Poem of the Day Exercise

Each student will be asked to curate a poem of the day for your classmates three times throughout the semester. These curation exercises will give you a chance to engage more deeply with the themes of our course through poets and poems of your own—and your classmates’—choosing [1], and they will also allow you to practice the analytical skills we’ll be developing throughout the term [2]. 

__________
[1] Opening up the course to material outside of what’s been assigned by the instructor
[2] Motivating the academic skills being taught in the course, while pointing to their application beyond it 

Adapted from Gen Ed 1057: Poetry without Borders
Professor Stephanie Sandler

The Weekly Lecture Self-Review has several purposes:

First, it is an exercise to help you process the weekly lectures. Writing is a way of thinking, so after listening to the pre-recorded lecture online, use this exercise to crystallize for yourself the key insights you gained from the information, questions, images, hand-outs, and other elements presented in the lecture [1]. Self-reviews should be concise (250-500 words) and should focus on some aspect of the lecture that you found compelling and/or problematic, or that was confusing to you. Just make what you write as thoughtful as possible, with specific reference to some element of that week’s lecture. Note that your focus should be on the lecture, not on the readings that week or any other part of the course. As such, the purposes of this assignment are to:

• help you process the week’s lectures [2];
• enable the professor and teaching fellow to ascertain what you understood;
• bring to the attention of the professor and teaching fellow any points about which you are confused and need clarification;
• and help the professor and teaching fellow to get to know your interests [3].

Furthermore, these weekly assignments are a feedback mechanism between you and the teaching faculty regarding the content of the lecture [4]. If you finish the lecture confused about some aspect of what was presented, say so! Articulating as precisely as you can what you did not fully understand will both help you as you seek understanding and it will help the teaching staff in responding helpfully to your questions.

Third, the weekly lecture self-review is an attendance mechanism to keep track of how well you are keeping up with the content of the course.

__________
[1] The medium of the assignment—writing—is motivated for students as a means of better engaging with lectures.  
[2] Students are given “something to do” with the lectures, rather than “just listening” to them.
[3] The self-reviews are a chance to build rapport between students and instructors.
[4] The assignments are framed as a chance to maintain a feedback loop with the teaching team: instructors know that students are processing lecture material and know where students need clarification or other support.

Adapted from Gen Ed 1134: Understanding Islam and Contemporary Muslim Societies | Spring 2021
Professor Ali Asani

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: INSTRUCTIONS AND REQUIREMENTS

The final assignment is your opportunity to put what you have learned in the course to use in thinking critically about a global health topic of particular interest to you [1]. You could further explore a topic from the course syllabus, or you could research a topic not covered in this class. The overall goal is to construct your own biosocial analysis of a global health issue using the theoretical tools, historical perspectives, and themes in this course [2].

__________
[1] The trajectory of the course framed as a chance to take a deep dive into a topic that students care about and are prepared to engage with
[2] The overall goal involves synthesizing all of the different methods and content from the course, which makes engagement with every module or disciplinary angle important.

Adapted from Gen Ed 1093: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Cares? Reimagining Global Health | Fall 2020

General Guidance

Please revisit the “Advice on Written Assignments” posted on canvas before writing the paper. Recall that you will write three papers in this course. The assignments get progressively more demanding. In the first paper, the emphasis was on reconstructing arguments, allowing you to develop the skill of logical reconstruction rather than narrative summary of a text. ...The second paper now goes beyond reconstruction [1], putting more emphasis on the critically evaluating arguments. The third paper will give you an opportunity to develop a well-reasoned defense in support of your own view regarding one of the central issues of the class [2].

__________
[1] Papers in the course are clearly scaffolding up: from students being asked to reconstruct others’ arguments toward getting to make arguments on behalf of their own position.
[2] The prompt lays out for students how each paper builds toward the next one, lending purpose to all three papers as well as the order they come in.  

Adapted from Gen Ed 1121: Economic Justice | Spring 2020
Professor Mathias Risse

iMovie Assignments
As an alternative to writing a final research paper, this course offers an iMovie assignment. This assignment is meant to demonstrate scholarly content in visual form, and more broadly, it is designed to encourage the creative translation of that scholarly content into interactive multimedia presentations [1]. Here are three goals of the iMovie assignment:

1. to allow you to think very concisely about a specific Egyptological problem and present it in an engaging way [2];
2. to combine a well-conceived, and well-written “script” with a chance to take advantage of ancient Egypt’s rich visual heritage;
3. to channel your inner Martin Scorsese, learn a new skill, impress your friends and have fun! [3]

You could think of the iMovie assignment as a visual paper topic, one that contains a story-arc relating to a specific Egyptological problem.

__________
[1] Explicit about the goal of translating academic content into a visual medium for a broader audience
[2] Makes it clear how mastery of course materials is a necessary condition for engaging with this genre of assignment
[3] Bakes intrinsic motivations into the goals of the assignment—students are supposed to have fun 

Adapted from Gen Ed 1099: Pyramid Schemes: What Can Ancient Egyptian Civilization Teach Us?
   Professor Peter der Manuelian