For all of my place-based projects, I am keen to maintain my contacts at the New York Historical Society, The Schubert Organization, and the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center and Map Division, as well as with the theater managers from Signature Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and the Public Theater. It is difficult to express in words the profound impact visits to these places have had on students in my courses. The experiential engagement with place deepens their understanding of the subject matter. The site visits also expand the cultural landscape of the students’ lives where they can envision new potentialities.
In the Spring of 2023, I redesigned the interdisciplinary History of the Theatre (THE2280ID) as a Hybrid course (in-person/asynchronous online). I had been teaching two sections of this course every semester for five years fully in-person, after developing the ID structure with Architecture Technology professors Ting Chin and Anne Leonhardt. In Spring 2023, I scheduled the in-person sessions for field trips to museums and theaters and the asynchronous remote sections were structures for students to view pre-recorded lectures, watch educational videos, conduct readings, and work independently and in groups responding to reading prompts in the form of low-stakes OpenLab writing. The students and I felt that the hyrid structure created confusion in the schedule and interrupted the continuity of peer-peer and instructor-student interaction and learning. This comment from a student in my SETS for that semester are exemplary:
Dr. Swift is a very knowledgeable doctor of the course. He explained the course very well as well as gave a good example library of course material. He could have been a little bit clearer on how to “post” the content, and the website could have been a little bit more organized. However, the course was very well planned and executed. Although I do wish, there were more in person interactions and explaining instead of videos.
The hybrid experiment was only partially successful, and I will return to fully in-person teaching going forward.
Based on feedback I have received from student evaluations in the Script Analysis course I will continue to work on better articulating grading criteria for students. Evaluating and grading writing is an especially complex task, since the skills and techniques involved in academic and creative writing are manifold. I have devised clear, concise grading rubrics that clarify the structures of the assignments themselves, helping me construct more focused and goal-oriented writing assignments for each stage of the process. I will continue to seek out ways of providing rewarding goals for students to pursue in their writing.
Finally, my recent experiences engaging with social and environmental justice issues in Learning Places inspires me to continue to find ways for students to connect learning outcomes with living outcomes. One of the best ways to become a lifelong learner is to do ethical, mindful, and responsible research and work in the community as part of undergraduate studies. I want to give my students the sense of hopefulness that comes with creating opportunity and effecting change.
