In the six weeks of our project, Professor Célérier and I set out to redesign her course called “What Does Francophone Comic Art Say?”.  The course will be taught in the spring of this coming school year and will be cross listed as French and Francophone Studies as well as Africana Studies.

First, we re-evaluated the former course syllabus and assessed each article and comic book on the assignment list in order to ensure that each assignment was relevant toward the goals of the course.  Then, after weeding out the less pertinent articles and comic books, we began our research for potential replacements that would better suit the curriculum.  Finally, we implemented the new articles and made further changes to the course schedule.  One of these changes was the assignment of a portfolio by each student due at the end of the course. The first part of this portfolio would showcase all of the written assignments completed by the student throughout the semester, demonstrating the student’s progress in the his/her French writing skills.  The other part of the portfolio would reveal the student’s process in crafting their own comic by showing each step of the creative procedure up to the final draft.  This final draft would then be turned into a poster which the student would orally present to the class during the last two weeks of class.

 All in all, this project was a significant learning experience for me because while I had the privilege to express my own opinions as a student in the redesign of this course, I had the opportunity to involve myself in the whole process and realize all of the work that goes into teaching such a course. I learned so much about the African Francophone culture, something that I had always wanted to study.  Thank you to everyone who has allowed me to have this wonderful research experience.  It has been a fruitful six weeks.