practices they hadobserved in the villages versus the cities. The social science studentsresponded to both of these maps by observing how political policiesinfluence agriculture, tourism, and health care. The class, relying onmapping, listening, and observing, synthesized a rich, complexunderstanding of Belize as text. As a general studies course, Culture and Natural History of Belizewas designed to expand students' knowledge and skills in certainareas: written and oral communication, multicultural awareness,understanding of biological systems. The assessment methods included theformal research papers and informal reflective essays, an oralpresentation, and a written exam over course content. By nature, atravel course differs from a conventional classroom course anyway, yetconducting this course using CAT methodology superadded skills thatnormally do not get assessed or even taught: collaboration, leadership,initiative, the ability to think on one's feet and adapt to novelsituations, the ability to articulate the way knowledge is constructed. The success of this course in meeting its stated objectives as wellas its unstated ones was driven home for me three months after the tripwhen I asked the students to present at Mount Mercy's UndergraduateScholars Day. Six students whose topics formed a good cross section ofthe course content agreed to participate. Because of schedulingconflicts, getting this group together to rehearse their presentationbefore giving it was difficult; as an expedient, I told them each justto read a section of the research paper they had written prior to thetrip. What the students gave me instead was evidence of the effectivenessof City as Text as a learning method. On Scholars Day, the first studentbegan by reading from the script of her written text. Then shespontaneously interrupted herself, looked up at the audience, and beganto extemporize ex��tem��po��rize?v. ex��tem��po��rized, ex��tem��po��riz��ing, ex��tem��po��riz��esv.tr.To do or perform (something) without prior preparation or practice: extemporized an acceptance speech. based on the knowledge she had acquired in Belize itself,which was so much richer than the facts she had conned from the pre-triptextbook. She spoke from experience and she spoke with authority, withtotal command of her topic even though it had been three months sinceshe had studied it and had never rehearsed-had not even planned for thisspontaneous speech. The next student followed suit, and the next. Onestudent was absent because of illness, and another, on the spur of themoment Adv. 1. on the spur of the moment - on impulse; without premeditation; "he decided to go to Chicago on the spur of the moment"; "he made up his mind suddenly"suddenly , spoke about her topic as knowledgably as about his own. In otherwords Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , these students, having been immersed the previous January intheir place as text and working cooperatively on the ground there toconstruct their knowledge as a group, had mastered their topic andretained their knowledge to the point where they could present anunrehearsed un��re��hearsed?adj.Not rehearsed. See Synonyms at extemporaneous.Adj. 1. unrehearsed - with little or no preparation or forethought; "his ad-lib comments showed poor judgment"; "an extemporaneous piano recital"; "an speech about it in April. During the question-and-answersession afterwards, students were asked about the process and benefitsof this form of experiential learning. Again, the students wereself-aware about their own learning process and articulated without anyprompting from me how the CAT method had stimulated their interest andenabled them to retain knowledge beyond what they normally do intraditionally taught courses, even in their own majors. What is most impressive is that these students were not from thehonors program but were regular students, with different interests andabilities, taking a course to fulfill a general education requirement.Honors pedagogies benefit more than only honors students. In terms ofwriting, oral communication, reflective judgment, multiculturalism,understanding of biological systems, and learning to read a text, thiscourse allowed students to integrate several branches of liberal studiesand make them relevant to their own concerns. At our small college, asthe conversation heats up over the role of a general educationcurriculum vis-a-vis professional training, CAT can provide a meaningfulway to educate all students in the liberal arts, engaging theirenthusiasm, enhancing their practical skills, and opening their eyes tothe world around them. JOY OCHS MOUNT MERCY COLLEGE