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In the early 1970s, about one-third of the courses were developed spur-of-the-moment during curriculum building at the beginning of the semester. Of the remaining two-thirds, many had been proposed by students the previous spring. During curriculum building, course descriptions with signup and comment sheets for each of the possible teacher-led or student-led learning activities were posted in the dining commons. All students would read through the proposals and make comments or sign their names to those that interested them. To discuss how potential courses might fit into a student's personal education needs, advisors would be available to meet with their advisees. Two parts of the Johnston curriculum building followed the dining-hall posting of classes: area meetings and contract filing.
Area meetings were held around subject area. ``Each faculty person will describe his or her proposed classes and answer questions about them. Students who are teaching classes in that area, or who want to get classes in that area, will also speak.'' Reviseable contracts were filed by each student for each of their classes. The contract included a general description of the course, as well as goals of the student, how those goals would be met, and how the students should be evaluated. Except for some Freshman seminars, these contracts are completed individually, outside of class time.
Curriculum-building, now part of GYST, has evolved, partially on its own accord and partially to meet the needs of the University. It has evolved now to include a posting of course ideas, followed by one large Community Meeting. Due to course catalog and faculty workload requirements, curriculum building for a particular semester now takes place in the GYST of the previous semester. In the fall 1994 curriculum-building, 5 courses were settled on for the spring semester. Including the independent and directed studies, this meant about half of the Johnston courses offered in the spring were initiated by joint faculty-student interest through curriculum-building. Every Johnston student and faculty I talked to considers this dialogue essential to successful classes.
At the end of the semester, students evaluated the course, the professor, and themselves, regularly taking over a page for each of the parts of the evaluations. The evaluations of faculty were automatically included in the faculty review. Everyone ``took class evaluations seriously. While students tended to be too harsh on themselves and too lenient with faculty, most evaluations were thoughtful and some were acute...faculty evaluations of students ran to one or one and a half pages...Student evaluations confirmed the fact that the class was a shared enterprise, not one produced by the faculty member and consumed by the student.''
Curriculum-building has changed since the 1979 ``reorganization''. The main community meeting has moved from the beginning of the semester to the middle or end of the previous semester so that courses devised during curriculum-building can be put into the Redlands catalog with the other courses. Many professors get around this by offering an untitled seminar, where the specific direction of the course is decided by the students at the beginning of the semester. After that main community meeting, groups that have formed meet a number of times to work more specifically on formulating a plan for the course. As Noah Wardrip-Fruin wrote,
Often, especially with new Johnstonians, it is difficult for them to plan a course in a vacuum - so after a preliminary discussion or two, the facilitator will bring one or several possible syllabi to a meeting. Students might also bring syllabi. Then these are used to ground the discussion. They provide, usually, different ways of looking at the course, and different sorts of emphasizing that can go on.Of course, sometimes this process gets entirely short-circuted. Take a New Student Seminar, for instance. Much of the planning and book ordering and other sorts of things happens before the students even arrive. This can happen with non-New Student Seminars, when faculty or students have a pretty well-developed idea of what they want the course to be, and pretty much propose that.
But in all of these syllabi, ``contracting for the syllabus'' can have a misleading ring. Most syllabi require that students define some sort of area of expertise, and do some sort of project -- and any successful contracting process begins with why the student is doing something, and then moves on to what will be done.[18]
Incompletes (called Works In Progress, or WIPs) were granted by faculty. In 1975 the Graduation Review Committee and the Policy Committee officially demanded that, due to the ``unnerving'' number of students who were barred from graduation with outstanding WIPs, WIPs should no longer be permitted. Though the community meeting passed the motion, they were still granted in practice simply because faculty believed the reasons students did not complete a class in time were legitimate; learning did not always fit into a 13-week block the way the class stucture seemed to assume.
Today, Johnston students regularly engage in four types of learning activities, as described by the Johnston Student Handbook: Johnston Center courses, cross-listed departmental courses, independent studies/internships, and departmental courses.
Johnston Center courses are courses ``specially created for (and often by) Johnston students.'' These courses must be contracted, and must be taken for narrative evaluation. Recently, some of the faculty seminars have been offered simply as ``seminars'' with the course material decided at the beggining of the course. Often, students attempt to get a faculty member to teach a course in a certain area. In order for the course to be counted in a professor's University teaching load, the Johnston director must be notified of the course in order to arrange with the University sufficiently in advance, which means that a student with specific needs or ideas must really plan ahead.
Many University professors also offer cross-listed courses as a part of their normal departmental offerings. These are listed as such in the course catalog, and indicates ``that the faculty person is especially receptive to having Johnston students in class and is willing to hear student proposals for changes in the syllabus (for a contract) and to write narrative evaluations.''[11] The number of Johnston students who simply ``contract for the syllabus'' disturbs some Johnstonians, as does the slightly less frequent practice of recontracting for fewer units at the end of the semester to avoid failing classes.
Independent studies and internships are options when no classes are appropriate or available in a specific area. With the approval of a faculty who will work with and evaluate a student, as well as the approval of the advisor, a student can pursue an applied project or academic independent study for credit. Evaluations are always narrative, just as in Johnston courses.
Last, Johnston students can take straight departmental courses from the University. Some University professors allow Johnston students to contract within these courses, and to receive a narrative evaluation; yet the professors are not obliged to do so, and many do not.
Any courses or learning activities that will be evaluated with narrative evaluations require a contract, including a course description and an ``actual contract''. I asked some students how similar the course descriptions were for students in a Johnston course. ``The description is irrelevant basically. Sometimes you leave it blank, or they give you one to copy. The contract is the only thing that matters.'' ``How similar are the contracts?'' ``Really depends on the Professor...Generally, they're pretty stock, unless you really motivate to do something different. Some University Professors only accept one line contracts, `I contract for the syllabus', which differs from taking it as a University student only in that there is a narrative evalution.'' [12]
Self-evaluations and contracts are still required for each class where there is a narrative evaluation. These self-evaluations evaluate the student and faculty performances, and what used to be evaluations of class process and content has been absorbed into the faculty evaluation.
Since the 1970s, student's class contracts have become slightly less personalized. Many teachers, however, continue to integrate a number of different kinds of activities as much as possible into their teaching. Evaluations have also changed, often becoming slightly more ``professional''.[20]