I’m going to close down the survey at the end of the day today. I’ve got 76% response for the cinema course, after 3 nag notes. In the mean time, I’d like to share another comment that came in this week.
“At first I really wasn’t too sure about this exercise and how it would add to my experience in this film class, but I was astounded by how much I enjoyed gaining a better understanding of the historical context of these films/filmmakers. Plus, on just about every assignment, a few things popped up that were really entertaining and gave interesting insight into the social culture of the time these movies came out.”
Obviously, this is a comment I find tremendously exciting. And it corresponds to the preliminary data – 80% of respondents so far either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I learned more information researching my post than I posted to the timeline.” And 100% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with this statement: “Historical or contextual information is an important component of a literature/film course.”
There is a chicken-and-egg aspect to this last question, however. Did the students come into the course uniformly strongly believing in the importance of contextual information, or have they come to believe this as a result of the assignment? Unfortunately, I didn’t have a question that would allow me to estimate that. However, I feel that the 100%, especially in the context of the comment cited above, strongly suggests that the exercise itself has informed their conviction.
