Teaching the Modern Presidency
on the Web
Russell D. Renka
Department of Political Science
Southeast Missouri State University
rdrenka@semo.edu
Presentation at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American
Political Science Association, Boston, MA, August 29, 2002, Panel 9-2
(Innovative Approaches to Teaching Political Science I: Foreign Policy and
the Presidency). Copyright © 2002, American Political
Science Association.
My special thanks for their indispensable support and
assistance goes to: Professors Thomas Harte and J. Christopher Schnell,
colleagues and fellow experimenters in teaching the presidency; David Starrett, Marcio Vieira, Eric Domazlicky, Annie
Clementz, Matt Catt, and Larry Law, all from Center for Scholarship in Teaching
and Learning; and Patricia Lipetzky, School of Extended Learning, Southeast
Missouri State University. Their support has been indispensable, and they
made none of the errors reflected in this work.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
°Introduction
°Advance Preparations
°On Line Resources
°The Calendar
°The Bulletin Board
°Essay Tests and Grading
°Trouble Shooting
°Conclusion
Introduction Next down; Return to Top
I am co-creator of an unusual, multidisciplinary course entitled The Modern Presidency with a once-a-year upper division undergraduate subscription of approximately 25 students. I have many years experience teaching American national institutions, specifically the U.S. Congress and the U.S. presidency. For years I taught a conventional presidency course on a solo basis, but in the mid-1980s, Southeast Missouri State University launched a comprehensive University Studies curriculum reform with strong emphasis and latitude for creating novel interdisciplinary courses at an upper division undergraduate level. This course was among the first of those, originated in the late 1980s with two good friends and fellow presidency devotees, one (Thomas Harte) a student of public and leadership rhetoric, the other (J. Christopher Schnell) an historian with emphasis on the second Roosevelt. Its origin and interdisciplinary nature were actively encouraged by the School of University Studies here at Southeast. The course blended our three respective disciplines, all of which pertain very closely to understanding the modern presidency (dating from FDR through the present time).
In Fall 1999 Professor Harte and I authored an entirely on-line version, also entitled "The Modern Presidency." This was among the first entirely on-line classes taught at Online Southeast Missouri State University under the auspices of the School of Extended Learning, with indispensable technical guidance and help from the Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (hereafter called simply CSTL). I now teach the course solo with a blend of in-class time and extremely extensive web-based learning materials. This paper will explicate how the course operates, with specific emphasis on the purely on-line Fall 1999 experience.
The UI320 - The Modern Presidency index page has a succinct introductory course description. We employed a very similar Fall 1999 statement, here recorded: "This course addresses the modern American presidency from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Using chronological coverage of the 11 modern presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to the Clinton presidency, we combine history, political science and speech communication to gain insight into the great power and impact of this institution. In many respects presidential history is modern American history. We cover the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, the postwar American economic boom, the civil rights upheaval and Vietnam in the 1960's, Nixon and Watergate, the dip and restoration of presidential power with Reagan, and the divided government era of the post-Cold War 1990's. The presidency has become a rhetorical office, a major contributor to the brief list of memorable and enduring American speeches. Changes in the rhetorical presidency are quite direct reflections of the communications revolution. The office's political standing is a window to understanding the fundamental character of American public life." (University Studies course)
The interdisciplinary profession of this statement is not window dressing. It closely reflects an unusually long and productive collaboration between two faculty in different disciplines. One of us (Renka) is Professor of Political Science with emphasis on teaching and research in American national institutions, the other (Harte) is Professor of Speech-Communication with emphasis upon the rhetorical practices of political leaders. The modern American presidency is a natural juncture for our shared interests. The School of University Studies; Southeast Missouri State University in the late 1980s strongly encouraged the creation of interdisciplinary upper-division classes. As a result, starting in Spring 1990 "The Modern Presidency" was begun as an authentic three-discipline course shared among the two of us and presidential historian Chris Schnell of the Department of History. That was taught yearly each spring semester until the practical realities of enrollment in a course team-taught by three professors caused a curtailment of the class in Spring 1999. Coincidentally the opportunity arose to create on-line courses from the same interdisciplinary model we had successfully brought about. The result is the Fall 1999 experience we share here.
I believe the special shared experience with both traditional and on-line versions of the course provide insights not otherwise available. I first delineate the advance preparations for this course, including the creation of an extensive body of on-line resources for this course. Then I discuss the weekly calendar as a governing factor for teaching without the benefit of a physical classroom site. I highlight the closest equivalent of a classroom for on-line venues, namely a Bulletin Board. I then address testing and grading, and the ever-present need to trouble shoot (address technical problems encountered by students--and faculty). I conclude by judging what factors are requisite conditions for successful conduct of an on-line course of this nature.
Advance Preparations
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There is bad news and good news about advance preparations
for a first-time web course. The bad news is that advance preparation is
much more extensive than for regular courses. Any illusions to the
contrary were quickly demolished in spring and again in summer of 1999. We
kept no log of hours devoted in comparison to other courses, but there is little
doubt that it is more extensive than we expected.
The good news is that those "sunk costs" have produced
important payoffs during Fall 1999 itself, and ever since. All aspects of
the current course were substantially enhanced by our intensive preparation for
teaching the course on-line. We believed firmly that the American
presidency is a pre-eminently rhetorical or speaking office. Thus,
Professor Harte produced an extensive set of excerpts of the rhetoric of every
modern president from Franklin Roosevelt through Clinton. This resulted in
a library of streaming audio and video productions with more than 20 hours of
speeches from modern presidents. He added a text statement informing
students what they would see and hear for each one. I compiled those onto
a single web page, with links to each president. We recommended that each
student print out the text statement and use it to follow the video while making
margin notes on it. Although numerous other excerpts are now available on
line, these were customized for delivery to students within reasonable time
limits and with text assistance.
I produced a book length manuscript for reading on line (with pass wording, of course, to restrict it to our students). I also expanded greatly upon some existing archival web links on the presidency, resulting now in one of the internet's most comprehensive presidential websites. It is now in public domain under my name at filename: U.S. Presidency Links - Russell D. Renka, and URL: http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/renka/PresidencyLinks.htm. This has been an incalculable endeavor, but I find two major benefits from it. One is that the web's here to stay, so the commitment of scholars to produce high quality materials for it is naturally quite important. The other is that these resources are flexible in use, lending themselves readily to both web-only and web-assisted classroom settings.
Faculty who are accustomed to regular web-assisted
course work can undertake a web-only course. But there is absolutely no substitute at the course
development stage for good
institutional support. The Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning
at our institution provided an array of services at our disposal. We
developed nice web page graphics, composed extensive file materials of
presidential speeches, learned the uses of bulletin boards and on-line testing,
and devised advance solutions to student difficulties with on-line access.
This was not our own doing alone, although each of us expended a great deal of
time in course development on that technical, presentational side of things.
It had to look good and be attractive to have any life after its maiden voyage.
I caution that faculty must expect to design the on-line
curriculum well in advance of teaching the course. That is hardly unusual
for most courses, but naturally most faculty rely on a large body of existing
notes and syllabi to compose upcoming courses. That is true even of a
newly taught course, since its basic design typically resembles those taught
before. The design cost for most courses is strictly on the margin.
The cost for a first-time web course is not
on the margin. We sat down far in advance of the Fall 1999 course to block out a weekly
calendar of events. These advance preparations were greatly helped by our clear picture of what the course should
accomplish. We
started with fundamental agreements that the course should remain truly
interdisciplinary, that there would be little discipline-based separation of
duties between the two principal instructors, and that each of us would carry
whatever load of work was necessary to make the course succeed. Our major effort was
tactical, namely how to accomplish on-line the things we had customarily done
through direct classroom contact. Nonetheless, the presentation of
materials on line is significantly different from presenting the same thing
via web-assisted classroom format. This warrants the singular
caution to plan farther in advance that would otherwise be necessary.
On Line Resources
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A result of our advance investment in UI320 was a very extensive body
of on line resource materials for use by registered students and
instructors. The only formal material not on-line was a single textbook
issued by surface mail from the institution's bookstore. All other
pertinent material was on line. This consists mostly of three very
extensive resources we developed over a considerable time period. One is a
series of edited voice and video materials of each modern president's rhetorical
methods, developed by Harte from an extensive pre-existing library of presidential rhetorical
materials. Another is a set of writings on the modern presidency, developed by Renka in response to the dearth of existing material treating the modern
presidency in a chronological framework.
We restrict those to students taking the course, in consideration of proprietary and copyright matters. Students used passwords to access them during the semester the course was held. This was and is essential to the institution's proprietary interest in maintaining only enrolled students in the course. As site managers we were able to qualify or disqualify students for site access as needed. We did not encounter evidence of trolling or participation by anyone except duly registered students.
Another resource is U.S. Presidency Links - Russell D. Renka.
This work is now approximately five years in development. It started with gradual development of a library of on-line
resources pertinent to the modern presidency, and accelerated with the onset of
Fall 1999. I basically spent all summer on it, and it substituted for
writing a textbook or a similar endeavor The file is organized first around
general presidential topics, and secondly with modern presidents in sequence from Franklin
Roosevelt through George W. Bush. Anyone accustomed to casual inquiry on the
American presidency through standard search engines will recognize that few
comprehensive and academic sites have existed. This one is offered for critical review by
interested scholars and students of the presidency. Although designed in
part for specific application to this interdisciplinary course, it could contribute to any standard American Presidency course taught by political
scientists, historians, or others. These represent a tremendous investment
of annotation, interpretation and updating over several years; and that job is
ultimately better done by a community of scholars than any single
practitioner. But it starts with willingness of on-line faculty to find
and edit the appropriate links.
A third resource is the on-line written material on each
modern president. These are designed for use on-line, with various links
directly to an array of evidentiary or supportive materials. A sampling of
these is now available on line in public domain. One goes first to our
Timeline of Modern Presidents, proceeds by
clicking links on the face portrait of the chosen president, and gains access
from there to specific readings and support materials. For instance, the
John F. Kennedy Assignment
Page has The 1960
Election followed by
The Kennedy Mystique,
both authored by me. Those readings in turn are designed with web support,
including some standard links plus other embedded in text. There is some
advantage to reading them on line since one can immediately traverse to
supportive material. I also devised each Timeline for specific links from
that portion of my Presidency Links devoted to that president. With
Kennedy, for instance, the link goes to
U.S.
Presidency Links - Russell D. Renka at URL:
http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/renka/PresidencyLinks.htm#Kennedy.
Finally, there is an on-going institutional resource
available for the inevitable technical challenges and glitches that confronted
students and teachers. Those problems we could not resolve were forwarded
to the CSTL Help
Desk.
Any institution that seriously offers on line courses or prods faculty to design
and offer these, had better have a competent and consumer oriented server
management and a friendly help site. That site will inevitably do a brisk
business. Although students are gradually becoming more web conversant,
there is unlikely ever to be a time when web using students do not encounter
technical problems calling for a help desk. Consider the need for that at
all major computer sellers!
The Calendar Next
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Since we had no regular class meetings, we organized the
course quite tightly around a weekly calendar. Our most basic unit of
organization on the website was a Presidential Timeline (not available for
public viewing, due to proprietary and copyright considerations). Students
would click on each president to obtain a short calendar of assignments, with
links to those available on line. The fundamental units of analysis were
each of the eleven modern presidents in chronological order, from Roosevelt to
Clinton. A concurrent chronological organization formed the course into
roughly four-week sectors, covering the sixteen weeks of the course. We
grouped Roosevelt 1933-1945 alone as one unit; Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy
(1945-1963) fell into a second one; Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter (1963-1981)
formed a third; and finally the 1981-current experience of Reagan, Bush and
Clinton closed it out. For each unit the students concluded with an essay
response to queries we posted on that unit.
The weekly itinerary had one very novel feature. We treated weeks as seven-day units instead of five. We set deadlines that may fall on a Sunday instead of a Friday. We had regular readings with deadlines, following which time the students had a "window of time" during which to take an on-line test. CSTL developed distinctive software (at CSTL - UTest Online Testing Software) expressly for this purpose. Our purely on-line tests were brief ten-item multiple choice items. Students would code in by name and password, take the test under a time limit, and have the result posted to our record. The essential test objective was to ensure that students had read the pertinent material by a specified deadline. If they had not, then "open book" could not compensate for failing to know the referenced material. There were ten to twelve of these during the semester, each with a specific span of dates allowing students to take the test. I have continued to use those short tests with students who sit in class, as they can partially solve that vexing problem of getting students to actually read the material before they arrive in class!
The Bulletin Board
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No aspect of a strictly web-based course is more important
than use of a common discussion center. We employed CSTL
-Ultimate Bulletin Board Web Conferencing Software. This has since been
replaced by CSTL with a home-grown on line Forum that works almost identically
with the Ultimate Bulletin
Board. The Board or Forum is indispensable as the primary substitute to
personally based class meetings. Our students were mostly off-campus
persons in the institution's normal service area, while some were web-conversant
students who resided close to campus. We never saw the majority of
students in person, nor was there a provision requiring any such meetings.
The Board was our sole common meeting ground. As such, it must do a lot of
work.
Board participation was a course requirement for every student. We specified a minimum number of meaningful Board posts per student, starting with 100 for acquisition of full credit (at 20 percent of the course grade). When that proved too many, we did several ad hoc adjustments for credit--some in response to a Board thread begun by students who criticized the original 100-post requirement.
Our experience with Board participation closely resembles customary class discussion experience. Students are diverse. A minority of persons participate vigorously from the very start, without need of incentives or sweeteners. A larger number participate here and there, including some who devote themselves to a single thread while ignoring other concurrent threads. And some are as quiet on the Board as in class; they have to be coaxed with various incentives to participate.
Our joint experience in running the Board proved enlightening. We had the advantage of being two in number, but we both participated at a high level. One of us (Harte) was on the Board very often, providing short and pertinent statements to keep a topic moving or to redirect it to appropriate subjects. The other (Renka) wrote fewer and longer statements that typically summarized a thread or established links from one thread (discussion) to another. We believe this worked quite well to keep the Board moving along productively. But since our joint experience, I have learned the necessity of doing something less labor intensive now that I no longer have a partner. I do summary statements, specific responses, and a few announcements and reminders. That is more affordable with a web-assisted class rather than web-exclusive one. Web-only instructors must plan extensive time on the Board to give students full value for the course.
In Fall 1999 we also made a discovery of some importance
to professional collaborators. We each had our professional specialties,
and despite ten years experience working together, could not truly substitute one for the
other. But on the Board, each of us had ample occasion to illuminate some
point within the purview of the other's discipline. Renka had occasion to
show or reinforce some point about how President Reagan employed rhetoric, and
Harte had equal room to show that Reagan practiced a certain kind of coalitional
politics. In short, we learned a lot from each other.
Finally, I note that heavy use of a Board is an excellent
antidote to excessive e-mail traffic. Every instructor receives
e-mail inquiries from students that could profitably be answered in a public
rather than private forum. Students must be accustomed to reading and
writing on a specific forum for this to happen. The Bulletin Board
accomplished this, leaving e-mail for the personal or private business
only. That was an unexpected dividend from conduct of the Fall
1999 class that has served me well ever since.
Essay Tests and Grading Next
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As cited above, we did some brief, on line
testing to prompt students to keep up with readings. These were only a
minor component of their grades. The most critical component
consisted of four quarterly student essays. Each of us received these by email
attachment, printed them out, and individually graded the printout with
accompanying penned or penciled remarks. We also wrote brief
summations. The two of us then convened to compare our respective grades,
which ranged in 13-point fashion from a possible A+ down to F. When grades
touched (say, B and B- respectively), we discussed the paper and arrived at one
of the two grades. On the less common occasions that grades did not touch,
we reread the papers to decide a common conclusion. Following that, we
jointly wrote an email assessment followed by grade to each student, typically
by one of us writing (Harte) as the other dictated or edited (Renka). We
then sent the two papers with penciled editorial notations by surface mail to the student.
Our general experience was clear:
students who performed well on the quarterly essays had previously done well on
the ten to twelve periodic U-test scores. They were also the students who
regularly contributed to the Board with thoughtful or intelligent
dialogue. This may surprise no one. Self-disciplined adherence to
regular reading of assigned material is crucial to student success, regardless
of the web-based or classroom course venue. Regular writing of short or
medium-length entries in a Board, followed by critique and rejoinder from
others, is a good way to learn how to write effective essays.
All interim evaluations of student work were compiled via
GradeA, an on line grade reviewer. (See Center for Scholarship in Teaching and
Learning - Resources Available at the CSTL and link to GradeA
(Internet Grade Publisher) under the "Instructional Tools"
button.) This useful and highly popular service allowed students in any remote
site to be completely conversant with their interim grades, not to mention
status of assignments in relation to deadlines. Missing entries were
constantly evident to any students who had failed to accomplish something on
proper deadline. That in turn created certain problems, but ones we could
address well before the last week or two of class.
Trouble Shooting
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Our biggest surprise in the first half of the course was in
helping students overcome quite basic technical obstacles. The shibboleth says
university students are experienced and worldly in using the web, but that was
not true. Some were, but many others came directly to us with
an array of problems of mundane nature. From clinical experience we doubt
that this
self-selected upper-division student audience for website classes was more sophisticated than
other student groups.
One example came with sending e-mail
attachments of essay examinations. We did not provide written instructions
in how to do this. We received e-mails with missing or nonfunctional
attachments, emails sent to one of us without a duplicate to the other, and
e-mails with unreadable attachments. There is nothing here but to
patiently instruct students: be sure the site is closed before it's
attached, send it to yourself to ensure that the attachment is there, and so
forth. And in hindsight, we would provide more detailed advance
instructions so that students have an improved likelihood of fixing their
problems themselves.
Some other problems derived from students having machines
with limited capacity to handle video and audio applications fed to them over
56K home modems rather than the fast DSL lines available from the campus
computer labs. We also found a tendency for some
students not to have up-to-date video and audio applications in some
cases. We did anticipate some of this, but the main method for correcting
these problems consisted of ad hoc trouble shooting. They described the symptoms
by telephone or e-mail, and we either saw and suggested solutions on the spot, or recognized a
more advanced problem and called on the CSTL Help Desk. Their assistance was
prompt and accurate, so very few problems remained for long
before a fix was applied.
Another problem we encountered was lack of
student awareness of the most pertinent website materials they could use to
resolve questions and problems. This is one area where web-assisted
courses have the advantage. I have enjoyed the relative luxury since 1999
of having technically up to date classrooms with website access. When
students encounter a problem such as, say, a proper interpretation of what
happened in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, I can directly pull up
pertinent website material and demonstrate the relevant points on the spot.
A Bulletin Board can be employed somewhat like that, with links to the same
site. But I find that combined web-access and in-class teaching makes that
a great deal easier and more effective.
Unfortunately, there is one occasional problem that admits of
no solution. Some students truly thrive in the personal environment of the
classroom. For them, there is no substitute via bulletin board or e-mail
for the lack of a direct face-to-face teaching venue. We found this true
for a handful of students, and suspect that it provides one of the natural
limitations to on-line applications of university classes. It is probable
that students only discover this belatedly. Remember also that we had not
one but two distinct student audiences. Possibly the on-campus web
conversant students will not have a problem in lack of a classroom, but the
off-campus and remote site audience will. In light of this, we recommend
that evaluation procedures ask students some pointed questions aimed at their
reaction to lack of the classroom. Although this "invites bad news," the
information is extremely pertinent.
Teaching on line is both a labor intensive and a rewarding experience. Obviously it has come into vogue, and it will likely remain a fixture of university curricula for the indefinite future. However, a quality web-only or web-assisted course is a labor intensive enterprise demanding that its prospective creators carefully assess the requisite conditions for success in this venue.
First, any faculty must be willing to commit considerable personal time to two objectives. One is advance work on the web to develop useful course resources. The other is assisting students with technical problems. The sponsoring institution cannot do much to achieve the first objective, since that depends upon the initiative of the faculty. But on the second point, the sponsoring institution must make a serious and sustained commitment to supporting those faculty and their students. For example, our institution had long since made a considerable commitment to liberal education with interdisciplinary emphasis. That resulted in creation of the Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning well in advance of the web's rise. They proceeded to put in place the basic web services we needed, including a highly workable bulletin board, an on-line testing procedure, and an on-line grading program. In turn, CSTL subscribed experienced faculty who used these services to teach others their use. This showed that the institution was committed to using the web in productive and practical ways for classroom application. Although this was primarily aimed at faculty in web-assisted rather than web-only courses, it still paved the way for the latter. The Center made our teaching job far more productive and pleasant by directly helping solve both our own technical shortcomings and those of our students. We emphasize again that faculty cannot simply count upon the students to be web-conversant enough to avoid problems strictly on their own. As quality telephone service is integral to success of major computer sellers, so it is for an institution that proposes to convey coursework via the web.
As suggested above, the web is here to stay. It is no magic solution to the hard and labor-intensive job of teaching a subject well. But it does offer special opportunity for improved delivery of courses. The vast array of fine materials on the American presidency lends itself very well to teaching the subject on-line. I hope this largely clinical experience prompts others to experiment with and report their own findings on teaching the presidency on the web. It's every bit worth the investment.
Tuesday, 21 August 2007 08:37:19 AM