| Course Title: | Protest and Reform in United States History |
| Teacher: | John Zola with Andri Ioannidou and Alex Repenning |
| Course Dates: | November 2, 1998 - January 21, 1999 |
| Meeting Days/Times: | MTThF, 8:45 - 10:45 |
Overview:
Protest and Reform focuses on theories and applications of social change in United States history. Students learn about such concepts as the "J-curve", techniques of protest and social change and social/political movements in United States history. Specific topics include the American Revolution as a protest movement, the Abolitionist movement, Women's suffrage, Civil Rights, the anti-war movement of the 1960s and the efforts for greater social/economic/political equality by Chicanos, Gays, women, and others during the 1960s and 1970s.
Melded into this content, students in this course will be engaged in the use and examination of computer simulations as both tools for learning course content and for exhibiting student learning. Specifically, AgentSheets© based simulations of two protest-based situations will be used to help teach course concepts and then students will have the opportunity to research and construct their own simulations on protests in history that will be presented to others in the class.
Course Goals: During this course, students will...
Course Outline:
Protest and Reform will be divided into four distinct, yet inter-related components. What follows is a description of each and the relationships among the parts.
Part 1: During the initial 2 weeks of the course, the focus will be on content related to "why" and "how" protest movements take place. Concepts include: the "J-curve", boycotts, protest marches, petitions, violent and non-violent attempts at social change, aspects of leadership in protest movements, and influencing the media. Concepts will be introduced and explored using a variety of methods including Socratic seminars and large/small group activities. Central to this part of the course will be the use of two AgentSheet© simulations that were constructed by New Vista students last year; one on the dynamics of protest marches and the other on the efforts of Cesar Chavez to organize the United Farm Workers through the use of a grape boycott by consumers in the 1960s and 1970s. These simulations will introduce course content and serve as models of the sorts of simulations that will be developed by students during the latter stages of the course. Thus, the first part of the course has the twin goals of introducing critical course concepts related to protest and reform and familiarizing students with the technological tools they will use to create their own simulations later in the course.
Part 2: From this introduction, teams of students will be formed to research historical examples of protest and reform as a prelude to constructing computer-based simulations of those historical movements. Topics available for students selection, as noted above, will include any of the more well-known social/political movements; as well as examples from labor history, the handicap rights movement, and current issues. The intent of this phase of the course is to allow time and support for students to identify a topic of interest and to develop an initial level of understanding of the actors, goals, events, and outcomes of their particular protest movement. This information is crucial to the initial work on developing a computer based simulation of the protest movement using the AgentSheets© software. As a special note, an effort will be made to enlist at least one group of students to work with the "Envisionment and Design Collaboratory" that will involve the parallel construction of a computational and physical simulation. This work will be done in conjunction with Ernie Arias and Hal Eden at the University of Colorado. The AgentSheets© work will be guided by a team working under Alex Repenning, also from the University of Colorado.
Part 3: The next 2-3 weeks of the course will be time for students, working with support from the Center for Life Long Learning and Design and others, to create web-situated computer simulations of their protest movement to be shared with others in the class (and over the web) in the final part of the course. Teams will work together to conceptualize and create "agents", program using Visual Agent Talk protocols, conduct research on the web to identify sites to include as links, and create a web page that presents their simulation to others. Examples of these web pages and simulations can be found at (insert URL for existing simulations here). Efforts are underway to acquire sufficient hardware for this work to be accomplished on site at New Vista in a "Simulation Studio" where students can readily access and use both the AgentSheets© software and the web. The team working with the "Envisionment and Design Collaboratory" will use the hardware available at the Center for Life Long Learning and Design. Additionally, students who express an interest will be supported in constructing final projects that conform to the design parameters of the ThinkQuest Competition.
Part 4: This part of the course, approximately two weeks in length, is perhaps the most important element of the course design. During these two weeks, students will interact with each other's simulations in an attempt to bring a "second level" of learning about each of these protest movements. The assumption is that, while those students who studied the protest and constructed the simulation learned a great deal about their topic, there is a need to extend that learning to others in the classroom. Using the simulations is one way of bringing about this "second level" of learning because the students will have opportunities to familiarize themselves with the new content through their interactions with the simulation and web page. These interactions will be accomplished in small and large group settings that are facilitated by the instructor and those who originally designed the simulations. Thus, a new audience has an opportunity to learn about each of the protest movements and the designers are pushed to a new level of understanding through the "teaching" of their simulation to others. As part of the regular Exhibition Days at New Vista, students will also have the opportunity of presenting their simulations to the broader school community. The existence of these simulations on the web will also broaden their dissemination.
Required Support and Infrastructure:
In order for the goals of this course to be attained and for the plans to be implemented, it is crucial that there be support in two distinct areas: human resources and hardware support. Human resources in the form of individuals skilled in Visual Agent Talk, the Envisionment and Design Collaborative processes, and web authoring have been promised as part of New Vista's collaboration with the Center for Life Long Learning and Design at the University of Colorado. Experience last year indicated that individuals with these sorts of skills can "scaffold" students as they become increasingly competent in using the computer hardware and software.
More problematic is the need for on-site hardware that is sufficiently powerful to allow productive simulation and web authoring. Last year, two groups of students did their work at the Center for Life Long Learning and Design laboratory on the C.U. campus. While this was compelling for those students, the institutionalizing of these sorts of classroom practices and reforms demands on-site hardware resources so that all students can avail themselves of the technology. The notion of a "Simulation Studio" at New Vista supports this goal by providing sufficient computers for teams to program simulations and engage in web searching and authoring at the same time. Feedback from last year indicated that the greatest and quickest "turn-offs" for students were "freezing" computers, slow processors, and insufficient access to the web. It was our analysis that several students who might have chosen to construct simulations last year decided not to as their frustration levels with the hardware increased. In order for the assumptions of this class to be credibly tested (i.e. that the creation of simulations is a powerful means of learning about historical content and that those same simulations can transfer learning to others in the class and across the web), there needs to be a robust technological environment--a Simulation Studio- where the work can be undertaken.