Reacting to the Past

In traditional courses, students learn by receiving ideas and information from teachers and teachers, or discuss these materials at seminars. In the "Respond to the past" course, we take a different approach to teach. Students can learn by playing the role of classical text in well-designed games, learn skills, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, teamwork and win in difficult and complicated circumstances .

(RTTP) consists of sophisticated games set in the past where students are assigned classical text roles in the history of thinking. All classes are conducted by the students, teachers give advice and guidance to the students, and evaluate oral and written tasks. It is aimed at attracting students to the past, promoting contact with important ideas, and improving their knowledge and academic ability. Unlike characters in drama, reaction characters do not have fixed scripts or results so students will be forced to follow the philosophy and intellectual beliefs of the historical character they are given to the game, but they I have to design their own means. Represent these ideas persuasively in paper, speech, or other public presentations; students must also take action plans that they believe will help them win the game.

Since the start of 2001, the RTTP program has been done by hundreds of university teachers in the United States and abroad, and Mark C. Carnes, pioneered by professor of history at Bernard University in the late 1990s.

RTTP received the 2004 Theodore Hesburgh Teaching Innovation Award. This project was supported by the development of Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Teagle Foundation and the US Department of Education FIPSE. RTTP is also published in magazines such as "Change", "Chronicle", "New York Times", "Chronicle of Higher Education", "Christian Science Monitor" And elsewhere

The settlement settlement class was part of the general education program called "response to the past" I started at Bernard University in 1996. It spreads to dozens of universities and universities (see next article). In "reaction", college students play elaborate games at an important moment in the past. And their characters are offered with great text. They discuss and discuss them by revisiting them to learn important ideas. President Bernard President Judith Shapiro instantly accepted the plan: "Trying out various roles not only teaches students other people but also makes them reflect more deeply.They together with others It is more efficient than being in. "

This section presents a series of data related to the use of reactions of my students to the past and the reactions to them. I will provide student attendance data for the first time. Next, I explained two studies conducted by 61 students on the Winter RTTP course. In this survey we analyzed students' written response assignments and compared them with non-responsive assignments. We also looked up the student's comments on the responses to the two games used in the American History course and the questions on the official EMU course evaluation form.

Attendance and Response Courses In a conference sponsored by reactions to past alliances, the teachers consistently but informally reported that their RTTP course students were absent from more courses than those of the equivalent course. A casual observation of the attendance of my 10 RTTP section shows that attendance is much higher than many beginner level courses. In the response section I spent the semester "student's head" looking for data that I support or support the increase in attendance that increased in the winter of 2008.