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Conversation with Elizabeth Cullingford

It was a long journey for Elizabeth Cullingford, Blumberg Centennial Professor In English, to receiving the Gold award in the Teaching with Technology category in the IITAP 2003 competition for her entry Multimedia Version of Masterworks of British Literature. Cullingford said she was thrilled to receive the award, in part because there have been so many phases to the project and many challenges along the way to produce the version of the course she now teaches annually.

Cullingford uses visual and aural materials to attract and hold attention in lectures of more than 200 students, and to provide cultural and historical context for the literary works they study. She has collected hundreds of images related to the authors, texts, and time periods, and blends these into her E316K class presentations, along with music appropriate for the texts, which help students become more involved in the course.

When Cullingford, a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, was asked by English Department chair James Garrison to teach E316K, a large course for students who are not English majors, she was determined to make it a positive experience. Aware that most students take the course only because it is a requirement for graduation, and are often unmotivated, Cullingford decided to make it interesting and fun. Her idea of doing literature as a show, with visual and aural stimuli, began with collecting materials from many sources, such as libraries and museums in London and Paris, and from online collections, over a period of years.

Assembling the collection of resources for use in a large lecture class was made possible by College of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Grants, which provided her with a computer, funds for materials, and a summer salary to work on the project. Essential for success was the support of a team of technology specialists in the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS), who helped Cullingford digitize images and prepare high-quality electronic media versions from her materials. She incorporates them during lectures, using QuickTime and PowerPoint. "I couldn't have done it by myself", says Cullingford. "If I'd just had money with no team, I might not have finished it," she said, giving credit to the artist, programmers, and Joe TenBarge, director of LAITS.

Cullingford initially began using a PC, with which she was familiar, but found that the quality of the digitized images was not what she'd envisioned. Switching to a Macintosh platform made a big improvement, she felt, in the quality and convenience of producing multimedia materials for use in class, and things began to go much better. She brings her materials to class on CDs, using the media where needed in the lectures. Showing images gives students a break from note-taking, which she believes helps them maintain attention during the class.

Before this project for E316K, Cullingford says she used conventional teaching methods, and taught mostly small, advanced courses. The problems of large classes, with a captive, unmotivated audience, indicated the need for a new teaching approach. She knew she wanted to get students' attention in class, and also encourage them to read the texts. "What I had to do was to have the media in the classroom," she says, rather than just have enrichment resources on a Web site. It's not just to make the class pretty; it's now an integral part of the way she teaches.

Choosing music and images that are appropriate for the works, Cullingford believes, gives students the sense that the study of literature is interdisciplinary. She explains, "The making of art is visual, aural. Great poets, like Chaucer, were also interested in music. Shakespeare was fascinated by music, and has images of concord and harmony that have to do with the music of his peers". She uses contextual materials, such as images of the Globe Theater when teaching Shakespeare, Irish music when teaching Yeats, or when teaching Milton, medieval images of Satan in Hell or images from Michelangelo. Cullingford says, "Music, visual art, and literature can be seen in the esthetic sense as unity."

Cullingford has been evaluating and tracking the effects of media on her students. At first, she did a pilot version, using media in twelve lectures, and had students evaluate those. Then she moved to having media in every lecture, but this brought along some technical problems. "Using media in class can be scary," she says, "because things can go wrong." Cullingford learned to recover from common problems, and eventually found a balance that worked. She is constantly revising and improving use of media in her E316K course. Evaluations both informal and official show that students appreciate the multimedia enhancements.

Though she's been working on this media version for several years, this was the first time Cullingford submitted an entry to IITAP, which is sponsored by the Center for Instructional Technologies (CIT). She learned about the faculty incentive program through a general e-mail sent to faculty. The process of preparing an IITAP entry was in itself useful, Cullingford said, because she had to think carefully about the exact objectives, the whole rationale for the multimedia approach. It helped her to reformulate her thinking about the course.

She encourages faculty to evaluate what they are doing with students before planning to submit an entry to IITAP. "The judges want to know about the evaluation," Cullingford said, "so, you have to know if it works." She also suggests applying for a grant, since that will give faculty access to a team to help with the development.

Cullingford advises getting proper permissions for using specific images and music, and understanding the extent such permissions allow. For example, she purchased some images, but found later that the license allows her to use them only in her own class. They can't be put on a Web site, unless password protection limits access to her students. The resources she's assembled can't simply be given to other teachers. Cullingford is exploring such issues more fully, since she wants to share her multimedia course material with others.

Reflecting on the process and learning that she has been through over several years of working on this course, Cullingford says that she wouldn't have believed it would change her whole manner of teaching the way that it has. Now even in small, specialized courses she uses media when appropriate. Sometimes these are items she collected for E316K, such as for Shakespeare, or she may capture images from film and use them in a PowerPoint demonstration, which she makes herself for use in a specific class.

The multimedia experience has also helped Cullingford publicize her scholarship. Recently, when giving a keynote lecture on the Irish Renaissance for a general audience, she was able to use images and music from the Yeats lectures in her E316K course. Cullingford explains, "I knew I wasn't going to be talking to scholars. I'd be talking to the public, so using the images and the music went over incredibly well."

Students in Cullingford's E316K Masterworks of British Literature course have benefited from the multimedia she uses. She encourages other faculty to try it, saying it would be great for topics where the context is important. Cullingford cites some examples: "Many of my students have never been outside of Texas. They've not seen medieval cathedrals. They haven't a clue what a moor looks like, or what "wuthering" means. So I have images of a moor. I show several views of cathedrals. Music of the period plays when they come in. I have images from the time of Chaucer of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury." It all helps students develop a visual sense, and enables them to comprehend the texts more fully. She believes that teaching large classes in this way is more fun and more educational for everyone.

May 2003
Dawn Cizmar