Time Schedule:
Colin Danby
BIS 300
Bothell Campus
Introduction to advanced work in interdisciplinary studies centered on broadly based questions and problems. Stresses the skills necessary to engage in upper-division research and learning in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program.
Class description
This course is an introduction to the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program. It will improve your skills and capacities in academic writing. Upper-level coursework requires you to produce writing that handles complex arguments, makes fine distinctions, and considers multiple points of view. Writing is, in upper level courses, a tool for understanding. You will be writing all the time in this course.
This course will also introduce you to new ways of reading -- different ways of engaging with texts to get meaning out of them, challenge them, shake them up, and get them to talk to each other.
Finally, this course will be an introduction to the idea of scholarship: what it is that scholars do to produce new knowledge about the world. Scholarship is what underlies interdisciplinarity.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Discussion, group work, films. I will make occasional short presentations but this is the opposite of a lecture course.
On this and other questions feel free to e-mail me at danby@u.washington.edu
Recommended preparation
Enthusiasm for interdisciplinary study.
Class assignments and grading
There are weekly writing assignments, some short, some long. See the last syllabus to get a sense of what the assignments are like. That's accessible through my website (http://www.bothell.washington.edu/faculty/danby/) or via the link below.
I will probably add a little bit of research in the Fall 2003 version, with corresponding reductions in other kinds of assignments.
The last time I taught the course, it worked like this:
First essay: 15%, Second essay: 15%, Third essay: 15% Completing short assignments: 15% Portfolio assessments, 20% Participation: 20%.
Expect a few modifcations next time around.
