Competence in written scientific communication is an important learning outcome of undergraduate science degrees. Writing helps students learn, encourages them to think creatively and critically about their learning, and trains them in communicating their insights as disciplinary experts. However, challenges exist in incorporating writing assignments into large undergraduate science classes, including lack of student engagement and difficulty in providing effective and personalized formative feedback to large numbers of students. Engagement and feedback are especially important for developing writing skills, which require active, reflective, critical attention on the learner’s part: it would be very useful if one mechanism could enhance both. We recently integrated audio feedback into the stages of a term-long, multi-part scientific literacy assignment in a large undergraduate biology class at the University of Toronto Mississauga, using it for formative purposes at early stages of the assignment. In order to determine the utility and effect of the audio feedback, we collected data from both teaching assistants (TAs) and students. In general, students felt audio feedback was constructive and engaging, and both TAs and students commented that audio feedback was more personal than written feedback. However, TAs noted that it took longer for them to give audio feedback compared with written feedback, and that they encountered technical issues with emailing audio feedback to the students. Overall, the response to audio feedback from both students and TAs suggested that this approach is logistically feasible and might aid in overcoming the disengagement that is often found in large introductory courses. La compétence en communication scientifique écrite est un résultat d’apprentissage important dans le cadre des diplômes en sciences au niveau du premier cycle. L’écriture aide les étudiants à apprendre, les encourage à réfléchir avec créativité et sens critique à propos de leur apprentissage et leur donne la formation nécessaire pour communiquer leurs idées en tant qu’experts dans leur discipline. Toutefois, il existe un certain nombre de défis dans le cas de grandes classes de sciences au niveau du premier cycle quand il s’agit d’y incorporer les travaux écrits, entre autres la participation des étudiants et les difficultés à donner à un grand nombre d’étudiants des rétroactions formatives personnalisées. La participation et les rétroactions sont des éléments particulièrement importants pour que les apprenants développent des compétences en écriture, qui exigent de leur part une attention active, réflective et critique. Il serait donc très utile si un mécanisme pouvait inclure ces deux éléments. Nous avons récemment intégré la rétroaction audio dans les diverses étapes de travaux de longue haleine à parties multiples portant sur des connaissances scientifiques dans une grande classe de biologie de premier cycle à l’Université de Toronto Mississauga, avec un objectif formatif dès les premières étapes des travaux. Afin de déterminer l’utilité et les effets de la rétraction audio, nous avons recueilli des données auprès des chargés de cours et des étudiants. En général, les étudiants ont déclaré que la rétroaction audio était constructive et favorisait la participation, et tant les chargés de cours que les étudiants ont indiqué que la rétroaction audio était davantage personnelle que la rétroaction écrite. Toutefois, les chargés de cours ont fait remarquer que cela leur prenait davantage de temps de donner une rétroaction audio qu’une rétroaction écrite et qu’ils avaient eu des problèmes techniques pour envoyer par courriel à leurs étudiants les rétroactions audio. En général, la réaction à la rétroaction audio tant de la part des chargés de cours que des étudiants suggère que cette approche est logistiquement réalisable et pourrait aider à relever le défi d’absence de participation souvent présent dans les cours d’introduction offerts à un très grand nombre d’étudiants.

While the individual texts in the various codices found near Nag Hammadi have been studied and discussed, relatively little attention has been paid to the motives underlying their original selection and organisation. Codices I, XI and VII in particular have been shown on palaeographical and codicological grounds to make up a sub-collection within the larger Nag Hammadi collection. Despite their doctrinal diversity, the texts found in these three codices were intended by their compilers to be read in sequence. The purpose of this article is to examine the logic behind this choice and arrangement of texts, and to advance the hypothesis that this three volume collection is intended to progressively introduce the reader to a heterodox and esoteric doctrine of religious conflict and polemic, in which the reader is invited to identify him- or herself with an embattled minority group within the larger Christian community, a group who nonetheless see themselves as enlightened and as being of the "lineage of the Father."

In this article I discuss free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler’s album New Grass, released in 1968. Although Ayler’s early works have entered the jazz canon, this album has been seen as the beginning of his decline and also as a sellout. I argue that by taking Ayler’s messianic religious convictions into account, we cannot only understand New Grass better but can also see how it fits into his career as a whole and widen our understanding of the ways in which religious convictions and experimental music interact.

In this article Michael Kaler notes the emphasis found in gnostic texts on transcendent religious experience and argues that this emphasis needs to be taken more into account in modern research than has tended to be the case.

In addition to being recognized for their musical contributions, the Grateful Dead were also well known (indeed, notorious) for espousing a world view that can in many ways be described as religious, and for inspiring great devotion among their fans. There have been a number of scholarly discussions of religious aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon, but these discussions usually have to do either with the interpretive lens through which their lyrics are understood, or with sociologically based analyses of the behaviour of their followers. Both of these approaches are explicitly or implicitly etic, and they neglect the abundant testimony from band members themselves about the nature of this new religious movement masquerading as a rock band (or vice versa). In this paper, I attempt to correct this neglect by discussing some of the religious aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon from the perspective of the band members themselves, particularly the bassist, Phil Lesh. Drawing on his recently published autobiography, Searching for the Sound, I will describe his model of Grateful Dead's religiosity, and show how it is reflected in the Grateful Dead's performance practice. I will also discuss briefly the ways in which the Grateful Dead's attitude toward these religious ideals can be seen as efforts to resist the “routinization of charisma.”