Official Course Description
The Introductory Arts and Humanities Seminar introduces students to questions about the place of the arts, humanities, and communication in a life well lived, in the university, and in the broader society. How do we make sense of the world through art and literature? How does familiarity with history help us place current events in a meaningful context? What concepts and terms do we use to arrive at our moral, ethical, aesthetic, and religious values? How might we communicate that meaning and those concerns to others in oral, written, and visual ways? Students participate in small group work, regular reading and writing, engaging discussions, and campus events. Over the term, they develop an academic ePortfolio, where they collect, select, and reflect on their learning. Throughout the class, students work closely with faculty and peers to critically examine the place of the liberal arts in higher education, relate their own goals to the curriculum, and become active participants in the School of Arts and Humanities
Student Course Description
The Intro to Arts and Humanities seminar incorporates the arts, humanities, and communications to help students broaden their understanding of how connected and complex these topic areas become when introduced in the scope of history, social theory, and global perspectives. The class structure takes on various methods, including discussions based on articles, a short novel, in-class faculty speakers, and reflections on group engagement and personal efforts to contribute to the class. A few themes that this course hones in on are ethical implications surrounding literature and art, such as the roles of consumerism, privacy rights, individualism, and many more. Students are also aware of two final projects, a College Story Podcast finalized ePortfolio website, that requires work to be done throughout the semester to have completeness. These are done by uploading all applicable work to customizable ePortfolios and doing weekly audio journal entries to have material to work from when completing. By the end of the semester, students will be able to confidently say they examined the roles of liberal learning in tertiary education, connected those to specific learning goals and requirements for each individual, and practiced skills relating to reading and writing comprehension and analysis.
