ARC5943: Pedagogy Seminar
Seminar/3 credit hours
Fall 2013
Florida International University School of Architecture
Professor David Rifkind [david.rifkind@fiu.edu]
PCA135, Monday, 11:00 – 1:30
Office hours, PCA383b, 305.348.1867, Wednesday and Friday, 1:30 – 4:00
This seminar course is designed to train graduate teaching assistants who aspire to
teach at the university level. Students enrolled in the Pedagogy Seminar will learn
to teach lecture, seminar and studio courses in a number of subjects. They will
learn to lead seminar discussions, to prepare and give lectures, to help
undergraduate students develop their faculties for textual and visual analysis, to
evaluate student assignments and to comment insightfully on essays. Students
enrolled in the Pedagogy Seminar will develop syllabi and curricula.
The pedagogy seminar runs parallel to the undergraduate survey course, ARC2701:
History of Design from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, and a set number of
students in the Pedagogy Seminar will each be assigned a section of undergraduate
students from that course, with whom they will work closely to develop critical and
interpretive skills through writing assignments and weekly discussion sessions. In
addition to the survey course instructor, the seminar will feature guest lecturers
from other humanities disciplines at FIU, including English, History, Geography,
Music and Anthropology.
N.B. – the Pedagogy Seminar is not limited to teaching assistants in ARC2701. The
Pedagogy Seminar is designed to help students develop their skills as teachers in a
number of disciplines.
The course outcomes include a sophisticated understanding of pedagogical techniques
and an ability to lead seminar-format classes, lecture in a large survey class,
lead a design studio, comment insightfully on student writing and design
assignments and grade student work judiciously.
Students will attend weekly seminar discussions with the instructor. Each student will
have the opportunity to lead the discussion of one week's readings in order to
engage that week's material with the level of scrutiny necessary when teaching a
graduate seminar course. Each student will prepare and give a 15-minute micro
lecture of the material on a particular subject in order to practice the various
skills involved in preparing and giving lectures. Students will write the syllabus
for a proposed seminar of the student's choosing, and re-write the syllabus for the
survey course.
Seminar students who serve as teaching assistants in ARC2701 will attend lectures
in that course, and will lead discussion sections with undergraduate students
enrolled in the survey course. Seminar students will lead discussion sections,
evaluate and comment on student writing assignments and grade quizzes. Students
will be evaluated based on their participation in the seminar meetings and their
syllabus-writing assignments. Students who serve as teaching assistants will also
be evaluated on their performance in the classroom. The course instructor will meet
with each student individually throughout the semester to discuss the student’s
progress as a teacher.
Throughout the spring 2013 semester, students will meet weekly with the survey
course instructor to discuss the readings for ARC2702: History of Design in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Students will conduct discussion sections,
grade papers and quizzes throughout the spring semester, but will not be enrolled
in a second pedagogy seminar.
There are no prerequisites, nor co-requisites for the course. Instructor permission is
required for enrollment.
The course text for ARC2701 is available at the Graham Center bookstore: Francis D.K.
Ching, Mark M. Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash, A Global History of
Architecture, 2nd edition, Hoboken: J. Wiley & Sons, 2010.
Other important texts on reserve at Green Library are Elizabeth Barlow Rogers,
Landscape design: a Cultural and Architectural History, Spiro Kostof, A History
of Architecture, Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, and
Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, Architecture, from Prehistory to PostModernism.
ARC5935: Pedagogy Seminar
Schedule of classes:
1 [8.26]
Leading a discussion section – introductions to broad concepts, and quiz
preparation
reading: Leland Roth, Understanding Architecture. Boulder, CO, 2007,
Ch.11 “Greek Architecture,” pp215-245.
Preparing students for quizzes – the prep session (plus Hadrian’s villa)
reading: Ching, Jarzombek and Prakash, pp. 202-211.
Charles W. Moore, “Hadrian's Villa,” Perspecta, Vol. 6, (1960), pp. 1627.
2 [9.2]
Labor Day – no class
3 [9.9]
Teaching beginning design studio – broad concepts, assignments, criticism
guest discussant: Claudia Busch
4 [9.16]
Preparing students for writing assignments – writing a research paper
Designing and grading quizzes
5 [9.23]
Leading a discussion section – how to unpack arguments through close
textual readings
reading: Rudolph Wittkower, “The Centrally Planned Church and the
Renaissance,” in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, New
York, 1949, pp.3-32 (also recommended: 101-154).
6 [9.30]
Commenting on student writing – proposals and annotated bibliographies
7 [10.7]
Roundtable discussion – upper level design studios
reading: Erwin Panofsky, “The Neo-Platonic Movement and Michelangelo,” in
Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance,
New York, 1939.
guest discussant: Jason Chandler
8 [10.14] Guest lecture – pedagogical methods in studio art courses
Leading a discussion section – the question of scale and analogies
between disciplines
Reading: Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities (1967), New York, 1978, pp.131161.
guest discussant: Jacek Kolasinski
9 [10.21] Commenting on student writing – analytical essays
Round-table discussion – pedagogical methods in design studios
10 [10.28]
Guest lecture – pedagogical methods in history courses and
integrating research into teaching
reading: Robin Middleton and David Watkins, Neoclassical and 19th-century
Architecture, ch.2, “The Picturesque Tradition in England,” pp.37-65.
Assignment due: syllabus for a seminar
guest discussant: April Merleaux
11 [11.4]
Guest lecture – pedagogical methods in art history courses
Reading: Alan Colquhoun, "Three Kinds of
Historicism," Oppositions 26
(Spring 1984), pp. 29-39. [first published in Architectural Design 53,
9/10 (1983)].
12 [11.11]
no class – Veteran’s Day
13 [11.18]
Round-table discussion – research in design studios
guest discussant: Marilys Nepomechie
14 [11.25]
Commenting on student papers – interpretive essays
presentations
15 [12.2] Assignment due: syllabus for the survey course
presentations
ARC5943: Pedagogy Seminar
Class policies:
Course Evaluation
Grading will be based on the University System. The final grade will be determined on
the following basis:
teaching assistantsnon-teaching assistants
Class Participation
20%
30%
Syllabus Writing Assignments 30%
70%
Teaching
50%
Grades
94-100= A 87-89= B+ 80-83= B- 74-76= C 67-69= D+ 60-63= D90-93= A- 84-86= B 77-79= C+ 70-73= C- 64-66= D 0-59= F
Class Standards
Attendance and class participation are required at all class meetings (see Course
Schedule). Four (4) unexcused absences automatically result in a failing grade for
the course. An acceptable excused absence is defined by the student having missed
class due to extraordinary circumstances beyond his or her control and must be
accompanied by written proof.
Student Rights and Responsibilities
It is the student’s responsibility to obtain, become familiar with, and abide by
all Departmental, College and University requirements and regulations. These
include but are not limited to:
- The Florida International University Catalog Division of Student Affairs
Handbook of Rights and Responsibilities
- Departmental Curriculum and Program Sheets
- Departmental Policies and Regulations
Student Work
The School of Architecture reserves the right to retain any and all student work for
the purpose of record, exhibition and instruction. All students are encouraged to
photograph and/or copy all work for personal records prior to submittal to
instructor.