Happiness, Virtue and Education are
Center of the Freshman College
Experience
at Herget Residential College
English
2123: Odysseys, a team-taught, special emphasis freshman literature
course, uses both large lecture and small breakout sessions to explore
core texts, through the lens of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
and his key questions “What is happiness?” and “What is virtue?”
Students not only examine The Odyssey, The Inferno, Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, and Henry V from philosophical
and literary perspectives but also from a historical viewpoint with a
history professor introducing each text in large lecture to provide a
historical framework and a Cardinal Newman learning experience. Students
go beyond information-based learning in class activities and
assignments, and in the construction of their major project, an
ePortfolio. The ePortfolio must demonstrate comprehensive understanding
of course texts and creative development of salient course themes, thus
embodying the kind of learning Newman recommends in The Idea of a
University: multidisciplinary, active, and community-directed.
With its
technology component, Odysseys capitalizes on the increasing emphasis placed
on the visual media and on the skills needed to use these media in students=
course work; a literature course that incorporates computer and digital
technology better prepares students for their careers after
college. Students ought to be establishing a media base to build
on during their college career. Additionally, they need to set up an alternative to Facebook, which is social but seldom
intellectual and won=t
prepare them well for the world after college.
The
Odysseys
team of four instructors decided on classics because these texts are
important ones for the students to experience and respond to; they
provide a wealth of characters, ideas, themes, and experiences that the
students can delve deeply into and explore. In order
to provide entry into these texts, students read sections from
Aristotle=s
Nicomachean Ethics on virtue and happiness and then from John
Henry Cardinal Newman=s
The Idea of a University on the function of education. Students
focus on how the various protagonists learn virtue and
put that virtue to work in their own lives and in building their
communities. The Newman, which comes at the end of the semester, shifts
students' focus to their own journeys in the university setting.
As a
capstone project, the ePortfolio pulls all the texts and experiences
together. Students construct a Website using SharePoint Designer,
software provided free by the university. They design their
pages and are responsible for layout as well as content. Their ePortfolio has a home page to welcome visitors, a personal page that
introduces visitors to who they are, an Odysseys main page with links to
their creative responses to Aristotle and two other texts of their
choice. The last link is to a reflective hyptertext essay that answers
questions about their changing perceptions of virtue and how it works
within the community. The response pages to Aristotle and two texts
present the texts imaginatively using graphics, video clips, historical
background, first and/or final responses, and responses to the
characters or themes. Additionally, students are encouraged to adapt
this site to the demands of their course work throughout their college
career. The ePortfolio gives them new tools with which to learn and
internalize knowledge and encourages them to apply what they=re
learning in new and vigorous ways to their own lives and their
communities.
With a
multi-discipline approach to learning, Odysseys empowers first-year
students to experience what Newman describes as “the mind’s energetic
and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas which
are rushing in upon it.”
One student sums it up in his reflective
hyptertext essay when he writes, “The course, to m
e, culminated when we
watched the film Road Scholar. The knowledge I gained during the
semester seemed to illuminate and enhance the film. Combining the film
with John Henry Newman’s
The Idea
of a University
in the review assignment really cemented the ideals of the course for
me. Newman identifies the importance of making connections between all
our knowledge. Realizing that Andrei Codrescu was more than a tourist
made me question my own perspective on life.
It inspired me to become more
than a tourist, a traveling observer to whom ‘Nothing has a drift or
relation; nothing has a history or a promise.’”
According to another Odysseys student, “making students good citizens
is the goal of Aristotle and English 2123. I believe that if we behave
virtuously as we have learned in this course then the world, or at least
LSU, might become a better place. So perhaps my function is to be a good
citizen, in which case this course has shown me how to perform this
function well.”
Nicom
achean Ethics’
main questions are the ones students come to see as relevant and vital
to their own lives and not just philosophical language from 3000 years
ago. Odysseys shows student how to explore happiness and virtue—even
though the translation of Aristotle’s ideas is very difficult, they translate his principles into all the texts they read and into their own
lives. In the end they realize that Aristotle’s questions are
timeless, instead of old and obsolete. As they are awakened to the
centrality of Aristotle’s questions, they begin to understand that these
questions about happiness and virtuousness will determine what they will
do for the rest of their college career and their lives.
Check out these ePortfolios created by freshman students in English 2123: Odysseys:
Odysseys is Herget's signature course.
Explore
its Website to find out why.
English 2123:
Odysseys rules
225-334-5510 or email: herget@lsu.edu
© Updated by Dorothy McCaughey 09/13/2009