Free Writing Exercise: Evolutionary Biology and the Human Condition
Free Writing Exercise: Evolutionary Biology and the Human Condition
Course Instructor: Sebastian Watzl (IFIKK, philosophy)
Course: FIL2208/FIL4200 Theory of Cognition/Philosophy of Science
Date: March 31st, 2017
Number of Students involved: about 20
Overview: The course ‘Theory of Cognition/Philosophy of Science’ is a mixed Bachelor/Master course. I have designed the syllabus for this course myself, and the content of the course is on the philosophy of evolutionary biology. The first part of the course (about two thirds) focused on general concepts and questions, whereas the second part (the last third) concerns what evolutionary biology may tell us about central aspects of the human condition.
The exercise:
I used a free writing exercise in the first course session of the second part of the course. After a quick review of the various concepts and topics we had discussed during the first part of the course, I introduced the topic for the second part as “Evolution and Human Nature.” In order to stimulate discussion, and in order to get students to use their prior interest, and knowledge, and to connect the contents of our discussion to those I asked the students to write continuously for 3 minutes (without the pen leaving the page):
“What are you interests and ideas about the topic “Evolution and Human Nature”
After the students were finished, I asked the students to condense what they had written into a single short sentence (30 seconds)
After that, I asked them to convert the sentence they had written into a question, instructing them that they could either reformulate the sentence or formulate a question behind that sentence (30 seconds).
After the students were done with that, I collected all questions and wrote them down on the white board (about 10 mins). I organized similar questions together, and sometimes asked for clarification, and collected similar questions together. While doing that I commented on how the questions related to what we had already discussed in the course, and how they relate to what we will discuss in the next weeks, thus using the students own question to introduce many of the topics for the second part.
After being done with the writing exercise, I introduced some main works on the topics, and provided a historical overview of the controversies surrounding Evolution and the Human condition.
Intent:
The overall task was intended in several ways: to activate the students, to get everyone to participate in the classroom discussion, as a student-initiated way of introducing the second part of the course, as help for me to know more about the interests of the students, and for students to get a tool for finding questions that they may use in finding a topic for their final essay (which will 5-6 pages be on some topic in the second half of the course).
Results:
All students seemed quite active during the 15 minutes used for the exercise. When I wrote down the questions on the board, they often followed up, and referred to each other. The task helped to activate also the more quiet students (several of them participate more actively than usual also during the rest of the seminar). I also had the sense that the task helped students to formulate their questions and ideas more clearly. One thing I felt I could have improved is to record the questions as they were written on the board, in order to help me as the teacher to refer back to them in future course sessions. In the future, I will take a picture of the board in order to do that.
General Conclusion:
This is the first course where I have used short in class writing exercises. In addition to the one detailed above, and began to use it also in supervision sessions. My overall impression is very positive: it (re)activates students and gets them to think in a more focused manner. I will continue to use it in my future teaching.
