ACE Series Part V: A Call to ACE Critical Reasoning for the Last Time Posted on August 21, 2013 by Richard NewtonWe are at a pedagogical turning point. Once we could impress students with our powers of memorization and recall. But that day is ending. Fast thumbs and fine-tuned algorithms can replicate the same thing. Sure, you can hold onto the belief that no one lectures quite the way you do. But what will you teach when your school uploads your lectures to iTunes University? Our task is becoming less about just transmitting content. Whatever our respective domains, we are increasingly called to train students in application, access, and analysis….
ACE Series Part IV: Writing ACE Commentary, or Everything I Need to Know About Arguing I Learned from Billy Madison! Posted on August 13, 2013 by Richard NewtonMy research deals with the scriptures people use to orient their lives. This interest may have begun in adolescence. Much to the chagrin of my youth group directors, my friends and I had a wider canon than the authorized version of any denomination out there. Our central text was the Adam Sandler film, Billy Madison (dir. Tamra Davis, 1995). To us it was a cult classic to be quoted chapter and verse. This movie made those awkward teenage years some how more bearable. For every situation, there was some line from the film available for application. And for whatever reason, when I think of ACE commentary, this film clip comes to mind….
ACE Series Part III: Good Evidence Must ACE the BS Test—It’s the Law! Posted on August 6, 2013 by Richard NewtonWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… Some of my students think that they are Thomas Jefferson. They will write paragraphs with assertions they hold to be self-evident. And while I laud their desire to write revolutionary words, they must first learn that no one, not even the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, can get away with offering evidence-less assertions. Mock academic politics all you want, but higher education at least claims the democratic notion of fair criticism. It’s a place where anyone should be able to call BS on an unsupported assertion at any time. And its participants should get the opportunity to challenge a point’s validity and qualify it with amendments—the 13th, 14, 15th, and 19th in Mr. Jefferson’s case….
More Backward Course Design: Getting Learning Done! Posted on August 1, 2013 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorImagine yourself at term’s end, talking with a sympathetic faculty colleague, or with a partner or family member. Your head is full of final papers or exams, ranging from exceptional to disappointing, and you cry out, “Argh! I just want them to ‘get’ that…(your rant here)!” If you can complete that sentence, then you have all you need for a start on “backward course design,” an idea fundamental to the widely-used framework Understanding by Design (book by McTighe and Wiggins), and having some similarity to David Allen’s Getting Things Done system of task management. Jane S. Webster blogged here at Seminarium on her own experience with “backward course design,” inspiring in me the same impulse I get when I meet someone with whom I share a love of some obscure musician: an urge to shout “Me, too!” and then talk everybody’s ear off on the subject….
ACE Series Part II: Asserting ACE Arguments One Paragraph at a Time Posted on August 1, 2013 by Richard NewtonThe assertion is an endangered species. With stunning regularity, I read student papers where paragraphs are flush with facts but lacking in authorial opinion. And if my conclaves with other teachers are any indication, you’ve noticed this too. I hear ya’. What can possibly be confusing about the assertion? You take a topic. You take a stance on it. Bada bing, bada boom, you’ve written a assertion. Nothing to it, right? But if you want students to bulk up their anemic arguments, then it’s worth looking at why many struggle with assertions….