SOURCE
Vol. 15
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No. 3
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14
August 2018
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A Novel Approach: Engaging First-Year Students in a Common Book Program As colleges and universities confront student retention challenges, many have charged their faculty with finding new and innovative ways to engage students in the first year. These faculty are frequently encouraged to embed common-reading selections in their courses as a way to deepen students’ engagement with a chosen text. This article describes a unique strategy of doing so at Kansas State University (KSU). KSU’s first-year seminar partnered a common reading of Mark Haddon’s book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with a choreographic dance. The project gave a section of 22 first-year students, most of whom likely had no dance experience upon entering the course, the chance to engage in dance and theater without needing to enroll in extra classes. While common readings are not new to FYE programs, we found that activities exploring this common read provided opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning, exchanges of ideas, and a variety of interactions.
Engagement Project As a foundation, all participants (i.e., seminar students and dancers) Kansas State University’s first-year seminar partnered a had to read and become familiar common reading of a mystery novel with a choreographic dance performance. Photo courtesy of Kansas State University with Haddon’s book, a mystery novel Communications and Marketing released in 2003. Students in the first-year seminar created timelines of important events from the book, which served as a reference for designing choreography for the dance piece. Trained dancers and other performers directed by the first-year students and their professor, who also served as the choreographer, would perform the piece as part of a mainstage event. The students’ first assignment was to construct a one-sentence statement that captured the novel’s essence rather than summarizing it. The choreographer had not expected to include spoken word in the dance piece; however, after reading the students’ responses, it was apparent that those one-sentence statements would greatly impact the overall performance. The variety of ideas they generated was diverse and inspiring. The text chosen to be part of the performance included the following: • If someone is labeled, it doesn’t define them;
Julie Pentz Associate Professor, Director, K-State Dance Program Kansas State University
“The students’ first assignment was to construct a one-sentence statement that captured the novel’s essence rather than summarizing it. … The variety of ideas they generated was diverse and
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inspiring.
• A boy who is discovering himself; • Innocence of the modern life; Return to Front Page Copyright © 2018 National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience® and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina
