GEORGE MACDONALD ROSS
E-LEARNING MATERIALS
I started producing e-learning materials in 1998. At the time, I was responsible for three modules:
1. Spinoza and Leibniz. This was shortly taken over by someone else, and the materials I produced are incomplete, and represent a primitive use of technology. However, I did further develop translations of Spinoza's Ethics, Part I, and Leibniz's Monadology, with linked running commentaries viewable in a separate frame.
2. Introduction to the History of Modern Philosophy, subsequently renamed Hobbes and Descartes in Context. The idea was that students would come to understand the radical nature of the change in philosophical and scientific thinking that took place in the 1630s and 1640s by comparing texts by Hobbes and Descartes with extracts from the writings of their predecessors in antiquity, the middle ages, and the renaissance. They would also appreciate the similarities as well as the differences between Hobbes and Descartes themselves. Apart from weekly seminars, and hard-copy versions of the principal texts, everything was on line. I encouraged students to work on line, and gave them a preliminary lecture and demonstration on how to make texts easier to read (see also 'Howtouse' in the navigation bar on the top left of the Hobbes and Descartes website). Texts were classed as 'compulsory', 'main', and 'supplementary', so that students could cover all the core materials, but pursue some topics to greater depth if they wished. All the compulsory texts were supplied with a running commentary. Each topic for each week's work had an overview document explaining the philosophical issues (in effect, a substitute for a stand-up lecture), with links to the reading at appropriate points. Importantly, the fact that I had created all the materials meant that I was not constrained by considerations of copyright.
In 2004/05, the status of the module was changed from a core module (with about 140 students), to an optional module, for which only 14 students registered. The Department of Philosophy decided the numbers were too small to be viable, and the module was discontinued. This is a pity, because an immense amount of time went into developing it, and it was the most electronically advanced module in the Department, and probably in any philosophy department in the world (with the possible exception of some logic modules).
3. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Because I prioritised Hobbes and Descartes in Context, the Kant module is not yet fully interactive (though all documents are available electronically as well as in hard copy). I originally wrote a running commentary to the relevant parts of the Kemp Smith translation of the Critique of Pure Reason. For various reasons, I decided to change the set text to the translation by Guyer and Wood, and I rewrote my commentaries. However, this translation was also unsatisfactory, so I produced my own student-friendly translation; but I have not yet had time to complete the rewriting of the commentaries so that they refer to my text. When I have done so, I can link text and commentary so that they can be read simultaneously on screen in separate frames. In the meantime, I do not regard the Kant module as yet a model for e-learning (unlike the previous two modules), although I do claim (and my students confrim this) that my translation is more intelligible as well as being more accurate than those in print.
Because I had a grand vision of a number of pathways through the history of philosophy, I created some resources which would be common to a number of modules. But since all but one module was discontinued, and no others were created, these resources are incomplete. They include links to external websites, summaries of philosophers' positions, biographies, and date charts and maps.
MCQs where there are no right or wrong answers. I believe that there are three levels of e-learning materials: (a) 'shovelware', or shovelling pre-existing materials into the internet, so that students can expensively shovel it out again into hard copy (to be deprecated); (b) using electronic media to design course materials in new ways, so that they are easier for students to use than hard-copy materials (as I have done so far); and (c) using electronic media to enable students to engage actively with the material, and to develop skills in ways which are otherwise inconceivable. This is the most exciting challenge, and as a University Teaching Fellow of the University of Leeds, I have been awarded a grant of £15k to develop a suite of MCQs to improve students' thinking skills in areas where there are no right or wrong answers. It is based on my Kant module, where the main objectives are that students should learn to argue why one interpretation of the text is better than another, and to argue for the pros and cons of the text as so interpreted. It is not evident that students approach difficult texts in the same way as experienced historians of philosophy, and the idea is, from time to time, to give them MCQs which provide a taste of the sort of thinking they should be using all the time. As far as interpretation is concerned, the MCQs will offer a number of different possible interpretations of a key text. When students click on a particular interpretation, they are confronted with a number of possible reasons why the interpretation is a good or bad one. Clicking on a particular reason will give them a judgment as to the validity of the reason, and they are encouraged to repeat the process with different reasons and different interpretations. If they go through the whole set of interpretations, reasons, and judgments, they will have experienced the sort of complex thinking that is normal for a professional historian of philosophy, and they will come to apply it to all their reading. At present I have created only one example of such an MCQ, but there should be many more within the near future. There will also be examples of reasons for and against any given interpretation. This technique can be applied to any discipline where there are no right or wrong answers, and it should stimulate a major increase in the use of C&IT for formative assessment.