Tips for an upper-division night course in Modern?

In the comments section of our "how can we help you?" thread, Anon writes:

I have a question about a specific course I am teaching this semester and would really like some feedback and advice. I have been assigned to teach Modern Philosophy, which is fine, but it got scheduled as a night class, which really throws me off. I REALLY prefer the MWF routine and this really takes me out of my comfort zone.

Second, I face a challenge in that a course like modern philosophy is a course I largely assume will be inhabited by philosophy majors, which it is to an extent, but because there are no prerequisites enforced, I have students who are taking a 300 level modern course as their first one. In some ways, I think this is unfair to me as the instructor and to the students.

So I guess I am asking two things:

1. How do you make a class like modern accessible that just due to the very nature of the content, will seem inaccessible to students have who never taken a class and then are being asked to dive into someone like Spinoza?

2. How do you make night classes work if you've never done one before and you feel like the students are dreading the time of the class?

I don't have experience running a course quite like this one--an upper-division course in the History of Philosophy--which I imagine has some unique challenges. However, I can offer a few quick suggestions based on my own experiences.

I've taught a number of upper-division courses quite a bit like the one Anon describes: upper-division evening classes that simultaneously enroll philosophy majors and students who have never taken a single philosophy course before. They are indeed a challenge for this reason: you need to find a way to make fairly advanced material accessible to first-time students, while not depriving more advanced students (i.e. majors) of the complexities of understanding the work at a higher-level. It is a real challenge.

One thing I try to do is to balance my lectures between introductory material (to get new students at least "in the game" in terms of understanding the advanced material), before moving into the more advanced stuff. I've found this approach works pretty well. I'll spend maybe 30-40% of a lecture on really basic stuff (for first-time students), and 60-70% on the more advanced stuff (for majors). My sense is that although the first-time students may still have trouble with the advanced stuff, this approach helps them not feel like they are totally drowning in the material.

A second thing I try to do--both because of the nature of the course itself, and especially if the course is at night--is to have a lot of creative, collaborative in-class group assignments. First, I think in-class group work (with groups of four or five students) is pretty much vital to good evening courses. My experience is that unless students are more or less constantly participating in night courses, they have a tendency to tune out: either because it's late and they are tired, or because it's late and there are other things they are thinking about (hanging out with friends, etc.). Group assignments keep things "fun" for students, keeping the class lively and passing the time far quicker than classes without those kinds of activities. Second, group assignments are really helpful because they enable more advanced students to mentor the less-experienced students. During these assignments, I'll often hear the advanced students explaining things to the less-experienced students, helping the latter get clearer both on the philosophical basics and the more advanced parts of the material. It's really cool to witness! 

Anyway, these are just a couple of things I've found helpful. What about you all? Do any of you have any helpful tips for Anon, particularly those of you who do Modern or other courses in History of Philosophy?

Comments

[Amanda]

I would note that I teach at a school where almost every class something similar is a problem: I have some very advanced students, and some um, not so advanced. My university lets in a lot of top students on full rides, but then also a lot of students that struggled in high school. I haven't found a great solution to teaching to different levels. I do a lot of group activity, and I just try to find a balance between providing challenging material for the best students and accessible material for the worst students. I do my best, but in the end it is not really fair to either type of student.

[Paul]

There might not a way to do this without resentment, but I wonder if you couldn't actually work a mentoring aspect into the syllabus. You could have a slightly different syllabus for philosophy majors and non-majors, and require majors to do pair up with non-majors and have a kind of guided mentoring. Then the non-majors do something like write really short reflection papers based on the material discussed in the mentoring/tutoring session with the major. While I have never tried anything like this, I do teach a cross-listed course with two slightly different syllabi with different assignments, and that has worked fine. Just a thought.

Re: teaching at night. I also think that it is really important to take breaks, let students brings drinks and snacks if they are allowed in the room, and do little ice-breakers once or twice a class so that all the students get to know each other. For the first several weeks I might do a get to know you activity at the beginning of the class, have a break in the middle of class, and then have another activity when they come back. While this doesn't help with teaching the material, I find that students who are comfortable in class, who know each other, and who really feel that the prof knows and cares about them are more willing to work hard and tackle difficult assignments.

[Anon UK Grad]

I'm in a similar boat to Amanda above - most of my upper division philosophy courses do not have prerequisites, and so many of them are split between majors and people who haven't taken much (if any!) philosophy before.

I find the group exercises can be really good, if they (1) are very structured (to give the non-majors a toe-hold), and (2) the groups are also structured such that they have a mix of majors and non-majors (otherwise, I find the groups tend to balkanize, which simple exacerbates the divide).

Similarly with papers - I think the more scaffolding you can give, the better the papers will turn out for the non-majors. I also like to include stretch topics/ideas for the majors, or even the non-majors who might want to try it!

[Mark]

One thing I've started doing a lot more recently with mixed-level classes is to give assignments with a range of different options. For example, students might get to choose between writing a series of short papers or one long research paper. I've found that provides more advanced students with a way to engage the material in greater depth whilst allowing less experienced students to tackle something more manageable. (This is similar to Paul's idea, but I haven't used two separate syllabi - just one syllabus with lots of choices on the format of the assignments.)