NOTE: This page reproduces the questions I asked via an anonymous online questionnaire at the end of the course. Because of a computer server error, some unknown number of responses were lost. All those I have are reproduced below; some, at least, will have been resubmitted after I let everyone know about the server problem.

In each case I identify one learning strategy that folks who had been engaged in the class will recognize; if you weren't enrolled and want to know more, please go to the course Web page for the 2012-13 version.

Making the writing of students a central focus of the course rather than primarily a means of evaluation:

• This is encouraging. It's more realistic for a school setting, compared to other professors who grade writing skills on content and grammar and never let you attempt your writing again. Being able to ask questions and comment on other students writing in order to adjust a wiki let us learn more.
• I think this worked particularly well, because it means people are much less anxious about saying something that is "incorrect", and if they do they can learn for their mistakes rather than be punished for them. There was a tremendous amount of writing to do for this course, more than many of my other courses. The volume and the types of analysis we were asked to do made me a better writer. It was good practice in having to quickly formulate and structure your thoughts in a readable manner, something that is a transferrable skill that goes beyond this course.
• I both like and dislike this. I like it because we can see everyone's standpoints and learn from everyone's observations, but I do also like having a textbook or assigned readings as a means of learning the material as well.

• I thought this was a good idea. It showed us where we were going and what to expect for the next few classes, and see what direction we were heading in respect to plays and different areas. The only thing I would change is not printing them off for everyone every day and only show them on the projector perhaps.. only because they are always available so many people don't bother saving the paper and throw it out right after they know what they're doing that day.
• This also generally worked well, though sometimes there had to be flexibility within the prompts because students would miss due dates, or a discussion would run overtime. It was useful to have everything written down, and it meant we had something to refer back to while writing assignments, as well as no good excuse for handing something in late.
• I really enjoy the prompts as I feel they keep things very organized and you can always go back to look at them if you forget how something should be done.

• This was one of the best things about the class. It was also the reason I felt I learned most of what I know. It allowed us to have easy conversation about what we have looked at over the past few days. Everyone would come to class with different reactions and expectations about what we've recently read, which showed a lot of insight to the plays that you may not pick up on the first reading of a play, etc.
• These also worked well, there was not too much of a rush on any one assignment, and I can't say I felt too much pressure in terms of unmanageable due dates. It meant we were really able to consider the texts we were looking at.
• This helped progress learning quickly to fit more into the time we had.. assignments were well suited to the amount of time we had to complete them.
• I found these both useful and not. It was good in the sense that they were usually relatively easy to get done, and we didn't have to set a lot of time away to get the assignments done. But I also found it difficult at times to keep up with the assignments because of other school work to be done that required a lot of my time. I also found that reading some of the plays took a long time, so it was difficult to have read the play and have a reflection on it for the next class time.

• It took some getting used to since I have never used these kind of forums before, but once we were comfortable with the site it was a good way to edit and continue our learning and writing. This also saved paper a lot of paper :)
• Moodle was not bad.. there are definitely some kinks to work out with this site.. nothing to serious though.
• These were simple, and very user friendly. It was an excellent opportunity to read what our peers wrote and learn from them. Especially the wiki system, where editing and commenting was easy and helpful.
• I really enjoy this idea because, again, it keeps the class information very organized. It also really contributes to learning the material, because we have the opportunity to see what everyone thinks and get a wide array of opinions.

• Very helpful compared to courses that have a syllabus to pass out the first class and don't add anything to it for the rest of the semester. I like that it is organized and easy to keep track of everything that is due, that we should be working on, and what we should know for the future.
• This was great, everything was well organized and easy to find. Again, I appreciated having these materials to refer back to periodically.
• Easily accessible and easy to keep track of things .. works very well.
• I think this is a great idea.

• Sometimes this is helpful but sometimes it isn't. I suppose it has to be gaged on how much the students know and how much they have to talk about, because we could be going in the wrong direction. Sometimes we just have nothing to say, so it's hard to start conversation. It is good to know what everyone is thinking, since it is such a small class, but we still need guidance from the expert!
• Our class was very involved and invested in the course, so this worked better than it had in other classes. I found that the group really gained confidence in their knowledge of the plays, and we were able to learn more by having a variety of voices and opinions who had studied different texts. It allowed us to examine more plays and criticism than would have been possible otherwise.
• Learning becomes up to the students, it forces us to take things into our hands .. perhaps makes learning slightly more difficult but also much much much more valuable in the end.
• I like this method of discussion because we all get to hear everyone's thoughts and observations.

• Very helpful, gives us a choice if we have something valuable to contribute or pass if we don't. Also if you pass when your name comes up but then the next person in the deck says something interesting, it might bring out a response that you hadn't thought of saying when your name was originally drawn. Works for organizing discussion.
• This allows for all of us to contribute anything we have to say, since I'm sure many people wouldn't be comfortable contributing to the class by raising their hand or speaking up. It shows many more views on the course rather than listen to one person talk for a whole class.
• Cards worked well, and meant people would have to come to class prepared to discuss and generally had a couple points in mind.
• I think this is a good idea because it prompts people to say something they might otherwise kept to themselves. If you know your name is going to be called out you will think of something to say (usually) and it could end up being very beneficial to our discussion.

• This seemed unfair at times because the amount of work half of the class puts into the assignments shouldn't be compared to the lower quality of work and research that others provided. Some assignments would be pages long and very useful while others would be two sentences, and still receive the same grade, which was frustrating for those who took hours to do a good job on the assignments. I do like the points system rather than having everything evaluated, but perhaps you could make a minimum amount of information to be posted, or grade the larger assignments and keep the smaller ones on a point system.
• A good example of how things actually function. Though it might seem a bit tough a times, it worked towards the philosophy of "you'll take out of this what you put in". Students who were dedicated and doing the readings were rewarded.
• I both like and dislike this I suppose just because I am used to being marked a certain way and with this method I am given credit regardless of the content of my work. I feel like this sometimes allowed me to not give very good feedback which I didn't want to do, but sometimes happened anyway.

• I liked that we got to pick what we wanted to read or study, and that we could learn from mistakes since we didn't always know to pick the best thing next. Maybe it would be helpful to spend the first few weeks of classes to cover a general overview of the time period, by putting playwrights and events in an order to show who we could expect to be learning about in different stages.
• This allowed us to follow a course of study that would benefit us the most, and made for a more logical choices of texts that would further our knowledge in the right direction. This was especially beneficial when we were choosing plays.
• With guidance from you this works well.. sometimes we don't know where to go without your help.
• This is an interesting method because we allow ourselves to explore what we want to, instead of sticking to guidelines. However, this makes me feel sometimes like we may have missed an important point that maybe a scholar had mentioned, for example, that we never got to explore.

• Made me a much more conscientious writer... took more time and effort knowing that my writing was intended to help others learn as well.
• I did like being able to read others' work in order to attain more insight and it often furthered my understanding of certain plots, ideas, or history that I didn't know anything about previously.
• I think this is a good idea because it pushes everyone to write something they won't be embarrassed about. It gives you the opportunity to express your observations, learn from everyone else and then come up with a final observation.

• This is comforting to know midsemester and at the end of the semester what can be expected for a grade. Some courses give zero feedback on how a student is doing throughout the semester and at the final exam you have no idea if you have an A or a C. As much as they don't always reflect a students learning, grades have a lot of importance at the university and cause worry for students if they don't know what they are going to end up with, so having minimum marks is a good way to sense that, since the points are not difficult to get as long as you keep up.
• I feel as though the minimum mark should be somewhat higher, if the person has achieved all of the points, because that would mean a perfect attendance, and completion of all assignments which in all other courses would probably be A worthy. However I understand that the final learning synthesis is important in finalizing all that we have learned and we can achieve an a that way.

• Sometimes I didn't have much to say because some weeks were based on figuring out what we were going to do next, but when we had class discussions it helped to organize what I've learned and it's a good way to look back on what we've accomplished, compared to the image I had of 18th century drama at the beginning of the semester.
• Sometimes this was helpful, and sometimes it was not. Depending on how much we had to write that week, it could be fairly redundant, and I often found myself repeating myself in the journals. However, they will be helpful when writing the final reflection, though I'm not sure they helped my learning process.
• This is definitely a good idea, it helped me keep track of each class , each week and my progress.
• I think this is a good idea (especially in a full year course) because it allows you to go back and reread entries in order to remember things you might have otherwise forgotten.

Determining grades by giving either a quantitative minimum or an evaluation of a final learning reflection:

• I think this is a good method of evaluation for this course.
• I think that the midterm learning reflection should be more than a practice for the final. it is hard to convey all of the learning from an entire year in a course such as this in the final reflection ... would be nice if there were two reflections worth equal marks.
• The mix of the two of these is fine, since the student only has to show what they have learned. This is reasonable, since showing what you learned should not necessarily be a hard task. It might be hard to portray everything we want to, but overall it shows you what we have learned and taken from this course and will help with what things to keep or discard next year!

• It's great how much the class makes us go to the library in research in ways that we don't have to in other classes. Getting familiarized with anthologies etc., was certainly helpful.

• When we all read different plays, I didn't find it extremely beneficial, since most of what we learned from presentations of these plays was the basic plot line, which we could have read in a book or online. I didn't take anything from the plays that I didn't get to read myself and don't remember what they were about, so reading them in small groups or as a class seems like a better idea to me personally:)
• Just the length of the course, I think. I feel like this course would have been even better had it been one semester long. It just becomes difficult to remember what was learned from first semester when the content is accumulative.

Is focusing a course on drama and theatre a useful strategy for learning? What were the consequences of paying attention to considerations beyond the texts to the contexts in which they were created?

• Learning about the outside context of plays helped SO much. Otherwise, I think many plays would seem very similar. They often have similar plot lines, characters and more, so knowing the background history of plays and what was going on during that time is helpful. I know little to nothing about history in this time, so it helped to know these things to differentiate one play from another.
• I thought it was a good strategy, because if we don't focus on the theater aspect, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that these plays were written to be performed. Especially for Restoration works, which are social documents, it was important to give us some background on what was happening, movements in theater, and criticisms of the stage. By doing so, it was much clearer how these plays were really the product of social processes. It was also much clearer why certain themes were reappearing in our texts, and why the plays were constructed along similar (or different) lines.
• I liked that because it allowed us to understand the play itself and the life behind the play. I suppose it created more content to learn, but I think it was useful.

• It gave us the chance to study many different areas of the subject rather than concentrate on one term paper with little knowledge to take from it and forget about it, but the little assignments connected together and we could put them together to show a broader view of what we've learned.
• I was much less stressed about learning. I felt like I could actually delve into the texts, and I wasn't afraid of posting and incorrect analysis. The fact that we were often allowed to go back and edit our work based on class feedback/comments, or our own realizations was very helpful. I also felt as though I was able to learn material that isn't necessarily "transferrable" to other areas of my studies in a way that allowed me to take away transferrable skills. My writing, critical thinking, and text analysis improved, but I was never freaking out about deadlines and papers.
• I feel like I would have learned a lot more by doing it the way we did as apposed to term papers and examinations because we were constantly engaged in the content with our daily assignments.

• Absolutely take this course! I was this person last year, and a student from a few years ago told me to take it, and I am very glad he did. The structure of this class is so much different than any other course I've taken during my years at STU. Having such a small class was one of the best things about it. We became close very quickly and it allowed us to be open about what we wanted to discuss and tell our own thoughts and opinions. The content of this class was different from any other English class that I have taken and it was something that I knew absolutely nothing about so it truly was beneficial to my learning because I can now say I have an understanding of the time period and the drama. Honestly my favorite class
• That you cover a lot of ground, and it doesn't matter if you hate restoration theater, you will find something to love about it and look at it in a different way if you take this course. However, I would also say that if she hates working independently, and deadlines, and writing she shouldn't take this course. This is really a class where you take away what you're willing to put in. If you don't work you won't learn a thing.
• I would definitely explain to her that the course is like nothing she had ever taken before, but that it is a refreshing and different style of learning.
• TAKE THIS COURSE!