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Background of this Project As the pre-law coordinator for the Department of Philosophy, Pre-Law and Peace Studies in the Division of Humanities and Communication, I regularly offer law related courses throughout the curriculum. As an integrated humanities program, the Human Communication major requires students to achieve numerous learning outcomes for the major as well as declare an area of concentration. As such, there are many students who take "Free Speech and Responsibility" for numerous reasons, including the major learning outcome "Relational Communication," and concentrations in Pre-Law, Practical and Professional Ethics, as well as Journalism. Considering that most of the students in the course will never seek advanced degrees in law, I wondered what process students went through to make meaning of a rather technical subject like free speech and what those processes could teach us about how students make meaning collaboratively in seminars. Moreover, my interest in this project connects with my deep committment to fostering civic engagement among college students; I wanted to test my assumption that students who can grapple with legal issues gain valuable skills necessary for becoming more engaged members of their communities. This project represents my first attempt to make sense of how undergraduate students make meaning about law. In the process, I hope to understand better ways for faculty to facilitate student learning about often complex subject matter.
Division of Humanities and Communication, California State University Monterey Bay
This is the website for the Division of Humanities and Communication.
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Sample Student Reflection Paper April 26, 2004 "For example, one member [of the seminar] posted after a class session regarding secrecy in the government. She wrote, 'After our seminar today, along with the readings for today, many questions have been raised in my mind. Who can we trust? Do we really need to know everything? How much is too much?' Although she doesn't necessarily know the answers to the questions, that's not really what's important. The seminar discussion helped her to be aware of the complexity of the many issues that she may not have been aware of before, which I believe, is an important step in beginning to develop a deeper understanding of free speech issues involved." (Michelle B)
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Evidence Collected Demographic data Student writing - Threshold Essay: students defined "free speech and responsibility" in their own words at beginning of the semester
- Jury Deliberation Essay: letter written to peers on a jury deliberating the case of Scopes v. Tennessee.
- Blog Essay: reflecting about how students used thir weblogs to prepare for seminar.
Assessments - Individual and seminar assessments
Observations of seminar discussion - Maps of discussion, notes about content and process of discussion compiled by two research assistants.
Individual interviews recorded and completed by research assistants
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Student Reflection Blog Essay April 26, 2004 Reacting to a perceived negative comment on the blog... "This comment made me realize that what I wrote in the blog was being scrutinized by other students. Luckily for me one of the members of our seminar commented to support my views, and so did I. After that posting, our blog seemed to change quite a bit; most of the comments posted were in agreement to the posts rather than to debate them. Self-censoring became the norm in our blog" (Chad D)
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Select Bibliography - Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog (Perseus Publishing, 2002)
- Kathy Charmaz, "Grounded Theory: Objectivist and Constructivist Models", in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2d ed. (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2000), eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln
- Sara Kajder and Glen Bull, "Scaffolding for Struggling Students: Reading and Writing With Weblogs" Learning and Leading With Technology 31(2) (October 2003): 32-35
- Martha Nussbaum, "Cultivating Humanity in Legal Education" 70 U. Chi L. Rev 265 (2003)
- Todd Taylor, "Legal Literacy and the Undergraduate Curriculum", Journal of Business and Communication 10(2) (April 1996): 239-250
- James Boyd White, "Meaningin the Humanities and the Law,"in From Expectation to Experience: Essays on Law and Legal Education (University of Michigan Press, 1999): 89-110
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Sample of a Student Blog February 11, 2004 "After class on Monday I started to think about if this country was really founded on the principal of free speech. In my last blog I wrote that I though this country was founded on a principal being that we all have the right to voice our opinions. But this was never really true. It was through the hard work and the determination of many people that the idea of freedom of speech became possible. In [Frederick] Douglas' writing he writes about how the freedom of speech was being restricted because people began to realize just how powerful and meaningful it can be, no matter what class you live in or what race you are. If you have the ability to voice your opinion and get enough people to believe in your cause then your speech becomes the most powerful weapon you could ever have." (Chris A)
Educational Bloggers Network
For educators using weblogs for teaching and learning.
Edweblogs.org
"Edweblogs.org is a project of Clarity Innovations, Inc., a consortium of educators, technologists, developers, and content and policy experts who work to effectively integrate technology into education. Our purpose is to clarify how technology can be applied to information management, professional development, classroom instruction, and organizational support."
Writing Across the Arts
A great example of a way to incorporate blogs into course design from Barbara Ganley
at Middlebury College.
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Tentative Results Seminars: - The degree of students' prior experience and knowledge with legal issues, interpersonal communication dynamics within the group, and vocal student leadership led to different kinds of understandings of free speech in each seminar.
- Without faculty facilitation of the seminars, students deep understanding about free speech was limited. Periodic power-point presentations, an applied research project completed by each seminar, and large class wrap up discussions at the end of each class, produced more complex understandings of free speech.
- Nevertheless, seminars were critical spaces for students to propose unformed ideas, ask questions, and generate meaning collaboratively about complex and technical course content.
Weblogs (Blogs): - Students used blogs to record reading notes, pose questions, and organize their ideas before and after seminar discussion, though student engagement with blogs changed during the semester. Each seminar's blog served different needs, highlighting how blogs complimented face-to-face discussions.
- While most students found blogs very useful as an organizing tool, a few students found blogging in preparation for class repetitive while others reported feeling alienated in comparison to face-to-face discussions. Quieter students frequently blogged more.
- However, several students liked how blogs created a public record of their learning process.
- Blogswere a safe space to pose questions for seminar. Questions posted on blogs frequently sparked further face-to-face discussion.
Making Meaning About Free Speech - Students made more sense of complex legal issues when they could envision those issues in a concrete case, story or hypothetical.
- Students prior knowledge about free speech was limited, and students reported enormous surprise that the meaning of free speech had changed in U.S. history; some students even expressed shock, surprise and anger at gaps in their learning. Other students, whose prior knowledge about free speech was more significant, expressed less surprise, but provided more textured analysis by the end of the semester.
- Student work suggests that examples of restrictions on speech (such as censorship, structural inequality in access to the means for speech/expression, and personal experience with feeling censored) provided a useful way for them to consider what free in free speech might mean. Students could understand free speech better when they considered examples of unfree speech.
- Students drew most of their early examples illustrating free speech from popular culture and/or personal experience, shying away from examples drawn from course materials. In their Threshold Essays, many students used the dictionary or personal impressions to define free speech at the beginning of the course. By mid-term, most students reported a more expansive definition of free speech after they had consider the complex history of free speech law. By the end of the semester, students became more comfortable drawing on abstract arguments about law or rights, actual cases, or the first amendment itself to bolster their analysis, even if such uses were limited and not entirely formed. As students became more familiar with legal discourse, they spoke more freely about law.
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