Aaron White's Assignment 1 University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Aaron Whites Assignment 1
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Excerpts from: Assignment 1-Principles of Learning and Learning Theory
Department of Library and Information Science
By
Aaron White
Kannapolis, NC
February, 2013
IV. Instructional and Learning Environments

As an aspiring academic librarian, I dont expect to be an instructor in the same
manner as a professor or classroom teacher, but I will need to help people navigate
information repositories and make use of complex user interfaces that cant be engaged
effectively with mere Google-style intuition. Creating Libguides and other learning
resources may be part of my daily work. Face-to-face consultation with puzzled patrons
may also be part of my daily routine.
Moreover, I aspire to act as a formal or informal liaison librarian to the theatre
departments, given my undergraduate instruction in theatre. As an undergraduate I
participated in a play (Our Countrys Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker) that incorporated
historical persons and events. The library supplied an array of books on those historical
subjects to the theatre building for our research purposes. This has remained with me as
an icon of librarianship; not merely warehousing information, but carrying it to where the
need existed, as Ranganathan would wish. I hope to extend beyond providing
information resources; I want to provide help in accessing these texts (not all theatre
students are comfortable dipping into scholarly historical texts) to find useful
information.
V. Develop Instruction using ADDIE Model

As a theatre undergraduate, one of my favorite skills was role-specific script
analysis, in which we analyzed a character we intended to play within the text of the
script. The process was as follows:
Read the script

highlight your role, and highlight your cues (the lines of dialogue and
actions that precede, and thus signal, your lines or actions) in a separate
color
Determine your characters objectives, problems, and tactics for each line
or set of lines
o Objective: what does the character want? (Generally to gain,
achieve, prove, or preserve something)
o Problem: What either stands between the character and objective,
or threatens the objective?
o Tactics: What is the character doing to overcome the problem and
achieve the objective?
o As if: think of a situation in your own life in which the emotional
stakes are similar to those of the character in this scene. EX: The
To Be or Not To Be soliloquy Its as if Im considering dropping
out of college, and staying up late thinking through the pluses and
minuses of this decision.

Draw a dividing line (Beat break) between lines of dialog everywhere you
believe there is a change of tactic or objective, and make a marginal note
(in pencil so it can be erased and replaced upon further
reflection/refinement) on the objectives, problems and tactics involved.
Ultimately decide what the characters Superobjective, the objective that

underlies all other objectives and never changes, is. This usually takes
time, sometimes weeks, to become clear, as the performer continues to
work with the analysis.
Performing the tasks results in an artifact: a marked-up script. The desired endproduct for an actor is a performance that is shaped and articulated by the analysis and
which articulates the analysis in turn. Declarative and procedural memory work together
in a reinforcing loop. For a scholar the fruits may be entirely declarative rather than
procedural/performative. Since students studying script interpretation may have either a
performative or scholarly interest in the practice, I would allow students to either do a
performative reading of a scene with a partner, or do an oral presentation walking the
class through their analysis.
I would select two scenes from contemporary theatrical scripts and prepare
handouts of the script pages for the class, perhaps including a scene from a play the
campus theatre department would be producing soon. Gaining attention: Id play
recordings of several performances of the famous To be or not to be speech, and ask
students to compare and contrast the different interpretations.
1. Informing learners of the objective: The objective of the class is to
teach students to use a common and systematic process for analyzing a
role and thinking through the characters choices, allowing performers
to create coherent performances.
2. Stimulating recall of prior learning: assuming the students had no prior
grounding in the related concepts, Id ask them to remember times
theyd really tried to achieve something that was important to them.

Since plays are about people who really want something and for whom
the stakes are high, part of acting is figuring out the stakes of the
situation, and what people do in response to those stakes.
3. Presenting the stimulus: Introduce the key words and phrases:
Objective, Problem, Tactic, As If, Superobjective.
4. Providing learning guidance. Walk the students through a printed
scene (with handout copies; assigning roles to volunteers and having
them read it aloud) then have the class work through the scene,
deciding what the objectives, problems and tactics are. Ask questions
such as Whats (character name)s objective at the start of the scene?
Where might the first beat change be? Whats the cause of that
change? Is it a tactic change, or an objective change?
5. Eliciting performance: Break the class into small groups to read
through another scene, then analyze it, figuring out the objectives,
problems, tactics, and beats. Then have each group explain their
analysis.
6. Providing feedback. Script analysis is not an exact science, and
allowing students to come to their own conclusions is part of the job,
but Id help the students keep the procedural steps in mind and prod
their memory in case they skipped or misunderstood a step as we
worked through their analyses. Id also answer questions about the
process of analysis.
7. Assessing performance. The students will demonstrate the extent to
which they initially grasp the procedure and purpose of this analytic
process through doing such analysis. If it seems some of them are
struggling with the process or purpose of any or all steps, Id work

with them to ensure they understood how the process works and how it
helps give performers a basis for coherent, assured performances.
8. Enhancing retention and transfer. Homework would be to do a solo
analysis of another scene. Before breaking, wed quickly run down
the stages of the process once again.
Assessing the richness and insight of a students scene interpretation has a strong
subjective element that Id wish to minimize in favor of assessing the extent to
which the students documentation of beat breaks and objectives/problems/tactics
demonstrated an understanding of the process. Along with marking the beat
breaks and O/P/T changes in the assigned scene, Id ask the students to write brief
(500 words or so) explanations of their thought processes in their analysis. If this
were a recurring class, the next class could include the students sharing their
interpretations.

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Aaron Whites Assignment 1

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Excerpts from: Assignment 1-Principles of Learning and Learning Theory

Department of Library and Information Science