Do you know where Middle Hall was or which Tufts president was the first to live in Gifford House? And just who was Dewick, anyway? Students who wanted to learn the answers to these and other questions had the opportunity to do so this past semester through a new Experimental College course based on the last century and a half of life on the Hill.
The course, entitled "From Ballou to Bacow: Tufts at 150," taught students not only about Tufts history and traditions, but also about the organization and future of the University. Taught by Dr. Anne Mahoney, students used the Perseus Digital Library and Tufts Archives to delve into topics ranging from the founding of the University to Tufts' current position in the academic world..
One of the main goals of the course, Mahoney said, was to help students learn about Tufts history in the University's sesquicentennial year. "It seemed like a timely thing to do," Mahoney said.
In addition, Mahoney hoped to use the history of Tufts to help students understand the present conditions at the University as well as our current Tufts traditions. Students learned about the general workings of universities, as well as about the specific organization of Tufts. The class also discussed the similarities and differences between Tufts and other benchmark schools.
In an interesting twist to the course, Mahoney had the class experiment with hypertext reading and the digital library. Students in the class did all their reading online. The main text was the two-volume work: Light on the Hill by Russell E. Miller. The entirety of the work was found in the Perseus Digital Library.
"We used Light on the Hill as the framework for the class, but wandered as things came up," Mahoney said.
Students also read several first-hand documents from Tufts' past. One of these was "Very Fine Indeed," a diary from a student in the 1880's. The class also read "Traditions at Tufts" and "High on the Hill." These two texts were written in the early 1940's and 1960's respectively and were pamphlets once given to incoming freshman.
Mahoney wanted to teach a course built around digital material because she believes that online material is very helpful for conducting research. "If you don't know what a building was, you can search the database for its name," Mahoney said.
Along with all the text in the database, another feature of the online material is the number of illustrations. The database contains over 3,000 illustrations, many with captions that were interesting to the class. "Online you can get far more pictorial material than in a print volume," Mahoney said.
The class, like many Ex-College classes, was small, attracting only seven students. Many of these were nostalgic seniors, as well as other students curious about the history of Tufts.
"In my second semester senior year, I was looking for types of classes that were different than I had previously taken," senior Michelle Shelton said. "The Tufts class caught my eye first because I wanted to learn about the history of the place that I am about to leave."
According to Mahoney, most students were surprised at the amount of online content used for the course, but quickly became accustomed to it. "At first, I liked it because it was something different," junior Sijuwola Adigun said. "There were different links you could click on to read more about a certain subject or to find pictures on a topic."
Many students also liked the idea of not having to buy the books and not having to carry them around. "Having the readings online was a good thing, because I could do them just about anywhere without lugging around the big copy of Light on the Hill, and you could easily link to old pictures from the archives," Shelton said.
Some students, however, did get tired of having to read from a computer screen and longed to hold an actual book in their hands. "Since it was a long book, I got tired of looking at the computer screen after a while," Adigun said.
Student reaction to the course was also positive, as many students enjoyed learning about the history of their university. "Having read the entire Light on the Hill: Volume 1, I now know enormous amounts of random Tufts knowledge," Shelton said.
Those enrolled in the course wrote short papers each week based on the readings they had done. The papers were mostly response papers meant to encourage class discussion. The class also had guest speakers, including President Bacow, who spoke about the future of Tufts.
At the end of the semester Mahoney said she was very satisfied with the course, because it was fun to teach. "The students were all really committed and involved members at Tufts," Mahoney said. "It was great to get a student's eye perspective."
For graduating seniors enrolled in the class, the course provided a nostalgic ending to their Tufts years. "I enjoyed the class, because it offered me something a bit sentimental for my last semester, and I can leave here knowing much more about the school than I did before I took the class," Shelton said.
@s:Students, professor satisfied with course
