The OWL Blog
Studying Rock and Roll History: Part 2
Studying Rock and Roll History: A Case for History of Rock and Roll, Part 2
Contributed by David Sherman
About a year ago in this blog, Keith Thompson made a compelling argument as to why we include music in the humanities. With the unveiling of Excelsior College's new course, MUS 211: The History of Rock and...
2014-01-22 20:48:15Games and Learning at Excelsior College
Contributed by David Seelow, PhD, Director of Writing and the Online Writing Lab, School of Liberal Arts, Excelsior College
This May 17th Excelsior College will host a major symposium entitled Games and the Curriculum: Toward a New Educational Model. You can attend this event online by registering at
Young Adult Fiction and Reader Motivation in the College Classroom
Contributed by Mary Firestone
Last year, when my students filed into my Contemporary Literature class with their Norton Anthologies, they complained about how heavy the textbooks were.
Soon though, the real story came out. “Is this the only textbook for the class?” one student wailed. “I...
2014-01-22 20:56:19Attending the Aspen Institute 2012: Citizenship in
Contributed by Dr. Constance Cramer, faculty member in the undergraduate Humanities and Arts program and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
Teaching with Comics
Contributed by Beth Davies-Stofka, Ph.D.
It’s fair to say that higher education vastly prefers the written word to the drawn picture. But are there good reasons for this preference? Isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? Perhaps the time has come to begin using comics as teaching tools. They...
2014-01-22 22:23:43The Examined Life
Contributed by Dr. Tracy Caldwell, Program Director and Faculty Advisor, Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program
English Deficiency in America
Contributed by Richard Wu, Associate Dean, School of Liberal Arts, Excelsior College
I came to this country from China in 1992, at the age of 35, too old to enact my Broca area and the related motor system to learn to speak English if I had not learned the language before. Fortunately I had. In fact I had a master degree in English...
2014-01-22 22:27:07Quality in Art
Contributed by Laura Eklund
In his book, “The End of Art,” Arthur Danto suggests that we have entered an age of art without manifestos. He says there is no longer a dominant aesthetic school in Western Art. He points to the moment of Andy Warhol’s stacked Brillo boxes, as the beginning of “The End of...
2014-01-22 22:28:10Online Learning & Voice Recognition: Thwarting hig
Contributed by Karen White - The reality of the fact, according to a recent Sloan-C survey performed by Allen & Seaman in 2010, is that “the growth rate for online enrollment (17%) continues to outpace the overall growth rate for enrollments in higher education (1.2%)” (Emphasis mine). Who would have...
2014-01-22 22:31:36Avoiding Plagiarism
Contributed by Claire Bradin Siskin – All writing instructors sooner or later must grapple with the issue of plagiarism, and the problem is particularly acute for those who teach English Language Learners (ELLs). An online tutorial called 2014-01-22 22:33:24
Ensuring Student Success for a Positive Online Learning Experience
Contributed by Errol Craig Sull -
It’s a mixed bag: what we pull together and offer our students to ensure they not only have a positive online learning experience but they continue to embrace and use beyond the course what they learned while in the course. Each online instructor has developed his or her own...
2014-01-22 22:37:33Gender and the Arts
Contributed by Dr. Victoria Schmidt -
Kathryn Bigelow is now the first female director to win an academy award! AND she is almost 60 years old AND she won for directing a war film… Was I dreaming? Oh how long women in film have been waiting for such a day but does this really mean anything? Have women come far in the industry?...
2014-01-22 22:38:44How is Music a Humanity?
Contributed by Dr. Keith Thompson -
“The Arts” and “The Humanities” are linked together on many campuses and in the minds of many scholars. Is this merely a marriage of convenience, or is there a substantative relationship between these disciplines? When I ask students in my music appreciation course...
2014-01-22 22:39:46