The three-hour course "Introduction to Inquiry" (i2i) is another choice for freshmen at PC for the first component of the new General Education requirements. Bob Bryant in the religion department and chemistry professor Wally Ott team-taught "The Universe Through Science and Religion" in the fall of 2003.

They began by having students consider the terms science and religion and then work "to gain an historical perspective of the rise of modern science in the context of Christianity." The course required students to examine models and paradigms relating science and religion in order to understand the central issues in this relationship and its significance for their own lives and our modern culture. Their required texts were Ian Barbour's Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (1997) and The New York Times.

Bryant and Ott made writing an integral part of their course, and Bryant thinks they may have required more writing than any other i2i course, considering the small group writing project and three papers (four to six pages) each student submitted. Bryant said the two "decided from their earliest meeting to give writing assignments in order to help the students integrate the material with their own critical reflections about it."

Small groups took turns generating summary notes of the readings, which they posted on Blackboard. Bryant thought that the summaries were "quite good," showing "a tremendous amount of work and ability." He and Ott were "mighty proud of what [their] students accomplished."

For the first paper, students compared and contrasted two articles (with some choice of which ones). The second paper asked students to critique a single article of their choice from several options. The final paper asked them to respond to a case study on medical ethics that philosophy professor Jim Thompson had discussed with the class. The case did not present simple answers of a "good" choice. "Nevertheless," Bryant said, "they were required to make a choice and support it as the better choice among other possibilities." Both teachers and students felt that the final assignment brought the course together.

Bryant and Ott required an early draft due for the first paper about two weeks before the final draft was due. They commented on the drafts, "an especially beneficial method for the first paper for both them and for us,"said Bryant. However, because the commenting involved "quite an effort," they did not require drafts on the last two papers but conferred with students who would most benefit from the one-on-one help. They recommended the Writing Center as well.

The grading of the papers was "quite a chore" for both of them, according to Bryant. Each read every paper and evaluated it on pre-established criteria appropriate for the particular assignment. Then they met to discuss each paper's strengths and weaknesses. "One of the interesting discoveries for us," said Bryant, "was that we were remarkably consistent in our assessments of the best and weakest papers, and the ones in the middle were usually in the same grade area along the spectrum between the extremes."

In the future, Bryant "might try more writing assignments of shorter length and only one lengthy paper of say six to eight pages."

In the fall of 2004 Wayne Smith and Mark Anderson offered the pilot "Dancing with Fire: Studying the Implicit in Computers and Technology." One objective was to allow students not only to learn to use technology but also to reflect on its use. In using word processors, for example, they discussed when a handwritten letter would be a better choice. As well as exposure to technology and the tools of writing and presenting that students will use at PC, the course also discussed the transition into college.

Part of the course writing was taking notes on class activities and what students learned from them. Many e-mailed the notes to themselves, while a handful kept theirs in notebooks. Students could then draw from these notes to write class papers. Daily topics for notes included the college experiences of orientation, advising, and the first round of tests and the advantages and disadvantages of presentation hardware.

Smith and Anderson also required projects. An early one was a handwritten letter to the freshman class of 1924 or a Luddite from the class of 2005 explaining the technology available at PC. Another was a PowerPoint presentation on diversions to study time and practical advice on dealing with them. A required website project outlined the history of a particular technology.

Students wrote three papers for the course, one a revised draft of the first after feedback from Smith and Anderson and one a final paper. Fifty percent of the course grade came from the papers: the first paper counted 12.5%, the revised draft 12.5%, and the final paper 25%.

The second essay asked students "to reflect on their own journey, values, and goals" with next year's freshman class as their audience. The first part of the essay asked them to describe the ideal pursuit of learning in two to five pages: the best way to pursue various subjects and how each subject contributes to a core of knowledge. The second part asked them to describe the reality of being a student at PC, not in a cynical tone, but a realistic one, describing what goes on in the classroom and in professors' teaching. Anderson and Smith gave students a short checklist of items that collectively counted 20% of the essay's grade:

Remember your audience: the best papers aren't written for the professors;
they're written for the intended audience.

Organize your paper with a main point
(thesis statement) and sub-points; use paragraphs to break your paper
into discernable parts that correspond to sub-points.

Cite sources and don't plagiarize.

Avoid spelling and grammar problems.

They also included a rubric for the content of the paper to outline how students could go about writing the paper, such as interviewing professors and using Internet and other sources.

The final paper or project asked students to synthesize what they had learned in the course, bringing together the short projects for the audience of next year's freshman class. Smith and Anderson encouraged students to use any medium they chose. PowerPoint did not allow the expected detail, according to Smith, but those who created a Web site with links to Word documents better demonstrated what they had learned. Smith said that most students did not communicate the depth that he was expecting in this final document. Perhaps they saw the final project as the best of what they had learned and incorporated only a few of their weekly projects, rather than all of them.

The hardest part of the i2i course for Smith was the grading. He and Anderson graded many of the papers alone first without knowing what the other had decided and then averaged the two grades if they differed. This method involved three passes through each paper. The two differed somewhat in how they evaluated the papers. Smith rewarded conciseness, writing that was specific without going into great detail. Anderson valued saying it well, whether or not the result was concise. He looked for good illustrations and flow in the paper. In grading the papers, Smith and Anderson wrote comments about sentence-level issues on the draft itself and e-mailed their comments on the content of the papers to the students.

When he teaches the course again, Smith plans to change his grading. Since the plethora of daily projects involved too much paperwork, he would choose fewer assignments, allowing students to work on the final project from the first day with perhaps three graded milestones.

In preparing the writing assignments for the other fall 2004 i2i course,"In Search of . . . ," Dean Thompson and Roy Campbell brainstormed paper topics together. Then Campbell typed a draft of the assignment sheet, and Thompson "tweaked it" with Campbell adding his suggestions. They assigned two thesis-based papers of four to six pages asking students to synthesize what they had learned from their class texts. They also assigned journal entries every week in response to reading or films.

In the future, Thompson would change a few sentences on one topic sheet that caused students confusion. He also plans to consider taking up journals more often "to ensure that students don't wait until the last minute to do seventeen at one sitting!"

Campbell and Thompson had one-on-one conferences with students on the first paper and then strongly encouraged them to use the Writing Center for the second paper. "Once the papers were in," said Thompson, "one of us would go through the entire set, marking here and commenting there and privately recording preliminary grades." After the other did his own marking and commenting, the two decided on the final paper grades together.

"The astonishing thing was," according to Thompson, "that though Roy's field is history and mine is English, we almost always had recorded the same numerical grade. That discovery was exhilarating, let me tell you: it confirmed that different disciplines agree on what constitutes good writing: clarity, organization, support, mature style, and good grammar! "

Thompson was satisfied with the students' writing: "Of course there always will be students who will procrastinate and turn in substandard work," said Thompson, "but those who spent nearly a week on each paper, writing and tweaking and slashing and shifting and chopping and adding and tweaking some more, more than fulfilled our objectives. More than once, as we were reviewing a good paper, Roy and I found ourselves grinning from ear to ear: good writing is fun to read."
Jill Frey