The following three faculty applied for and received Curriculum Development Grants from the Office of Academic Planning and Assessment in 2005 for the development of blended (hybrid) courses. The three faculty recipients were Mark Mullen, Arthur Wilson, and Robbin Zeff. Professor Mullen and Professor Zeff proposed and implemented course re-designs of University Writing 20 courses that were previously taught exclusively face-to-face. Professor Wilson proposed and implemented a new course, “Exploring Finance through FinGame”. Read more about this course that is currently in session (Spring 2007).
Mark Mullen
Assistant Professor, University Writing Program
University Writing 20: "Blood on the Plains:
The Custer Autobiography Project"
Course Description
One of the strangest artifacts to emerge from the U.S. Plains Wars of the 1860s and 1870s is the autobiography of George Armstrong Custer. Penned by Custer during garrison duty in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the series of articles that would eventually became known as "My Life on the Plains", began appearing without introduction in the magazine The Galaxy (forerunner of The Atlantic Monthly) in early 1872 through late 1874.
Recounting (and often enlarging) his role in the Kansas and Nebraska campaigns of the late 1860s, Custer's memoirs are a strange mix of acute geographical observation, strategic acumen, bravado, staggering racism, anthropological speculation, and self-aggrandizement.
Using the original Galaxy articles, this class will continue work begun by a Fall 2004 UW20 class on an annotated version of Custer's autobiography to be published on the web. Every member of the class will have a role in helping design and code the website, deciding what elements of each article need annotating, researching and writing those annotations, and selecting, researching, and writing a paper on an aspect of the Plains Wars.
J. Wilson, Associate Professor, Finance Department, at The George Washington University since September 1995.
Project Description
To make Fingame the basis of an intense and focused standalone elective course, such as is possible during a Summer session. The students will do the following four main tasks:
- Run their companies as best they can, making use of what they should have learned in a recent BADM 115 course;
- Write up brief reports explaining and defending their decisions;
- Give feedback to each other based on their reports; and
- Manage a virtual portfolio of the stocks of the firms in the group.
Robbin Zeff
Assistant Professor of Writing, University Writing Program
UW20:"Political Junkie: Writing about Politics in the Nation's Capital"
Course Description
Washington, DC is a political town where all politics, even national politics, are local. This first-year writing seminar will study the exciting world of contemporary politics. From monitoring how political issues are debated in the media, to observing how policy is made on the national level, to researching the applications and implications of political action, the class will use current political issues and trends to engage in sophisticated academic research and writing.
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