2005-06 Course Development Fellowship Recipient Sheila Crane

Project Title

Collaborative Learning Strategies for Mediterranean Cities

Nature of the Request

Four years ago I developed Mediterranean Cities as an upper-level course in the HAVC Department. The aim of the course is to introduce students to critical debates surrounding the changing architectural forms and urban experiences of Barcelona, Casablanca, Marseille, Algiers, Genoa, Istanbul, and Beirut from the nineteenth century to the present.

Due to the breadth of material, the unfamiliarity of the sites discussed, and the difficult questions that are raised regarding cultural differences and historical relationships between Islamic and non-Islamic worlds, this course presents unique pedagogical challenges. A Course Development Fellowship would allow me to thoroughly rework the course in response to these concerns. By integrating collaborative learning techniques, revising writing assignments to balance small group and independent work, and developing enhanced multimedia resources, I aim to improve student comprehension of course material, to foster skills of visual and spatial analysis, to significantly increase development of critical thinking and writing abilities, and to encourage informed understanding of how built forms are shaped by historical and cultural dynamics.

Background and Rationale

Because this course represents a new area in the HAVC Department's curriculum, I have already devoted substantial efforts to assembling necessary visual materials (slides, digital images, links to relevant web sites, films, and videos) in order to introduce students to the distant places, cultures, and architectures that form the subject of the course. Because our topic is not a series of discrete objects (such as paintings, sculptures, or isolated works of architecture) but complex urban environments, this course presents unusual difficulties far beyond those that accompany the design of any new course dealing with visual culture. The visual materials I have assembled were successful in introducing students to isolated architectural projects and representations of individual cities, as well as in developing their skills of visual and architectural analysis.  However, even though the course provided introductory overviews of the historical development and urban form of each city, students found it difficult to develop sufficiently in-depth understandings of all seven cities we examined. As a result, students still tended to approach and engage the work of architects and key building projects we studied as isolated, abstracted elements dislocated from the complex landscapes out of which they emerged.

I propose to implement a series of related instructional innovations to redress these concerns:

1. Revise course content to foreground collaborative and active learning activities

Working in small groups, students will develop collaborative presentations introducing their peers to the broad historical developments and changing urban landscapes in one of the seven cities discussed in the course. Active learning activities will also be incorporated throughout.

2. Integrate a series of related research-based writing assignments into the new course framework

Collaborative study of specific urban environments will be balanced by individual research projects that will grow out of the initial, group study of a specific city. Although students will write their own final papers, I will develop activities to encourage peer-review of their research and writing assignments throughout the course using the resources of the CTE.

3. Develop new multimedia materials bringing complex urban environments to life

In consultation with the Faculty Instructional Technology Center and Instructional Computing, I will develop enhanced visual materials for the course that may be used inside and outside the classroom. In addition to utilizing interactive aspects of WebCT to facilitate small group and class-wide discussions outside of class, I plan to design a web site that will expand as the course progresses to incorporate materials collected by students and used in their presentations.

Impact on Teaching and Learning:

More than ever, this course is essential to the HAVC Department's curriculum as it provides students an informed means of critically engaging complex topographies and politically charged issues at the forefront of current debates. The instructional improvements I propose would greatly enhance student understanding of the broader cultural, political, and social contexts in which buildings and cities evolved by implementing a more effective balance between architectural analysis of specific buildings and in-depth historical understanding. Importantly, by encouraging students to become "experts" in one city, they will be able to more easily participate in discussion of other, less familiar cities as they will always have a well-known site on which to draw for comparison.  In this way, the course redesign will foreground materials produced by students in dialogue with each other and create a more interactive learning environment.

Having an instructional course relief will give me the opportunity to not only take advantage of new technologies, but, more importantly, it will help me to activate student ownership of the learning process through concrete pedagogical innovations. I fully anticipate that the result of this instructional release will not simply be limited to Mediterranean Cities but will help me to reconceptualize my pedagogical enterprise more broadly speaking and thus have an immediate impact on the over 300 students I teach in a typical year.

Project Assessment