Indiana University Teaching Experiment

A Teaching Experiment Shows Students How to Grasp Big Concepts

See the 11.15.09 Chronicle of Higher Education article by David Glenn.

Here’s an excerpt:

Several years ago, a small group of faculty members at Indiana University at Bloomington decided to do something about the problem. The key, they concluded, was to construct every history course around two core skills of their discipline: assembling evidence and interpreting it.

Their course reinventions are now drawing attention from scholars around the world, and from disciplines far afield from history. Every area of study, the Indiana scholars say, has its own distinctive bottleneck—concepts or tasks that many students never quite grasp. Biology students, for example, have trouble developing accurate mental images of molecules. Many professors are so familiar with these bottleneck concepts that they find them difficult to explain.

Colonial Colleges

These nine institutions of higher education, which were chartered in the American colonies before the American Revolution, are listed below in their order of founding under their common name during the colonial period.

1. Newtowne College (Harvard University)  {Massachusetts Bay Colony; Founded 1636; Chartered 1650; Primary Religious Influence-Puritan} {*For a brief time in 1638 was named Cambridge Institution; was renamed Harvard College in 1639 after John Harvard’s bequest}

2. The College of William & Mary {Colony and Dominion of Virginia; Founded & Chartered 1693; Primary Religious Influence-Church of England}

3. Collegiate School (Yale University)  {Connecticut Colony; Founded & Chartered 1701; Religious Influence-Puritan}

4. Academy of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania or “Penn) {Province of Pennsylvania; Founded 1740; Chartered 1755; Primary Religious Influence-Church of England, though nonsectarian officially}

5. College of New Jersey (Princeton University) {Province of New Jersey; Founded and Chartered 1746; Primary Religious Influence-Presbyterian, though officially nonsectarian}

6. King’s College (Columbia University in the City of New York)  {Province of New York; Founded & Chartered 1754; Primary Religious Influence-Church of England}

7. College in the English Colony of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations (Brown University)  {Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; Founded and Chartered 1764; Primary Religious Influence-Baptist, though no religious requirement for admissions}

8. Queen’s College (Rutger’s, The State University of New Jersey)  {Province of New Jersey; Founded & Chartered 1766; Primary Religious Influence-Dutch Reformed}

9. Dartmouth College  {The Province of New Hampshire; Founded & Chartered 1769; Primary Religious Influence-Puritan}

Note: Many other colleges and universities have their foundations in colonial-era academies or schools, but are not considered Colonial Colleges as they did not receive university status until after the formation of the United States of America in 1776. These include but are not limited to: King William’s School in Annapolis (the present-day St. John’s College), College of Charleston, Hampden-Sydney College, Augusta Academy (the present day Washington and Lee University), and Union College.

Note: Seven of these nine colleges are part of the Ivy League Athletic Conference. These include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Brown. The eighth member of the Ivy League, Cornell, was founded in 1865. The two colonial colleges that are not part of the Ivy League are The College of William & Mary and Rutgers University. William & Mary is a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, and Rutgers is a member of the Big East Conference. William and Mary was private upon its founding in 1693 and remained so until 1906.

Note: Click here for a map of the original 13 colonies in America.

Note: Click here for a link to an interactive image of the Harvard Charter of 1650, along with transcription. 

Note: Harvard was modeled on Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Emmanuel College was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, a Puritan who intended the college to be a training center for Protestant ministers to rival the then-dominant Catholic theological schools devoted to the training of Dominican friars. Other interesting facts include: Emmanuel remained a single-sex college until 1979. The college is affectionately known as “Emma” throughout Cambridge University. Emmanuel’s chapel was designed in 1677 by Christopher Wren, a famous 17th century architect and scholar trained in mathematics, astronomy, geometry, and physics.