FYI Seminars
Overview of Workshop
 Segment 1: Choosing a Topic/Organizing the Course
 Segment 2: Seminar Format/Readings
 LUNCH
 Segment 3: Service Learning/Civic Engagement
 Segment 4: Writing Assignments & Assessments
 Review of the Day
Choosing a Topic/Organizing the Course
FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Step 1: Questions and Controversies
What are the major questions and controversies in your discipline/topic?
Question/Controversy 1
Question/Controversy 2
Question/Controversy 3
Question/Controversy 4
FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Step 2: History of Questions/Controversies
What is the history of those questions and controversies?
1. Origins of Controversy
3. Important Contributors
2. Paradigm Shifts
4. Current Status
FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Step 3: “Big Questions”
Who cares? Why are these questions/controversies important and worth study?
1. What first interested
you in your own studies?
3. Philosophical/ethical
implications?
2. Broader implications
for knowledge of world?
4. Contribution to
human/social progress?
Relevance to students?
 Beloit Mindset List
(http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/)
 Richard Light, Making the Most of College:
 Students value classes that make them “a
slightly different person” (p. 47)
 Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out
Popular Seminar Topics at TCNJ
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This is Your Life on Music
Mortality, Mind, and the Meaning of Life
Popular Culture, Power, and Identity
Advertising & Society: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly
Multicultural New York
Friends Forever: Examining Online Socializing
Making Sense of Life, For Life
The Beatles and Their World
The Cultural Phenomenon of Harry Potter
Being Me, Knowing You: The Foundations for Human
Encounter
Unpopular Seminar Topics at TCNJ
Protecting New Jersey's Pinelands
Africa and the West: From Monologue to Dialogue
Our Town and Other Works by Thornton Wilder
The Geology and Tectonics of Africa
Strong Democracy and Student Leadership
The Worlds of Moby-Dick
Harlem Renaissance: Black Paris
The Evolution of African American Gospel Music
Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in the Anglophone
Caribbean
10. Concert Dance of the 20th Century in America
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FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Step 4: Relevance to Students
How might my seminar’s questions/controversies intersect students’ lives?
1. Fun facts to know & tell
3. Personal stories
2. Topical relevance to
pop culture
4. The unexpected and
mysterious
Putting Everything Together
 Which items or boxes from Steps 1-4 seem to go
together?
 Try to link up at least one item or box from each
sheet (especially Steps 2-4) into one “unit” for a
prospective FYI Seminar.
 Try to come up with at least three or four “units” in
this way.
 How might these “units” accomplish the course
objectives of the FYI Seminars?
FYI Seminar Course Objectives
 Investigate a specific topic or question in-depth.
 Consider the connections within and between various fields of
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study.
Discuss and explore how diverse viewpoints can aid and enhance
research and understanding.
Recognize the need to explore underlying assumptions in both
people and text.
Demonstrate strengthened inquiry, research and information
literacy skills.
Reflect upon the importance of civic responsibility.
Discuss and practice integrity within personal and educational
contexts.
Develop skills in oral discussion and written communication.
Learn to utilize University resources.
Seminar Format/Readings
Seminar Format: What We Just Did
 Small, well-defined tasks that built toward a specific,
planned outcome, relevant to the participants’ needs
and interests.
 Small, in-class writing exercises to prime participants
for discussion.
 Paired discussion and group work.
 Reporting out.
 Large-group fact-gathering, brainstorming, and
discussion.
 Even a little lecturing.
Seminar Format: Questions to Consider
 In a free-wheeling discussion, how will students know
what to write down in their notes?
 Which is better – debate or consensus-building?
 How can I tell if class is going well (or badly)?
 What happens when the discussion gets sidetracked?
 Should I call on people or only on volunteers (and
what if the same two people are always the only
volunteers)?
 Should I grade participation?
 What are reasonable expectations for how much one
class meeting can cover?
Seminar Format: Goals to Strive For
 Lecture less.
 Teach students to think like a . . . (sociologist,
physicist, artist, journalist, teacher).
 Encourage students to take responsibility for their own
education and to take an active part in it.
 Help students to retain what they learn in class.
 Allow students to experiment with ideas and deepen
their understanding of material.
 Give students the opportunity to learn by teaching
their peers.
FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Step 5: Readings
What should the students read?
1. Texts that provide
essential background
3. Provocative, troubling,
polemical, cutting-edge texts
2. Milestones in history of
questions/controversies
4. Texts with which I
vehemently disagree
Reasonable Expectations:
Student Responsibility for Reading
 Expect and encourage maturity/commitment….
 But remember what high school is like (meeting every
day, busy work, etc.) and help students to be
responsible without your looking like a police officer.
 Easy, low-stress, not-gotcha quizzes
 Response papers (short, informal responses to readings
submitted at the beginning of class – once a week, on
assigned days, or student’s choice)
 Collected in-class writing
 Opening or closing statements (one-minute précis of
thoughts about the reading from each student, going
around the room at the beginning or end of class)
Reasonable Expectations
for Student Reading
 Quantity of reading to be assigned
 For each text, time yourself and multiply by two to get
student reading speed for that text.
 Expect students to work two hours outside of class for
every hour in.
 Quality of reading on students’ parts
 Be happy about whatever level of comprehension the
students achieve.
 Model good reading strategies in class for each type of
reading before expecting students to read those types
with sophistication.
FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Step 6: Teaching Reading Strategies
How do you read? Where do you start? How do you proceed?
1. Texts that provide
essential background
3. Provocative, troubling,
polemical, cutting-edge texts
2. Milestones in history of
questions/controversies
4. Texts with which I
vehemently disagree
Writing Assignments & Assessments
Writing Assignment Gimmicks
 Writing for audiences other than the professor
 Make-believe audiences (e.g., composing a position
paper for the Obama transition team)
 “Real” audiences (e.g., drawing up a feasibility study for
an ice cream shop on campus to be submitted for real to
the College President’s office)
 Internet audiences (e.g., keeping a blog, open to anyone
and everyone on the web)
 Peer audiences (e.g., submitting papers not only to
professor but to classmates OR “publishing” papers in a
collection of class essays)
A Good Writing Assignment...
 Gives a brief and clear description of exactly what
students are supposed to do and how their work will
be evaluated.
 Asks students to do something very specific while also
allowing them to follow their own interests and ideas.
 Builds on what students have been doing in class but
goes further in some way.
 Provides ample opportunity for students to practice
and show off specific skills and concepts that they have
learned.
 Promises to be interesting for the professor to read.
 Doesn’t stand alone as the only communication about
the paper.
Informal Write-to-Learn Assignments
 In-class writing
 Response papers
 Blogs
 Threaded discussion boards
 Posters
 Search-and-destroy research assignments
Sample Grading Rubric
A = Outstanding
An "A" paper has a strong, clear, interesting, narrow, and specific thesis and an introduction that provides an interesting, helpful preview of the content, logic, and
organization of the paper.
An "A" paper provides relevant, concrete evidence and logically persuasive reasons for every assertion.
An "A" paper has a clear and consistent overall organization that relates all the ideas of the paper together logically in a thoughtful, sophisticated, and memorable
manner with ample transitions to aid the reader.
An "A" paper has unified, coherent, and well-developed paragraphs without exception.
An "A" paper has almost no errors of grammar, punctuation, word choice, or usage. The writer consistently uses sentences that are clear, concise, effective, and
varied in terms of length and structure.
An "A" paper synthesizes the information and arguments from multiple, reliable sources into its own argument, summarizing its sources fairly and assessing them
critically.
B = Good
A "B" paper has a strong, clear, interesting, narrow, and specific thesis, but the introduction is not a wholly adequate preface to the content, logic, and
organization of the paper.
A "B" paper provides relevant, concrete evidence and logically persuasive reasons for most assertions.
A "B" paper has a clear and consistent overall organization that relates all the ideas of the paper together logically with transitions for the reader at significant
points in the paper.
A "B" paper has unified, coherent, and well-developed paragraphs for the most part.
A "B" paper has some errors of grammar, punctuation, word choice, or usage. The writing is always clear, although it is not always concise, effective, and varied.
A "B" paper uses multiple, reliable sources, but uses them merely to provide specific evidence for its own argument.
C = Adequate
A "C" paper has a clear thesis, but the thesis is vague, broad, uninteresting, or not wholly relevant to the assignment.
A "C" paper provides evidence and reasons for most assertions, but the evidence and reasons are frequently not the most relevant or the most logically persuasive
or the most thoroughly developed.
A "C" paper has a clear and consistent overall organization, but the organizational principle is vague, uninteresting, or inadequate. Transitions tend to be weak,
uninspired, or vague.
A "C" paper has significant problems with the unity, coherence, or development of some of its paragraphs.
A "C" paper has a number of errors of grammar, punctuation, word choice, and usage, but the writing remains comprehensible at all times. The sentences are
sometimes short and choppy or long and wordy.
A "C" paper uses evidence from a source of questionable reliability uncritically or relies too heavily on a single source at key moments in its argument.
D = Deficient
A "D" paper has a thesis, but the thesis is unclear and vague.
A "D" paper rarely provides real evidence or real reasons for its assertions. The paper is made up mostly of unsubstantiated opinion.
A "D" paper does not have one clear organizational principle or does not follow through on its initial organizational principle consistently.
A "D" paper has frequent problems with the unity, coherence, or development of its paragraphs.
A "D" paper has many errors of grammar, punctuation, word choice, and usage, and the writing is sometimes incomprehensible with little variation in terms of
sentence length and structure.
A "D" paper relies heavily on unreliable sources or seriously misrepresents its sources.
FYI Seminar Planning Worksheet
Final Step of the Day: Criteria for Evaluating Writing
What matters most in student writing? What makes good and bad writing?
1.
2.
“A” writing:
“A” writing:
“B” writing:
“B” writing:
“C” writing:
“C” writing:
“D” writing:
“D” writing:
3.
4.
“A” writing:
“A” writing:
“B” writing:
“B” writing:
“C” writing:
“C” writing:
“D” writing:
“D” writing:
What obstacles or questions remain?
Resources
 Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004), ISBN 0674013255
 Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 2007), ISBN 0226110660
 James M. Lang, On Course (Cambridge: Harvard UP,
2008), ISBN 0674028067
 Richard J. Light, Making the Most of College
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004), ISBN 067401359X