{"id":20769,"date":"2018-04-09T07:49:09","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T11:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=20769"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:09:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:09:08","slug":"expanding-understanding-of-the-middle-ages-through-a-multimedia-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2018\/expanding-understanding-of-the-middle-ages-through-a-multimedia-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Expanding understanding of the Middle Ages through a multimedia platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emily Cook, TLS staff writer<\/em><\/p>\n

In a course on Medieval history, cuPortfolio is helping students use multimedia to understand how pop culture sees the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

Second year students in Professor Marc Saurette\u2019s class, Discovering the Medieval and Early Modern Past<\/em>, explore pop culture conceptions of the Middle Ages. Saurette says the multimedia nature of cuPortfolio encourages students to use less conventional research and analysis methods.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur approach to these discourses of the Middle Ages is not limited to text, as historians tend to usually focus on, but rather to engage with music, YouTube videos, webpages, as well as art work and architectural schematics,\u201d Saurette says.<\/p>\n

Saurette uses cuPortfolio for two types of assignments in the course \u2013 analytical writing and critical reflection. He says the first asks students to evaluate an artefact from pop culture that depicts Medieval past. The second assignment is a reflection on pre-conceptions about the Middle Ages, and how these change during the course.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese two different kinds of assignments overlapped very well and made [students] more aware of the process by which they were learning,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Throughout these two assignments, Saurette says students are assigned to give feedback to peers and rewrite assignments accordingly. They are then asked to write a critical reflection on this process. He says this experience, combined with their multimedia sources, has helped students work in ways they typically wouldn\u2019t in other history courses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt end of term, it was that experience that students were quite consciously aware of as being something different, something harder than they would have wanted to do, but also the most rewarding,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Saurette says the greatest struggle for him has been assessing creativity. As a solution, he says he\u2019s created multiple, small assignments and used small group tutorials to get a greater sense of students\u2019 knowledge and abilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cAssessment is both difficult, but also rewarding, because you\u2019re seeing students being engaged and working in different ways,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Saurette\u2019s advice to other instructors interested in incorporating cuPortfolio into their courses is not to teach the course in the same way it\u2019s always been taught. He says integrating cuPortfolio into his course pushed him to redesign assignments that ask students to be more self-aware and to engage in critical self-reflection and critical reflection on their peers.<\/p>\n

Since the introduction of the new cuPortfolio assignments in his course, Saurette says he is pleased with the high level of student engagement and collegiality.<\/p>\n

The key to these successful results, he says, is that he built cuPortfolio into the course \u2013 giving students grades for their work and assigning peer-review partners so that students could provide feedback on each other\u2019s portfolios. Thoughtful assignment design is critical, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents are willing to give a lot, as long as they know what is being expected of them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

To find out more about Saurette\u2019s experience with cuPortfolio, watch the full interview below. You can also watch interviews with other instructors on the\u00a0cuPortfolio instructor peer support site<\/a>.<\/p>\n