Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning. . If USC’s earliest students could travel through time to today’s university, they would probably find the changes inside the classrooms even more astounding than the transformation of the campus. Confined to a rigid academic program that included just four courses of study, classical, philosophical, literary and scientific, students entering USC during the 1880s were permitted no electives during their first two years. Their only resource was a tiny library. , After 1894, when the Reverend Milton E. Phillips became dean of the College of Liberal Arts, both the pedagogy and the curriculum began to broaden, and students gained more choices. “At this moment, a new era had dawned, and with it was ushered in the modern progressive spirit of scientific investigation and thought,” notes Samuel Eugene Gates in his 1929 master’s thesis, “A History of the University of Southern California, 1900-1928.” Science labs were outfitted with the newest and best equipment; course offerings multiplied; and enrollment increased, trends that continued over the next few decades. , During the 1930s, to complement its ongoing curricular expansion, USC began to experiment with new ways to deliver instruction. The first venture was the “University of the Air,” a weekday educational radio program that debuted in the middle of the decade on the Columbia–Don Lee radio network. It was followed in 1939 by “University Television,” a series of USC-produced telecasts over KHJ’s short-wave television station. In 1949, in conjunction with NBC, USC developed a noncredit radio course called “Pioneers of Music.” , By far the most famous of USC’s educational broadcasts began in 1953, when the local CBS television station, KNXT, gave USC one hour of air time a week. The result was “Shakespeare on Television,” hosted by one of USC’s most popular faculty members, Dr. Frank Baxter, an English professor, and adapted from his course. Within weeks, Baxter attracted an audience of 400,000, aged 16 to 93, from all walks of life. The rapid success of the initial series prompted USC and Baxter to offer the course for one unit of college credit, the first TV course given for credit in Southern California. It was so popular that two additional TV Shakespeare courses followed. The 45 programs were picked up by stations across the nation, and other series followed. Baxter was a household name for two decades, earning seven Emmy and a Peabody Award for distinguished achievement in television education. , Educational innovation at USC assumed different forms during the 1960s and 1970s hut again attracted national attention. Inaugurated in 1968, the Urban Semester was an interdisciplinary immersion program that used the entire region as a laboratory. Thematic Option, a demanding, interdisciplinary freshman honors program taught by top faculty, was developed with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and first offered in 1975-76. Today Thematic Option is considered one of the nation’s best undergraduate honors programs. , The opening of the Leavey Library in 1994 added a new dimension to instruction at USC. Conceived as a teaching library combining traditional and digital sources of information, it quickly became a major vehicle for bringing information technology into the classroom. Both a testing ground for technological approaches to more effective learning and a catalyst for technology partnerships, it began offering such services as full-text online reserve readings for courses, World Wide Web pages to support individual courses and a program to improve faculty instruction and research through the use of computer technology. Although its tools were high-tech, its mission was familiar, and one that is now a longstanding campus tradition: developing new and innovative ways to help faculty teach and students learn more effectively.