Active, Inquiry-based Learning and Collaboration

While the use of case studies to explore urban politics, public administration, and city planning has a long, rich, and still-growing history, the literature on integrating successful inquiry-based learning—not to mention institutional collaboration at the college level—into the examination of urban affairs is relatively thin. Our approach has been to meld these pedagogical approaches and recent initiatives for more active learning with the use of an academic institution's own geographic setting into a serious field of study.

In researching our approach to experiential learning, we found useful models in the emerging inquiry-based learning literature (see, for example, Gardiner 1998). In a report entitled Reinventing Undergraduate Education, the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University (1998), sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, makes a strong case that undergraduates are too often shortchanged as “passive learners.” The Commission's survey of colleges and universities reveals that undergraduate students only rarely have the opportunity to collect and observe primary data or tackle research questions for themselves. In response, the Commission calls for an academic bill of rights to define and differentiate inquiry-based or active learning from traditionally passive modes of instruction. With this bill of rights, undergraduates receive,

Specifically, the Boyer report calls for the following as building blocks toward creating a new inquiry-based educational paradigm:

• more research-based learning for all students;
• the discovery of knowledge derived from close faculty mentoring and advisement;
• active learning through collaborative projects among teams of students;
• the breaking of disciplinary molds so that students can address research questions from inter-disciplinary standpoints;
• the linking of expert communications skills with all aspects of course work;
• a revised merit system to reward faculty for innovative pedagogical strategies that prove successful with students; and
• the cultivation of a greater sense of community on college campuses, so that students feel that they are integral and contributing components of the learning environment.

The desire to enhance a student's sense of belonging and engagement in the curriculum is also inherent in the concept of service learning, whereby students participate in organized community service typically linked to more formal coursework. While laudable, we decided against a service-learning model due to the controversial and contentious nature of urban renewal in both downtown Providence and Worcester. Although not opposed to activist scholarship per se, we did not want our students to appear as lobbyists or serve as ground troops for any one particular cause or redevelopment agenda. However, we did wish for research to be community-based and centered on our students' own questions and concerns about the nature of redevelopment, especially when compared to case studies they had been reading of similar cities in the region.

As such, we have infused many of the Boyer Commission's major themes into our course designs and syllabi proposals, and have further developed the Commission's core ideas by moving to an inter-institutional scale to experiment with course implementation. Our students, therefore, have the bonus of studying case studies of policy environments in two cities, Providence and Worcester, and two states, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The two locales enable us to illuminate the similarities and differences between the two cities and to begin to explore the historical, political, cultural, sociological, and economic reasons for those differences. By building direct experiences of the citybuilding process into our course structure, our approach attempts to elicit what Gardiner (1998) calls “excitement and wonder in the classroom.”

Since the mid-1980s, pioneering works on the redevelopment of cities by Clavel (1986) on Burlington, Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts; Fainstein et al. on Detroit, New Haven, and San Francisco (1986); Stone, Sanders et al. on Atlanta, Dallas, and New Orleans (1987); and David Harvey on Baltimore, New York, and numerous other cities (1985a; 1985b; 2001), have examined the social, political, and economic forces that shape and reshape cities, their central business districts (CBD's), and neighborhoods. Increasingly, that literature takes a comparative form and is rich in empirical analysis of the different modalities of urban policy formation (see, for example, Pagano and Bowman 1995, and Grogan and Proscio 2000).

During the 1990s and the first few years of the 21st Century, a growing number of scholars have focused on the cities and neighborhoods where they live and work. Of his home town, Larry Bennett explains,

Of her anthropological approach to creating case studies of cities in the under-studied region of Appalachia, Rhoda Halperin states emphatically,

Social scientists interested in the urban realm have certainly started to look closer to home for more intimate portrayals of urban dynamics and, indeed, the makings of good urban policy. Why not, we thought, try the same approach with our students in New England? Like Halperin in Appalachia, we have found little in the literature on Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts. Urban analysis in the northeast has focused on Boston and New York. We reasoned that our students could test some of what they had read in case studies of other cities by tackling the “big questions” of urban change for themselves, in their own cities.

Overcoming Traditional Barriers: The Institutional and Discipline-based Contexts

Given our institutional settings, departmental foci, and professional interests, an active learning approach makes sense for three reasons. First, is the opportunity to breathe life into often abstract and even potentially dry material (in our case urban politics, policy, and planning). Despite the benefit of studying the inter-related fields of political science, city planning, geography, and urban studies, students often find it difficult to make connections between the text books in these disciplines and the day-to-day realities of modern metropolitan life. Our approach enables them to see policy as it unfolds in the changing physical form of the city.

Second, we take advantage of several ongoing (and some recently completed) urban renewal projects a short distance from our campuses. Providence has seen the wholesale “Renaissance” of its central core, while Worcester has witnessed the development of “Medical City” adjacent to its traditional downtown, as well as significant transportation infrastructure improvements. Even more fortunate are the many parallels that exist between the redevelopment efforts in two cities with similar histories and populations. They are located less than one hour from each other along a major highway and are situated at either end of the historic Blackstone River Valley's federally-designated National Heritage Corridor. As such, a collaborative approach seemed rational and mutually beneficial.

Third, an active learning approach allows us to transcend the dominant instructional paradigms at our respective schools. In many respects, Rhode Island College and Worcester State College share a common heritage. Both were founded as state “normal schools” in the 19th century and have evolved into comprehensive, baccalaureate-plus commuter colleges. Most of our students are the first generation in their families to attend college and are drawn from an educational background identical to that described by Gardiner:

For a variety of factors all too common at today's colleges and universities, the average student has little opportunity to challenge this traditional educational culture, given the competing demands of employment, family, and often excessive course/credit loads. Professors also find it difficult to overcome an all too prevalent dependence upon passive instruction, given limited institutional resources and the demands on our own time to participate in governance, community service, research, and, above all, the high number of courses to be taught. (For example, the faculty loads at Rhode Island College and Worcester State College typically include 24 credits per year, translating to four courses per semester.)

After many discussions during the spring of 1997 on the similarities between our colleges and their host communities, we decided to collaborate on a series of joint student events. In the fall of 1997 we began the first of what have become regular semester meetings of students from our two schools. To facilitate inquiry-based learning, we supplement our weekly classroom meetings and reading assignments with a series of projects designed to give students direct experience with an active research process. Throughout the semester, we act as mentors and guide students through the steps we ourselves would undertake to study the forces driving urban renewal.

At the start of the semester, we divide our classes into six teams (each school has an identical set of teams), each of which studies an aspect of downtown redevelopment in their cities. In addition to regular weekly class sessions, each team meets independently and divides up research process elements that together form case studies on contemporary urban problems and their possible solutions.

We ask them to read a great deal before we unleash them into the field. But we have found over eleven consecutive semesters (fall 1997–fall 2002) that, if we prepare our students well in the first few weeks of class with carefully targeted readings, not only do our students become increasingly motivated by their new-found ability to go out and ask questions for themselves, but that the caliber of work they produce improves markedly. (Upon reflection, we would not have persisted with this learning paradigm even for one semester had we been confronted by failure.) Students from both schools meet as a complete group three times during the semester, twice for guided tours of each city's downtown and surrounding neighborhoods and a third time at an undergraduate conference during which students present the results of their research projects and field questions from their peers, professors, and guests.

Students also travel to visit their peers in the sister cities at regular intervals throughout the semester to share information and to plan the final conference. We appropriately entitle these conferences, “A Tale of Two Cities: Urban Renewal in Providence and Worcester,” and invite the public, local media, and colleagues from both schools to attend. The results have far surpassed our expectations and have led us to make farreaching and ongoing changes to our course syllabi.

Curriculum Revisions Arising From the Model

The courses chosen to pilot our collaborative, inquiry-based model from 1997 onward were, at Worcester State College, Steven Corey's “Analysis of Urban Systems,” and at Rhode Island College, Mark Motte's “Metropolitan Providence: Past, Present, and Future.” Before the fall 1997 semester, Corey's students generally wrote research papers on major urban infrastructure issues in the national context covered in assigned readings. Motte's students focused on building a timeline of key public policy and private investment/construction decisions that brought Providence through industrialization, decline, and what has been dubbed a modern Renaissance.

Although both Corey and Motte encouraged their students to use Worcester and Providence, respectively, as laboratories for making observations and gathering data, few students did so initially. Without any experience with or direct exposure to local resources, most students typically summarized literature on events and trends in larger, better-documented cities such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Motte's students tended to compare the growth trajectories of these larger cities with classroom-based interpretations of Providence's development pattern (derived from legislation, published plans, and policy documents). By making Providence and Worcester the main foci of these revised courses, we now require that our students seek local information first, rather than relying exclusively on previously synthesized secondary sources or local materials conveniently provided on desk reserve at the library.

Since each student's participation, from initial research to final conference, takes place within the timeframe of just one semester, the process of active learning begins in earnest during the second week of class when they choose a research concentration from a designated list of six subject areas:

• urban geography/spatial morphology;
• infrastructure and the environment;
• social and demographic change;
• political culture, regimes, and systems;
• public-private development partnerships; and
• education, health, and human service delivery.

After selecting a category, students form small teams to narrow down potential research topics (since our class sizes differ—Corey's with around 20 students and Motte's with 30 students—these teams also differ in size within the two institutions—RIC's larger, WSC's smaller). Fortunately, given the large number of redevelopment projects initiated or recently completed during the 1990s in both cities, students have no problem choosing a research topic. Following team and subject selection, we then devote several class sessions to research approaches in the social sciences, especially on how to locate local resources and gather data to address clearly defined research questions. In addition to showing students how to perform traditional literature searches, both Corey and Motte hold special classes on finding and assessing information from the Internet; collecting primary data from archive and government agencies; conducting interviews with “key informants” in the policy development arena; and then organizing, analyzing, and presenting information in a group setting.

Students conduct monograph, journal, and newspaper research at their own college and local municipal libraries, and, in various combinations of teams from both institutions, they visit special collections at the Providence Preservation Society, Rhode Island Historical Society, Worcester Public Library, Worcester Historical Museum, and the archives of other colleges in the greater Blackstone Valley region. Corey and Motte repeatedly emphasize the value of archival and primary research for determining the original intent of development schemes (whether in-process or completed) as a baseline against which to measure how well such projects meet their potential and live up to the sponsors' and/or developers' promises. Whenever possible, students are directed to City Hall to examine evidence first hand; especially historical photographs, land use maps, comprehensive community assessments, tax records, land deeds, consultants' feasibility studies, and other development plans.

Students also talk to officials in city planning offices and other government agencies connected to downtown renewal projects. To balance the “insider views” of professionals with vested interests in the success of specific development projects, students draw upon their own local contacts. They interview peers, relatives, and community activists/advocates to assess levels of public input, types of citizen participation, and the extent of community satisfaction with different redevelopment projects as well as the overall pattern of redevelopment in the two cities.

Invariably, concerns arise from students about the time commitment in performing inquiry-based research outside of class and in traveling to and from Worcester and Providence for walking tours and other meetings. Both Corey and Motte make it clear at the start of the semester that the amount of time required to perform research collaboratively will not exceed the work load for a typical course in their respective departments. We also provide students with a timetable and overview of course expectation in our syllabi, stating clearly that participation in group research and class exchanges are mandatory. By providing students with advance notice, the majority are able to rearrange work schedules and family obligations to participate fully in class activities. However, exceptions are made on a case-bycase basis for those who cannot attend exchanges out of state, or who have unforeseen emergencies. These students are given alternative assignments and/or expected to perform additional work for their research team.

The high level of participation outside the classroom is more than just a product of stringent course requirements. Without question, students are motivated by the timeliness and relevance of the subject matter and their own role in shaping the direction of the course. Yet at the same time, both Corey and Motte have had to devise strategies for assessing the contributions of each student to determine if any are failing to “pull their own weight.” Every student has to hand in a series of written assignments, from the initial research proposal to project updates and a final class paper, separate from other members of their research team. In each update, students must account for their own actions and assess their own role in the collaborative process.

Even by the middle of the semester, it is usually evident that an impressive assortment of research projects is well underway. In recent years, projects have ranged from a gender analysis of the use of public space in downtown Worcester to the role of a community group in rehabilitating a former factory as artists' lofts in Providence. But despite assurances that they are on the right track, some members of the Worcester classes invariably express fear that they are not uncovering anything particularly new or interesting about their topics. To make matters worse, these doubts sometimes turn to personal insecurity and fears that they have nothing to say that will impress their peers from outside the college, especially given the more advanced stage and scale of Providence's redevelopment plans as compared to Worcester's (a new phobia for the books: “Urban Renewal Envy!”). In contrast, some students will hardly be able to contain their excitement, bursting with energy over unearthing information and making connections between readings on national urban trends and events close to home. As the time for the joint undergraduate conferences draw near, these competing tensions demand resolution.

For Corey's students, the key to relieving anxiety over public presentation of their research comes through a series of mock oral presentations. Throughout the semester, students are constantly told to narrow their focus and keep their arguments clear. But only by being forced to first present their findings to their fellow classmates do students come to understand the difference between simple descriptive narration and an argument concerning the nature, impact, and success of their research topics.

Generally, three 50-minute class sessions are designated for such rehearsals at Worcester State. At Rhode Island, Motte gives his students only one dry run. In each one of Corey's presentation skills classes, students are instructed to speak for only three minutes on their topics. Invariably, three minutes turns to ten! Again, only by experiencing the process of presentation do students come to understand what is (and what is not) important about their work and learn to pare down their presentations for the conference. The final presentations often reveal that Motte's somewhat more confident students could have benefited from this paring down process. By seeing how others in the class deal with time limitations and how they use visual materials such as photographs and maps, the Worcester students learn how to polish their work for a general audience. In the end, Corey believes that these rehearsals also significantly improve the quality of his students' final written reports, since the class better understands how to concisely present information.

Once the joint undergraduate conference arrives, although still somewhat anxious about speaking in public, students from both colleges generally perform admirably. As well they should: As a group, they have compiled a body of work on urban renewal worthy of any undergraduate program anywhere in the country. Among the more memorable presentations have been a fiveminute video on the changing physical nature of Worcester's downtown and its impact on nearby neighborhoods; a series of graphic overlays showing the development of Providence's Waterplace Park and River Relocation Project; a history of downtown Worcester's commercial heyday in the 1950s; and a presentation on the planning, financing, and construction of the Providence Place Mall.

The students are impressed by what they have accomplished within a 15-week semester. Each college team expresses respect for the work of the other. Faculty, college administrators, and the media give positive reviews. Colleagues at both institutions call for a continued and strengthened collaboration between the two colleges. Recently, our students were interviewed for an article that appeared in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, and the collaborative projects continue to serve as models for developing “urban” courses at Rhode Island College and Worcester State. Corey and Motte will offer similar courses during the 2003–04 academic year.