Class evaluation!

Likes:

-Overall I really liked this class. My favorite part was the discussion aspect. I think it is really valuable to have students from all different backgrounds engage in respectful dialogue about meaningful topics. Learning from other people is incredibly worthwhile and often more effective than long lectures or just taking notes. I really enjoyed this part of the class because it allowed everyone to engage with the material on a more personal and relevant level.

-I also enjoyed the guest speakers because I thought that their perspectives were often balanced, and I really appreciated hearing from Jews, Christians, and Muslims equally. It made some of the topics come more alive when we got to hear from experts in certain fields, especially from Richard Herrmann in Political Science. I would definitely invite him, as well as all of the other professors, back again next year.

-The video conferences were another great aspect of the class. Despite some technical difficulties, it was a new and rewarding experience to be able to communicate with people on the other side of the world in such a personal way. It was also really cool to get the perspective of people currently living in Jerusalem that we would not have been able to get without the video conferencing technology.

-I also thought the blogs were great. I have never had a blog before, and it was a good learning experience. I liked how everyone was able to connect through the class blog website and how interaction with each others’ blogs was encouraged. Having the readings available online was certainly helpful, and I think that the idea for reading responses in the blogs was good as well.

Suggestions:

-While I really enjoyed the free form of the discussions for the most part, I do think that a little more structure would be beneficial to keep more on track. Some of our digressions were the most interesting parts, but some seemed superfluous and unnecessary. Perhaps having the students each come with a question to ask the whole class or something like that might help to give a more solid form to the discussion.

-It would also have been nice to have a video conference room. I loved that we were able to do a lot of different things with the class (and I know, Dr. H, that you want a conference room), but not having the room made things a little hectic, although we managed. I thought it was a great idea for everyone to have prepared a question before each video conference, but it also might have helped to have gotten those questions organized a little more (Jay did a great job putting things together, but maybe we could have worked together more on the questions so that the conferences were more focused).

-Also, with the blogs, I would suggest just a little more structure and/or guidelines. I liked that everyone was able to express their thoughts in their own style, but I thought that certain styles were not as conducive to interaction or commenting. I would have loved to have had more interaction over the blogs, and part of it was my own lack of commitment, but sometimes I would spend a while looking at peoples’ blogs and not feel like I could comment because of the length or sometimes because people summarized more than analyzed. It is kind of hard to respond to short or shallow posts, or posts that don’t express much interaction with the text. Perhaps every once in a while students could be required to answer specific analytical questions related to the readings that would elicit more discussion.

-I thought that most of the readings were incredibly relevant and helpful, but I honestly found it very difficult to trudge through Karen Armstrong’s book. Her perspective was great and her video conference was amazing, but I thought that there might be a more efficient way to get through the material in her book. Overall I felt like it was so much information that I was barely able to absorb any of it because I was so concerned with just getting it done, and while it opened my eyes to a lot about the history of Jerusalem, I felt drowned by it more so than immersed in it. Maybe the book could just be spread out over the quarter more, with one chapter assigned for each class period. Then the other readings could be due in addition to Armstrong (for example, one chapter from Armstrong and one reading from Tamari, or something like that).

Overall, I thought that this class was great. I really enjoyed being a part of it and am glad to have met everyone. Best of luck next year.