{"id":18022,"date":"2014-02-05t11:20:30","date_gmt":"2014-02-05t16:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=18022"},"modified":"2015-06-03t12:52:01","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03t17:52:01","slug":"learn-to-produce-or-produce-to-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2014\/02\/learn-to-produce-or-produce-to-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"learn to produce or produce to learn?"},"content":{"rendered":"

vanderbilt faculty members have found a variety of ways to engage students as producers in their classes and guided students to produce work for authentic audiences. the cft celebrated its 16th annual graduate student teaching event for professional development (gradstep) by focusing on our theme for this year,\u00a0\u201cstudents as producers.” the day started with a <\/span>plenary on “<\/span>students as producers: developing dynamic learning in a virtual and real-world setting” <\/span><\/strong>by <\/span>dr. cynthia cyrus(musicology) and dr. joe bandy (sociology) and their students <\/span>where we were introduced to two excellent but different approaches <\/span>on how to<\/span> engage students to produce “real and lasting public goods”. <\/span> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"dr. cynthia cyrus <\/span><\/strong>from blair school of music along with her student <\/span>arlyn goodrich<\/span><\/strong> gave an engaging and nuanced talk on creating a wikipedia article<\/a> for a major class assignment for the seminar course on brahms. the project acquainted students with the quirks of wikipedia citation practice and the need for imbedded navigational links. apart from being a new way to engage students, the fact that the wikipedia article would be read by “real” people incentivized students to do a thorough study of brahms by taking a deep look into the life and musical repertoire of a particular composer, while at the same time learning how research is actually done. students were willing to put in more effort and work in teams since this article was “something that (was) theirs.” <\/span><\/p>\n

to design a course which involves students to create a wikipedia page takes preparation. in fact the task starts long before the actual work of creating the page. dr. cyrus prepared students on creating bibliographies and hypertextuality.\u00a0 the basic background work on how to analyze music equipped the class with the tools to do the necessary research for the article. class time was also used to help students to organize the outline of the article. after the initial groundwork, teams were created to work on the different components of the article. although team work is essential for such project, dr. cyrus allowed students to work independently but the final content decision was made by the group. the public facing nature of such assignments actually motivates students to care about the minor details – proofreading and editing – that a regular assignment often do not.<\/p>\n

dr. cyrus\u2019 was pleased with the outcomes from the project:<\/h3>\n