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Fewer classes per student. Collaborative teaching.
3-4 week courses. Class sizes of 12. 2 instructors. Run it 4x per semester.
Online or hybrid. High touch.
Emphasize community aspect of academic learning.
3-4 week courses. Class sizes of 12. 2 instructors. Run it 4x per semester.
Online or hybrid. High touch.
Emphasize community aspect of academic learning.
Post the readings/course materials 4-6 weeks in advance for fall semester. Assume some people will need extra time to digest before engaging. The month together is a focused dive back through, in community.
For profs inclined towards podcasts/talks release materials to the public. Many kinds of classes aren’t solely transmission of ideas via lecture. The labor is in thinking together. Send syllabi to the Open Syllabus Project. Contribute to a shared archive of the academic terrain.
The argument for preserving labor is and has always been that teaching, as such, doesn’t scale. This is even more obvious for teaching at a distance. Connection is labor. It’s work. Care is a fundamental aspect of teaching and research. Scientists conference after all.
Teach classes with librarians and archivists, or colleagues from other departments. Push administrations to offer ways students can enroll in such things. (Ahem, stop separating schools so much). These are the changes that matter.
Will everyone want to enroll in Fall? No. But can the experience of those who do be critical thinking welcome to the 21st century, we have no idea what’s coming so let’s do this amazing? Yeah actually.
Wasn’t the academy an invention in space apart, inspired by a teacher who wandered outside the walls? Wasn’t the context of Socrates/Plato the decline of empire, shit leadership, and a plague? Weren’t they all about educating new citizens for a different world?
It’s good to have stories and to tell stories of moments of encounter with crisis and how humans, organizations, institutions, movements etc. handled education and culture work. Crisis always comes. A repertoire of stories gives us narratives to think with.
What are the most interesting education models you know of? Ed historians, tell us what we need to know.
Somehow this earlier but in my head connects — thinking about a curriculum built around collaboration in teaching/research:
https://twitter.com/fstflofscholars/status/1175027501552283649?s=21 https://twitter.com/fstflofscholars/status/1175027501552283649
https://twitter.com/fstflofscholars/status/1175027501552283649?s=21 https://twitter.com/fstflofscholars/status/1175027501552283649
Ecological computing, let’s tackle this AI/society thing by teaching ML and critical race theories together actually. Sociology of religion and media studies, sport economy with athletes and economics majors....learn from each other.
A wild thought, teach *with* grad students.
I do not mean to suggest that education can only be this way or these things. It has been many things, it takes many forms, it reforms in response to the enduring concerns of society. But the repertoire is vast, the archive deep. I bet we’ve been here before. I bet there is a way
