Notes on Teaching and Learning

Your Degree Course

The philosophy courses at Warwick are designed to help you develop clear, rigorous, and creative responses to challenging questions in an inspiring intellectual environment.

We employ a variety of teaching methods and our syllabus covers a wide range of areas and traditions of philosophy. The course includes text-based modules intended to introduce you to the key texts from the history of philosophy such as Aristotle, Friederich Nietzsche, Elizabeth Anscombe, or Frantz Fanon. It also includes thematically organised modules that show how philosophy helps illuminate important fields of study. Examples include modules that focus on moral psychology and the philosophy of emotions, or modules that focus on democracy and on terrorism. The teaching methods we employ vary between types of modules and from lecturer to lecturer. In general, however, our aim is to provide you with the knowledge and the intellectual resources that will enable you to engage with philosophers ancient, modern and contemporary and to use philosophy to think through important questions.

To make the most of your degree, take a look at our Philosophy Study Skills Moodle.

Teaching

We use a variety of different teaching methods, though they are mostly centred around Lectures and Seminars happening on campus. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that your module tutors provide you with a number of other teaching materials for you to make use of in independent study. You can access these through the Moodle page for your module. For instance, each of your modules will typically have a reading list with texts you are expected to read in preparation for your seminar, and other texts selected by your module tutor to serve as background material and prepare you for assessments.

Lectures

Lectures typically address all students in a module and they aim to introduce you to a philosophical text, an area of philosophical study, or a philosophical position. Even in large lectures, though, lecturers welcome questions from students about the material covered, or requests to go over particular parts of the lecture again for clarification.

Seminars

Seminars are small group meetings with a tutor. Module participants are typically divided into seminar groups of around 15 students. Students may take it in turns to begin the discussion with a presentation, but the main purpose of a seminar is to encourage everybody there to join in a discussion. Please make sure that you do any recommended reading before the seminar meets, in order to get the most out of the seminar.

Engaging with what you have been taught

You should expect our teaching to provide basic information about philosophical theories, texts and arguments and to provide exposure to good philosophical practice. Whether in lecture, seminar or tutorial, it is important that you are aware not just of the information flow ‘Descartes said this’, ‘Arnauld said that’ etc. - but also of the ongoing practice of philosophical argument, debate, interpretation and the standards appropriate to the conduct of these activities.

We encourage you to get into the habit of careful note-taking and to use your note-taking as a tool for reflection on what you are being taught (effective note-taking). You need to develop sound habits of note-taking as your notes help you keep a record of important philosophical views, arguments, and objections. But good notes are more than records of what you are being taught. They are also the beginning of your own critical engagement with the material. Often enough, it is a sign that you are really beginning to understand something when the notes you take are of this latter type in which you note what has been said, but amplify it with a question, or a speculative development, e.g. ‘But if Descartes really said that, then...’.

Also, do not just take detailed notes of lectures, seminars etc. and then file them away and neglect to reflect on them. Set aside time to read over your notes, make sense of them and perhaps write a summary paragraph of what you have learnt. It might also be a good idea to compare your notes with those of other students, and to challenge and debate each other’s accounts – do philosophy together.

One word of warning: always clearly identify quotes from a philosophical text, or passages that are paraphrased in your notes. You do not want to be accused of plagiarism in an essay!

Engaging with philosophical texts

A central aspect of your learning will consist in your reading philosophical texts. Take this part of your studies seriously and make time for it. You will only be able to provide the kind of level of analysis and discussion of philosophical topics that is expected at University if you have engaged with the relevant philosophical literature yourself. As a rule of thumb, the CATS number of each module gives you an indication as to how much time you should spend on individual study. Multiply the CATS number by 10, and that gives you an estimate of the overall number of hours you should expect to spend on the module. Thus, in the case of the 15 CATS module Mind and Reality, for instance, that will be 150 hours.

As with lectures, the aim of reading philosophical texts is not merely to note what was said and when. The aim is to understand the structure of arguments, grasp how and why they work (or don’t work), practice interrogating them and making your own judgement about their merit relative to other texts and arguments that you have studied (more tips for effective note-taking).

Many of us are familiar with the experience of reading a complex text and feeling secure that we have understood it only to find that, when asked to recount what it was all about, we find our understanding slip through our grasp. A good test is this: if you think you have fully understood a text, see if you can write down, in your own words, what the key claims were; what the structure of the argument was; what the key objections are (of your own or those in the literature).

Again, to avoid being accused of plagiarism in one of your essays, always make sure your notes make it clear when you quote from a text or paraphrase a passage.

Essay writing

Writing good philosophy essays takes time, perseverance and hard work. In your first year you will be asked to write a number of quite short essays in order to help you get into the practice of writing philosophical essays. Make yourself familiar with the deadlines for your essays early on, and plan when you will work on which essay, rather than leaving things to the last minute. Good time management is crucial to producing an essay that shows what you are capable of a gets the mark you deserve.

We also provide you with additional support on essay writing, as we realise that this is something many students are concerned about.