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Libraries Contribute to Award-Winning Curriculum Redesign
When Professor Ellen Strenski accepted the 2004 Curriculum Development Award, she acknowledged the importance of her collaboration with UCI librarians to her project’s success. The new Writing 39C curriculum, which debuted in fall 2003, is the result of early and active collaboration between the composition program in the School of Humanities and the Libraries’ Department of Education and Outreach.
Writing
39C (Argument and
Research) is a key
course in the English
and Comparative
Literature
curriculum, and
while serving as
Course Director in
2002, Prof. Strenski
realized that the
curriculum needed
a make-over. The
fundamental goals
of the course--to
help students strengthen their
academic writing ability and to
engage responsibly and effectively
in democratic debate and policymaking--remained as compelling as
ever, but the instructional methods
and course content had become
dated. Today’s students are
adept at using Google and other
Internet search engines to locate
information on the Internet, but
they need help learning to evaluate
the information they locate online,
as well as an understanding of the
continuing importance of seeking
out scholarly materials collected by
libraries that are not immediately
surfaced by a search engine.
In the newly revised curriculum,
students select a public policy
issue raised in Barbara Ehrenreich’s
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting
By in America (2002). Writing
assignments require the use of
credible scholarly sources to
support the students’ assertions.
The essentials of information
literacy espoused by librarians,
such as the ability to locate
scholarly information, to evaluate
materials based on audience,
bias, credentials
of authors, and
currency, and to
avoid plagiarism,
are stressed
throughout the
course.
The Curriculum Development Award is given in recognition of a school or departmental curriculum which employs innovative teaching strategies to enhance the educational experience of undergraduates. This and other awards were presented at UCI’s 11th Annual Celebration of Teaching, which was held on May 26th at the University Club.
The Libraries welcome opportunities to collaborate with faculty on curriculum design projects and to participate in course implementation.
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