Story Pass 4

Story Pass 4

Online Assignment 6

Online Assignment 6  Review of “The Journey to Red Water”

Story Pass Three

Story Pass Three

Another Sunday

 Cats by the pool

Online Assignment 4

Road Trip to New York City 

See what happens when 5 friends do a road trip to New York City and love smacks a reluctant 30 year old right between the eyes. 

Transmedia story Pass 2

 ”Take out your pencils and scantrons.”

If there is a dreaded sentence in any student’s vernacular this one should be in the top five. Another would be the phrase Pop Quiz.  If this brought back memories of feelings of anxiety for you, you can relate to your students fear when you utter these words. But how effective is the pop quiz? Are we giving our students a lesson in multiple choice test taking and fear? Is that our goal? Is the only way to assess learning through testing? Is this the only way to get feedback on the effectiveness of our teaching? Does traditional test taking give us the feedback that we need to help our students learn?

There are other ways to assess students, gain insight into our teaching, and it doesn’t have to involve that four letter word-test. Alternative assessment strategies are not a new idea but it is one that you may not be familiar. The aim of this article is to provide you, the faculty, with ideas on how to implement assessment strategies in your courses without a lot of prep time and to illustrate how they can be an effective teaching and learning tool.

What are Alternative Assessment Strategies?

Alternative assessment strategies are formative evaluation methods that serve two purposes. They can help you to assess the degree to which your students understand the course content and they can provide you with information about the effectiveness of your teaching methods.

When alternative assessment strategies are used consistently, they can have the following results:

For faculty

• provide day-to-day feedback
• provide information about what students have learned without a large time investment
• allow you to address students lack of understanding
• help to create good working relationships with students

For students

• help develop learning skills
• increase understanding the content
• shows your interest about their success in your course

The Muddiest Point

The Muddiest Point focuses on course knowledge and skills and takes almost no prep time.

 

1.  Pass out index cards
2. Ask students to write down the topic or idea that they understood the least.  3. Collect the cards as the students exit.
4. Separate the cards into categories.
5. Review the Muddiest Point(s) at the beginning of the next class meeting.

Instructor reactions to activity

I’m a tenured Biology faculty member at Hillsborough Community College’s Ybor City Campus, and I conducted this activity in my Nutrition and Drugs course which meets twice a week for a 3 hour lecture and 2 hour lab. The class session is typically broken into two lecture portions each about 1 hour and 45 minutes long. The remainder of the time is used for a break. This course is designed for the non-science major. These students are those who are typically weaker in science skills then those pursuing a future career in the medical field and I am always looking for ways to meet their needs and make up for the deficit in their prior learning.

I found the implementation of The Muddiest Point easy; however, because it was something new to the students they were confused at first as to what expectations were required. I did modify the procedure somewhat and conducted two sessions of the activity; one at the end of the first portion of the lecture before the break and one after the second portion of the lecture before the lab. In the second application of the activity I provided the index cards to the students before starting the lecture and asked the students to write down the least clear concept from this portion of the lecture.

In the next class meeting I used the information gleaned from the student feedback to spend some more time on concepts identified as being the muddiest. I also provided students with additional resources for study on the top three muddiest points.

Student reactions to activity

 

Through observation and statements by the class it was clear that the students were somewhat uncomfortable with the activity at first. This reaction was not unexpected as none of the students indicated that they had encountered this type of process previously. More responses were collected in the second attempt than the first. I think if this is something that I had started from the beginning of the semester the students would be more comfortable with the process; it would be part of the normal routine of the class.

In the following class meeting I opened with the results from the activity explaining the top three concepts again and in more detail. The class was observed as being attentive and taking notes regarding the additional resources.

Overall, I found the activity to be very useful in helping me hone in on topics or concepts students were having trouble conceptualizing. I think it also made them think about which concepts they needed help.  I do feel that the students need practice with the activity to become more comfortable with the process.

 

Online Assignment 3

 The Importance of Bruner’s Referentiality

(Or lack of) in the film The Princess Bride

“Scaling the Cliffs of Insanity, Battling Rodents of Unusual Size, Facing torture in the Pit of Despair.
- True love has never been a snap” (Wiki Quote, 2007)

Film Summary

The Princess Bride (1987) is based on the book by the same name published in 1973 and authored by Simon Morgenstern, a pseudonym for William Goldman.

The film is framed around an ill grandson whose grandfather comes to visit intent on cheering the grandson by bringing a special book. The story, a fairy tale, contains fencing, revenge, redemption, true love, pirates, giants, torture, miracles, captures, and escapes. The grandson reluctantly agrees to listen to the reading of the story.

In the fictitious country of Florin, farm-boy Westley and Buttercup fall in love but as he is poor, he sets off to earn his fortune so that they may marry. It is soon reported to Buttercup that The Dread Pirate Roberts attacked Westley’s ship, and Westley has been murdered. Fast-forward five years and Crown Prince Humperdinck decides to marry Buttercup. She has but no choice to marry the cowardly prince as the law gives him the right to choose his bride without objection. 

Just a few days before the nuptials, the future Princess is kidnapped by three former circus performers; Vizzini the self noted ‘brains’ of the operation, a man of small stature with an even shorter temper from Sicily, gentle giant Fezzik, and an alcoholic former master sword fighter from Spain, Inigo Montoya. Inigo is determined to avenge his father, who was murdered by The Six Fingered Man when Inigo was a boy. It is Vizzini’s plan to murder the Princess and leave her body in the neighboring country, Gilder, in order to start a war between the two countries, Gilder and Florin. Inigo and Fezzik are reluctant participants in his scheme.

The kidnappers make off with Buttercup but are followed by The Man in Black (MIB). The MIB catches up, knocks the Inigo unconscious in a duel, beats Fezzik in hand to hand combat, wins a battle of wits against Vizzini and kidnaps Buttercup himself. By this time, Prince Humperdinck and his evil partner-in-crime, Count Rugen, are tailing them hoping to rescue the princess.

Buttercup soon learns that The MIB is really The Dread Pirate Roberts inhabited by her true love Westley. The reunited pair escapes into the fire swamp and is faced with three previously un-survivable terrors: The Flame Spurt, Lightening Sand and R.O.U.Ses (Rodents Of Unusual Size, which are the size of a very large dog). Amazingly, but not without encountering peril, they survive to be captured on the other side of the swamp by Humperdinck and his men. Buttercup negotiates the safe return of Westley to his ship by agreeing to return to Florin and marry the prince. The Prince instructs Count Rugen to take Westley and throw him into the Pit of Despair where Westley is tortured until he is mostly dead.
Inigo and Fezzik have reunited and Fezzik tells Inigo of The Six-Fingered Man, Count Rugen. Inigo decides they need The Man in Black to help plan his revenge. The two companions rescue Westley from The Pit of Despair. Because of Westley’s mostly dead state they seek a miracle. They seek out Miracle Max, who retired after being fired by Prince Humperdinck, on hearing that Westley is Buttercup’s true love, makes a chocolate-coated miracle pill to bring him back to life. 

The revived, but still weakened, Westley comes up with a plan and the three of them storm the castle. Inigo finds and kills The Six Fingered Man, Buttercup ties the Prince to a chair, Fezzik finds four white horses for their escape and they all ride off, happily ever after.

Definition of Bruner’s Narrative Feature: Referentiality

Bruner writes that “Narrative ‘truth’ is judged by its verisimilitude rather then it’s verifiability” (Bruner, 1991). He speaks here of providing the correct balance of ‘truth’ in a work of fiction so that an audience will identify with the story and characters.

Analysis

The Princess Bride is a film that is dependant on the audience knowing the rules of a fairy tale so that Goldman and the director, Rob Riener, can use them to parody the fanciful nature of this type of narrative all the while getting the audience to applaud the ending.

We look at the common elements of a fairy tale which include:

• A good character
  • Westley, Fezzik, Inigo
• An evil character
  • Prince Humperdinck, Count Rugen, Vizzini
• Royalty and/or a castle
  • Prince Humperdinck lives in a castle
• Magic is an integral part of the plot

• Magic Max and the miracle chocolate covered pill that brings Westley back from being mostly dead thus allowing the storming of the castle.

Problem and solution

• Initially the audience is lured into believing that the problem is the kidnapping and potential marriage of Buttercup to Prince Humperdinck, but actually the problem resides within Buttercup and the audience. The problem is to first convince the Princess of true love, and for the audience to believe in it as well.

Things often happen in threes

• Three heroes
• Three villains
• Three perils in the Fire Swamp
• Three identities of Westley: Farm-boy, The Man in Black, The Dread Pirate Roberts

By using the common, or referential elements, of the fairy tale narrative, albeit in a humorous, over-the-top way, the films creators develop a world and characters that audiences expect to encounter. The parody of the fairy tale narrative lends to suspend the audiences cynical nature, which leads to the moral of the story: True Love conquers all. Even being mostly dead.

References

The Princess Bride (film) Retrieved on June 9, 2007 from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_%28film%29#Taglines

Bruner, J. Autumn 1991; The Narrative Construction of Reality; Critical Inquiry Vol 18; The University of Chicago; Chicago, IL