| INTRODUCTION - Choosing A Topic |
As you begin thinking about choosing the topic or problem for your seminar it is helpful to keep in mind the primary goals of the seminars are to foster critical thinking and analytic interpretation, to improve written and oral communication skills, to provide experience with group dynamics and collaborative exploration of problems, to enhance research skills and to develop familiarity with electronic communication and visual presentations. An additional goals of the seminars are to model the type of open-ended problem solving that takes place in teams found in the business world and to prepare students to face the complexities and challenges of the workplace in the twenty-first century.
You should be interested in the topic of your seminar but do not need to be an expert. This arrangement avoids the problem having the students view you as the most autoritative source of information about the topic. It also ensures you will have the opportunity to be an active participant in the seminar.
You will need to choose the topic of your seminar by the third week of fall quarter, even if your seminar is not offered until spring quarter. Past participants have found the topic can be the key to the success of the seminar and the driving force motivating students to push themselves to become actively involved in their learning.
An important part of choosing a successful topic is knowing your audience, in this case first and second-year students. Look at what is important to them and who they are and then select your topic. It is also important to think about how students view knowledge and how they think. Before you choose a topic take a few minutes to read the handbook sections that discuss student development theory.
Past experiece has also demonstrated that the topics/problems best suited for honors seminars, are those known as ill-structured problems in education liturature, because they are multi-faceted, mult-dimensional and have no clear right or wrong answer. The ill-structured problem is an important aspect of the honors seminar because it is the ill-structured problem that challenges students to choose, create and defend viable solutions. Choosing a solution to an ill-structured problem is much more difficult than choosing a solution to a well defined problem because it requires students to think critically, about which of the equally viable solutions is the best, based on critieria that the students will have to prioritze and select. The high degree of uncertainty and complexity surrounding ill-structured problems also makes them well suited for collaborative work.
The following are examples of ill-structured and well-structured problems:
| Well- Structured Problems | Ill-Structured Problems |
| Deductive logic problems and puzzles | Developing legal guidelines for physician-assisted suicide |
| Calulating the trajectory of a rocket | Solving the problem of world hunger |
As you work through the process of choosing your topic or problem ask yourself the following questions:
Is my topic..........?
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