by our experienced yet anonymous “Points of View” professor

It’s an exciting time—and a challenging one—to be a teacher at the University of Cincinnati.  Many of us are a bit nervous as we face semester conversion, collegiate restructuring, and the One University initiative. I’ve spent years honing my skills to deliver effective didactic lectures coupled with readings, assignments, and exams,  and now I’m being asked to rework my ten week-long courses into a fifteen week-long format.

by Wayne Hall, PhD

IT’S NOT A GAME! It’s an immersive world. Or maybe an interactive learning environment. Would you accept “multi-user simulation”? What about “contextualized role playing”?

Okay, so maybe it is a game. But this is serious stuff. Check out The Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, “focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector.” And the MacArthur Foundation sponsored a project for the Pew Research Center, a national survey of over 1100 youth ages 12 to 17. Although one purpose of the survey was to consider if gaming led teens to be more socially isolated, the results indicated that “gaming can be tied to civic and political engagement. Indeed, youth have many experiences playing games that mirror aspects of civic and political life, such as thinking about moral and ethical issues and making decisions about city and/or community affairs.” 

by Rebecca S. Borah, PhD

Early this past quarter, I spent an afternoon replying to my composition students’ emails in which they pitched their ideas for a first-person research assignment involving a nonprofit social-service agency.  After sending affirmative replies to the first few, I paused before rejecting one email concerning a medical marijuana-advocacy group.  I saved my reply to this student for last and put off the likely thumbs down by asking some basic questions to determine how much thought the student had invested in the topic.  (You never can tell when they’re 100% serious at this point.)  Once finished, I took a few quiet moments to consider how long it had been since someone had wanted to write about marijuana.

by Kevin Grace

When I teach a class, a song from The Who’s rock opera Tommy always seems to course through my brain.  In “Go to the Mirror, Boy,” an exchange between Tommy and the doctor results in lyrics most of us have heard at one time or another: “See me, Feel me, Touch me, Heal me.” Like those lyrics, it all comes down to “experiential” learning, our pedagogical emphasis on hands-on curricula.  For me, experiential learning boils down to putting primary documents—15^th century manuscripts, 17^th century rare bindings, 19^th century letters, early 20^th century photographs—into the hands of students so they can see them, feel them, and of course, smell them.