Exploring environmental literature using electronic portfolios.

Abstract

Field trips naturally enhance class experiences for students of environmental literature; technology, however, is rarely incorporated in such courses. This panel discussion chronicles how using an electronic portfolio to create an "art gallery" encourages literature students to generate writings informed by both literature and art. A significant value in entering the virtual world is that students are able to draw on artists' conceptions of nature in stimulating ways, aiding their understanding of course concepts.

Introduction--Katherine

Taking students outside of the classroom is a natural extension of my environmental literature courses. Classes beside a pond to discuss Thoreau's Walden, or rendezvousing on a hilltop to read Gary Snyder poems--those, I have done. What I have not attempted is the rocky terrain of the computer lab. In composition I employ computer exercises, but the cement block walls of our windowless computer labs have not seemed appropriate class settings for nature literature. In this, I am not alone. Any review of eco-pedagogical articles and bibliographies demonstrates that others also wish to move students into the natural rather than the technological world. A recent survey of members of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, for instance, indicates that all "respondents include some outdoor activity in their curriculum" while "nearly all ... are reluctant to use on-line instruction" (Erb, 2003 6, 5). Although Erb surveyed only a small percentage of the association's members, studies on teaching literature with an environmental focus confirm that common practice includes taking students outdoors (see, for example, Waage, 1985; Thomashow, 1995).

Indeed, when we read nature essays from writers like Thoreau or Edward Abbey, technology is often the railed-against adversary of ecological practices. Environmental literature faculty have interest in moving away from technology into experiential education (Kraft and Kielsmeier, 1995; Crimmel, 2003). Social justice and service learning, other pedagogical methods that are distant from technology, also play significant roles (Dixon and Smith, 1998). Studies of computer technology in environmentally-related education specify lack of computer training in addition to skepticism as reasons why faculty do not turn to the electronic environment (Bowers, 1995; Selfe and Selfe, 1994; Woodlief, 1994). Certainly both attitude and lack of training influenced my decisions. Out of the wide range of pedagogical methodologies available, computer technology was the very last approach 1 would have chosen for my environmental courses--until I signed up for a workshop on electronic portfolios offered by our school's Writing Center.

Introducing Electronic Portfolios--Sarah

In May 2003, the Writing Center offered a two-day workshop introducing electronic portfolios to interested faculty members, hoping to acquaint faculty with new teaching tools and make them feel comfortable exploring programs they may not have had time to learn on their own. We hoped that introducing electronic portfolios to a greater number of instructors would increase faculty interest in incorporating technology into their classes and inspire them to use it in new ways. We did not realize that their ideas would, in turn, inspire us.

As a teaching tool, electronic portfolios have been used many different ways. At St. Mary's College of Maryland, electronic portfolio use has been made possible by the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant under the US Department of Education. We believe, as Kathleen Yancey does, that a successful portfolio, electronic or otherwise, is one that is "longitudinal in nature ... diverse in content ... and almost always collaborative in ownership and composition" (1992, 102). In most cases, students use Dreamweaver software to populate pre-designed templates with classwork, drafts, and reflections on what they are learning. For ease of instruction, we use a standard template that defines the menu and folder structure of the electronic portfolio. However, because the template specifies format rather than content, instructors and instructional technologists can easily adapt our portfolios across genres and purposes. Among other applications, electronic portfolios have been used at St. Mary's in composition classes, biology field studies, as student-teacher portfolios and senior capstone projects; they are constantly evolving.

An electronic portfolio is not only flexible as a learning tool but also as a final product. Students have living documentation of their work that can be posted to the Internet, kept on a CD as a reference, or used as part of a resume, in a format that is much more accessible than a large binder or manila folder. Recognizing the potential of electronic portfolios, twenty faculty members attended the May 2003 workshop, and out of 109 full-time faculty, nearly 20% now employ electronic portfolios in some capacity. [1]

Reconceptualizing a Pedagogical Approach--Katherine

Particularly with its title specifying "portfolios," the electronic portfolio workshop appeared to me an opportunity to learn another way in which computers might aid my composition students. Following the workshop, however, a conversation with a colleague sent my thoughts in entirely new directions. After listening to my lament about the difficulty of adding time-expensive computer training into classes, my colleague, who directs our education program and who had participated in the workshop, asked, "What about your new course? Describe it to me; there may be a way to work this in." [2]

My new course was Landscape and Literature, a topics class for upper level English majors and students pursuing our Environmental Studies program. Rather than exploring the nature writing canon, however, this course would examine works commonly taught in literature classrooms. Shakespeare, Woolf, Dickinson, and Wright were to be our authors. I adopted an anthology that included four centuries of British and American literary works with significant nature-related content. [3] As a means of managing this wide range of material, I decided to use pastoral as our course focus. [4]

During my conversation with my colleague, the concept of using an electronic portfolio as a "gallery" emerged. That word opened a floodgate for me. I could suddenly envision the value of turning to technology to help us understand the natural world. We could locate artworks as a means of conceptualizing the abstract ideas we encountered in the written word. As an environmental studies offering, Landscape and Literature was a course that I believed should be interdisciplinary, and I arranged to team-teach with a photography professor, merging our classes for three weeks of the semester. The electronic portfolio would provide a way of compiling the students' photographic interpretations of pastoral, which would add a valuable dimension. The gallery idea suited the objectives of the course and seemed an ideal modification of the electronic portfolio. Over the next two months, during planning sessions with the Assistant Writing Center Director and the Arts and Letters reference librarian, I developed the art gallery concept to include several "exhibits." To follow through on the gallery idea, each image placed in the electronic portfolio was to be accompanied by labelling text. We also designed collaborative assignments that would allow students to turn to each other while developing comfort with the technology.

Designing a Gallery Template--Sarah

We needed to design a template that allowed for flexible group work, an evolving syllabus, and creativity in student design, while providing suitable guidelines for each assignment, the final structure, and copyright issues inherent in crafting a gallery of images. We also wanted the final product to display the class's progress to both students and public (Meyer, Schuman, and Angelo, 1990). The primary challenge in this case was inventing a structure that presented the gallery exhibits in an attractive and easily-navigable way while still tracking each student's learning processes.

In the end, we decided that the gallery itself would be created by the professor. Although the students would work in groups, with each group responsible for contributing a section of every exhibit, the students were given individual electronic portfolios on a shared network drive. The portfolios would be populated with responses to readings, definitional writings, reflections on the paintings, and drafts working towards their final exhibit pages--the artwork accompanied by a collaboratively written label that explained its connections to course literature. As the students posted their final exhibits, Katherine would link to them from the main gallery, located on the same network drive. The gallery would be posted to the Internet at the end of the semester. Visitors to the final website would encounter six different renderings (created by six different groups in the class) in each exhibit before moving to the next. In addition, a drop-down menu would allow interested visitors to see individual students' work, posted with permission, including everything each student did to contribute to the final product.

Assignment Design--Katherine

The first concept I wanted students to grapple with was "arcadia," so I had two groups search on the Internet for a painting conveying an idealized arcadia, two, a sentimentalized arcadia, and two, a complex arcadia. Each group was to choose a representative image, download it into the exhibit, and write and post explanatory text. Those accessing the site could then view the six paintings comprising the arcadia exhibit with their accompanying interpretive "labels," then move to the next exhibit. Other exhibits included British versus American notions of pastoral, national parks' version of pastoral, and examples of pastoral, anti-pastoral, and post-pastoral. [5] For the latter, students create their own digital images. It was during this assignment that our class would join with the photography class. However, since students were transferring artwork from the Internet into their exhibits throughout the semester, sources of images and acknowledgment of copyright had to be addressed. This is when we found especially valuable the expertise of our reference librarian.

Locating and Documenting Images--Kerie

In one of those coincidences that can happen on a small campus, I ended up sitting next to Katherine in the electronic portfolio workshop. Katherine and I had worked together successfully in the past, so when we talked about her Landscape and Literature class we thought we would experiment with the traditional "library lecture." Issues relating to copyright and permissions for electronic publications are growing ever more complicated, so Katherine's original suggestion was that I talk to the class about those concerns. As the divisional library liaison for the Arts and Letters departments, I have worked with art history and studio students on finding images. When I demonstrated for Katherine just how difficult it can be to locate specific artworks, she agreed that we should expand the session to include assistance with image search as well as copyright issues.

Sarah and I met later to talk more specifically about how we could structure a computer lab/library session. One of the issues that librarians contend with is the idea, common to most students, that any and all information, including images, is freely available on the Internet and can easily be located with a couple of mouse clicks. I have found that assigning mini-projects to small groups is a memorable way of demonstrating effective and ineffective search strategies and can lead to productive class discussions; it is also a successful way to get students frustrated, interested, and involved. Sarah and I devised a teaching plan to put students in small groups and assign them the task of finding specific kinds of images using different search tools such as Google, Sherlock, or public gallery websites. In addition, each group would be asked to describe the copyright and permissions information given on the website. Sarah and I decided that I would take the students through the steps of finding images, locating permissions and copyright, and using the correct citation style, then Sarah would take over the technological aspects of importing images into the electronic portfolio.

Securing the Nuts and Bolts--Sarah

While we had decided to use the electronic portfolio as a gallery instigating insights into the natural world and had developed a template that would support those goals, we still needed to decide how the electronic portfolio would best fit into the semester schedule. This "gallery" of images and text, and especially the time that would be needed to teach students how to use and populate it, certainly had the potential to overwhelm other aspects of the class. Because technology is often difficult to learn unless it is immediately relevant, we decided to spend a week near the beginning of the semester immersing the students in computer technology. This was when students would learn basic Dreamweaver skills and also when the images and citation class would occur. We scheduled two separate lab dates for later in the semester, when students would begin individual projects to include as their final exhibit.

Assessing Learning Goals--Katherine, Sarah, Kerie

Developing a course electronic portfolio "gallery" promotes technological and presentation skills as well as content goals. In addition to extending online research abilities, this gallery concept of the electronic portfolio allows students to practice web design. Creativity, forethought, and cooperation are fostered. For instance, discussion accompanying image selection allows students to articulate better what the literature we are reading suggests. Deeper understandings of course ideas inform the students' accompanying labels.

Since Landscape and Literature is an upper level course, student input is necessary to encourage independent thinking. Working in groups encourages valuing others' reactions during the reasoning process. Collaborating provides a means of stretching beyond comfortable and commonplace terrain and is one of the greatest benefits of this work, a benefit which the three of us also experienced in the process of designing this project. The electronic portfolio has the advantage of a public component in a more permanent forum than panel presentations or talks. Displaying students' work on a website allows visits by others outside of class and revisiting by classmates in process of understanding course concepts. The gallery's placement of the work of one group in relation to the work of others creates opportunities for one group's ideas to interact with another's, adding a measure of contextualizing to the process. We also see on-going revision during the semester, with the final gallery linked to the department's website.

In terms of the course's environmental focus, a significant value in entering the virtual as opposed to the real world is that students can draw on artists' impressions of nature in both comparative and evocative ways. In the literature we read, conceptualizations invite us to "see" the world around us through the lens of multiple perspectives, including diverse ideologies. Visual representations help students to grasp those and other abstract notions. The electronic portfolio is also a way for students in urban environments to access, at least visually, a variety of settings beyond the cityscape.

While the experiential aspect of the electronic portfolio is in the realm of computers, we believe that the gallery approach aids in developing a keener awareness of the natural environment and our attitudes toward it. By selecting the artwork that amplifies their literary texts and responding with thought, students come to understand embedded cultural ideas about nature. As they move away from their monitors and out to their campus settings, students carry with them more informed consciousness of the ponds and hills adjoining the parking lots and computer labs. That deeper understanding subsequently inspires their ideas to expand.

Footnotes

[1] The materials used in our workshop can be seen at http://www.smcm.edu/writingcenter/workshop/WWW_LocalRoot/index.htm.

[2] For her ideas and insights during our brainstorming conversation, my gratitude to Lois Stover, Chair of Educational Studies at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

[3] The textbook for the course is Literature and Nature: Four Centuries of Nature Writing edited by Bridget Keegan and James C. McKusick, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001.

[4] For two sources on pastoral, see The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964, 2000 and Pastoral by Terry Gifford, London: Routledge, 1999.

[5] I employed Terry Gifford's definitions for anti- and post-pastoral.

References

Bowers, C.A. (1995) Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture. New York: State University of New York Press.

Crimmel, Hal, ed. (2003) Teaching in the Field: Working with Students in the Outdoor Classroom. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.

Dixon, Terrell and L. Smith (1998) "Service Learning and Environmental Writing." New York: The Modern Language Association Newsletter, Special Issue on Innovations in Undergraduate Teaching A: 3-4.

Erb, Audrey (2003) "A Survey of ASLE Members' Current Teaching Practices: Implications and Questions." http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~writent/audrey/asle%20survey.html.

Kraft, Richard J. and James Kielsmeier, eds. (1995) Experiential Learning In Schools and Higher Education. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company for the Association For Experiential Education.

Meyer, Schuman, and Angello (1990, September) NWEA white paper on aggregating portfolio data. Lake Oswego, Oregon: Northwest Evaluation Association.

Selfe, Richard J. and Cynthia L. Selfe (1994) "The Politics of the Interface; Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones. " College Composition and Communication 45.4: 480-504.

Thomashow, Mitchell (1995) Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Waage, Frederick O., ed. (1985) Teaching Environmental Literature: Materials, Methods, Resources. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Woodlief, Ann (1994) "American Nature Writing: A Computer and Writing Intensive Course." ISLE 2.1: 141-149.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake (1992) Portfolios in the Writing Classroom: An Introduction. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE.

Katherine Chandler, St. Mary's College of Maryland

Sarah C. Magruder, St. Mary's College of Maryland

Kerie L. Nickel, St. Mary's College of Maryland

Chandler is Assistant Professor of English and an originating member of the college's Environmental Studies Program. Magruder is the Assistant Director of the Writing Center and an Assistant Instructional Technologist. Nickel's responsibilities as reference/instruction librarian include working with faculty to develop assignments that teach not only course content but information literacy skills and legal and ethical aspects of using information.