By E. B. Hunter
These online materials accompany the Theatre Topics article "Structuring Courses with Agile Research Studio: Five Components and Four Pedagogical Values," which describes a system for structuring courses wherein students create projects, either individually or in groups. The system, Agile Research Studio (ARS), trains students how to self-direct the complex process of completing a high-quality project. The article explains how the five components of ARS can cultivate four key pedagogical values: effective planning, community, transferrable skills, and accountability. Readers are invited to download and use/modify these materials as desired; no attribution is necessary. However, the author would be extremely appreciative of emails to ebh@sfsu advising her of such, for inclusion in her file.
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Syllabus. The syllabus illustrates how the author uses ARS to structure a sixteen-week, upper-division theatre history seminar of twenty-five-to-thirty students. Although this syllabus describes a Zoom version of the class, which transpired during distance learning, it is also suitable for on-campus learning. Regardless of modality, the syllabus divides the semester into seven "sprints," each of which lasts two weeks and focuses on one canonical dramatic text. A one-week introduction and conclusion bookend the term. Over the course of each sprint, groups (here "companies") of four-to-six students create and stage a brief original adaptation of a section of the canonical play under discussion. Half of a student's grade is based on this group work, and the other half on individual writing assignments, which are described in Appendix B: Assignments.
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Individual research log template. Students keep an individual research log as a "research diary" of their contributions to each sprint. Rather than aiding with planning, this document helps students connect their work with course learning objectives and post-graduation plans.
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Process guide for assembling companies. This guide explains how the author assists students in assembling the four-to-six person companies they will work with throughout the semester. This version of the process assumes an on-campus experience, but could easily be modified for an online environment.
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Sprint log. This template is a streamlined version of the original, which can be found in the ARS Starter Kit on www.agileresearch.io.
For my theatre history seminars, I use the task categories of "D = Dramaturgy, T = Technical, and R = Rehearsal." Different category names may be more suitable for other courses.
To direct students' attention only to the cells they should edit, I grayed out all other cells and added a large reminder at the top. Do not update grayed-out cells—they update automatically. Direct editing these cells disrupts formulae and links elsewhere in the workbook.
Another important element of the sprint log is the "Hours Available" column in the top section, which students do not edit. This column is linked to and populated by the sprint log's first sheet, which includes a column for company member names and a column for how many hours students have available for each two-week sprint. I populate this column myself, because it represents the number of hours per week the department and university expect students to spend on a three-credit, upper-division course.
The "Hours Available" column populates automatically across all sprint logs in the template, so institutional expectations appear at the top of every sheet. As students fill out the Hours Spent column for each task, the template automatically calculates how many total hours each group member has contributed per sprint, and compares it to the hours they are expected to contribute.
Syllabus
Individual Research Log Template
| First name, last name | |||
| Task | How this task relates to a specific learning objective | How my work on this task might transfer to a job | Extra thoughts |
| Sprint 1 |
Process Guide for Assembling Companies
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Ice-breaker activity about commute length. Working together, students line up in order of commute length.1 This activity creates camaraderie through a common Bay Area struggle and helps students assemble companies with an understanding of classmates' time pressures. Many companies form because students discover they live near one another. Other companies have formed because students with especially long commutes decide to collaborate online.
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Special Interest Group (SIG) formation. Students affiliate with one of five Special Interest Groups (SIGs), based on themes from my research. Another option is to identify themes in conjunction with students. Students group together according to the theme that most interests them. Students interested in multiple themes may switch SIGs every two sprints. To encourage full participation in related small-group discussions, I split groups larger than eight into two SIGs with the same theme. Each SIG creates a Slack channel.
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Company formation. Students put themselves into the companies that will stay together for the term, barring extraordinary circumstances. They prioritize having at least one member from each SIG as well as commute times. I was the bookworm regularly picked last for kickball in elementary school, so I aid in this step of the process as much as possible. Students name their company and create a company Slack channel. (NB: I limit the total number of companies to six because my seventy-five-minute class period accommodates only six short scenes. I do not recommend a higher company-to-class-minutes ratio, even if it means that companies must have more members. Technical hiccups create regular delays on production showcase days, and companies cannot resist crafting long scenes.)
Sprint Log
This template is a streamlined version of the original, which can be found in the ARS Starter Kit on www.agileresearch.io.
Note
1. Students are not de facto arranging themselves in order of economic status. Commute length is such a well-known, widespread problem that it far transcends economic index. Due to rent control, property tax, and capital gains laws, commute length is more likely an index of how recently someone moved to California. See Rent Board, "This Year's Annual Allowable Increase," City and County of San Francisco, November 2019, https://sfrb.org/topic-no-051-years-annual-allowable-increase; Jimmy Im, "If You Bought a House in San Francisco 10 Years Ago, Here's How Much It Could Be Worth Now," CNBC, July 2, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/01/how-much-a-san-francisco-house-bought-10-years-ago-could-be-worth-now.html; and "Home Truths: The Hidden Reason behind Berkeley's Housing Crisis," Berkeleyside (blog), August 9, 2017, https://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/08/09/hidden-reason-behind-berkeleys-housing-crisis.