• Project Wikis

These are wikis dedicated to a particular IF Discussion Project about an area of emerging social and political concern. During the course of a project the project facilitator might set up a “private” wiki for each discussion panel for the sharing of that panel’s developmental thinking. Prior to the joint panel discussions, only the members of a given panel would be able to view and edit the project material. Once the project panels are ready to share their ideas as a joint panel, the wiki can be made publicly viewable–but with writing or posting privileges restricted to the project panelists. Currently the Towns and Cities Wiki (for the joint panel sessions of “Shaping our Towns and Cities” project) is set up this way. Once the project panelists are ready to turn over their material for public discussion, then the wiki can be set up as a fully “public” wiki where anyone online could view, edit, and add to the material. The Future of the Family Wiki is an example of such a public wiki. This wiki is open for the contributions of anyone who is interested in building upon the ideas that emerged from the project discussions. We ask only that contributors engage with this material in the same generosity of spirit that guided the creation of this material from the beginning. This means that people are invited to make revisions that help to clarify for expand upon the ideas present here. Anyone can add new policy ideas to the wiki as well. But, we ask that people not delete or undermine ideas with which they disagree. Our purpose is to expand the range of policy ideas people might think about–regardless of whether any of us approves of these ideas.

• Guide Wikis

These are wikis dedicated to offering guidance to anyone who might want to engage in some aspect of what the Interactivity Foundation does in any of its three focal areas (IF’s project discussions, the public discussions that are based on those project discussions, and the use of IF’s discussion approach in educational settings). Guide wikis offer the opportunity for users or practitioners to share the wisdom gained from their particular experiences by editing, revising, or generating new material to help others. The Student Guide Wiki, for example, focuses on offering guidance from a student perspective on our student-centered discussion process. It started with entries from Jack Byrd at IF, but is being edited and augmented by students who have worked through these lessons first-hand. We will likely develop a similar wiki from a faculty perspective as well. We are also planning to add an Academic Success Wiki, to share guidance about how to be a successful student more generally (in a way not limited to using IF’s collaborative discussion model). Such wikis can be a powerful tool to enable people to share their experiential know-how with others.

• Internal Development Wikis

As we continually expand and develop our own thinking as an organization about what we do and how we do it, we’ll undoubtedly develop any number of wikis on these various topics. These are likely going to be primarily of internal relevance to IF in the near term. But they may be of interest to those who are interested in exploring more of the thinking behind the Interactivity Foundation. Some of these wikis will show up as publicly viewable.

We hope these wikis will be a helpful way for you to interact with the ideas that shape the work we do and that emerge from the work we do.

–Jeff Prudhomme

Scheduling an event and selecting a topic is very time consuming. In order to avoid going back and forth between people, IFers have come up with ideas such as to let students write down their available time slots and interested topics on pieces of papers, so that the organizer can combine them and make a decision.  Many times, the organizer has to sacrifice a few people and make compromises. However, with doodle.com scheduling an event is much easier and more efficient. Participants’ demand can be maximized in this way. Here is how:

When you click into www.doodle.com you will see a blue button “schedule an event.” Once you click on that, you can put in the event title (such as “IF Boston August Discussion”) and tentative location for the discussion. You can also write a brief description about the discussions if you have not informed the participants yet. Entering your name and email address will be helpful here.

Once you click “next,” you will see a calendar, which allows you to put in potential days to organize this event. Usually including both weekdays and weekends will work the best. Too few options will end up with less mutually agreeable times and too many options will make people select less. With my past experience, 5-7 dates will be ideal.

Once you’ve select your dates, you can click “next.” You will be able to specify time slots for each date. Or you can simply enter time slots for the first date and click “copy and paste first row.” Make sure your time slots can potentially accommodate people who have to work during the day and also keep the meal time in mind. It is extremely important that the facilitator herself/himself can make it to all the time slots you’ve put in.

Once you are done, click “next” and select “basic” to “finish” and your event is now scheduled. All you need to do is copy and paste the link provided saying “Send this link to anyone you wish to invite” to the emails you will be sending out to the participants. It is always a good idea to fill out the survey first yourself to see if it works. I would recommend checking all the time slots (since you’ve only put time slots you are available on the list). This, in economics terms, is setting an “anchor.” Participants, therefore, will be more likely to enter more slots.

Here is an example what the participants will see: http://www.doodle.com/rgderxx7h45i6ni2  You can click on the same link to check participants’ responses or you will receive an email after each respondent has answered if you’ve entered your email previously.

I also provided a list of topics for the participants to choose using survey monkey (many of you are already using). Again, setting an anchor by selecting all works well based on my experience: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X236V78

You will be surprised by how many people actually have access to the internet nowadays, especially the student body. The entire scheduling process probably will take you ten minutes and you will get the maximum out of it. Some phone communication is still needed before setting up the doodle as you will need to know around which days there might be people available for discussions.

I hope this can save some of your time and make your scheduling more efficient.

Best,

Taiyi

People who tune in to us: These are generally people who are interested in discussing policy possibilities pertaining to our areas of concern. Many people care about issues related to our areas of concern. If they make the time and effort to participate in our sanctuary projects and public discussions, or to use our discussion process in their classrooms, then they are part of our audience.

People who want to think about (but not necessarily discuss) policy possibilities: There are different kinds of civic engagement, and there are many people who may be interested in reading and thinking about the policy possibilities in our reports, but not necessarily in discussing them. Some of them may not have the time or willingness to discuss them themselves, but may still be interested in hearing other people discuss them.

Civically engaged people: These are people who are actively engaged with policy issues. They read newspapers; listen to NPR; and watch C-SPAN, Fox News, and other media outlets.

Professionals who work within our areas of concern: These people are generally experts and specialists working within our areas of concern, such as health care workers, scientists, food regulators, etc.

People who are interested in our discussion process: These people may include teachers, other education professionals, people working in development, strategists, people who are interested in deliberative processes, and people working with the internal governance processes of various firms.

Policy makers and their staffs: We do not advocate any of the possibilities in our reports, but the content of the possibilities may still be of interest to policy makers and their staffs—especially since they have a professional obligation to consider a range of policy possibilities.

Different political groups: These include Democrats, Republicans, Independents, liberals, moderates, progressives, social conservatives—indeed, the whole range of how people in this country define themselves politically. Our reports present this wide range of possibilities.

Public institutions and other NGO’s that are interested in democratic deliberation: Organizations that promote democratic deliberation may be interested in our work, and we may find areas of mutual interest on which to work.

The education sector: IF promotes student-centered college classroom discussions. So we currently work with selected university faculty members, both in our Summer Institutes and in our JFDP training programs, to use our discussion process in their classrooms. We currently have a special interest in Communication Studies, Political Science, Public Administration, and Industrial Engineering (management). But we are also interested in expanding this category to include middle school and high school teachers and students.

Promoting IF Discussion Methodology in Georgia through Teaching

by Ia Natsvlishvili

I recently taught the course “EU Social Policy and Multicultural Processes” at the Institute for European Studies, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. It was the first time that I taught this course using the IF process.  The course aimed to introduce graduate students to social policy as the use of political power to supersede, supplement, or modify operations of economic systems in order to achieve results which the economic system would not achieve on its own.  While I was teaching the course using the IF discussion process, I received advice and recommendations from IF instructors Mark Notturno and Ieva Notturno in conversations via Skype. I found these conversations very helpful, especially since I was teaching a course using the IF discussion process for the first time.

The course and the discussions were conducted in English and the discussion summaries were produced in English too. It seems to me that the discussions flowed very smoothly, despite the fact that English was not the native language of the students. All of the students found the facilitation sessions very useful. They told me that the discussion and facilitation sessions helped them to improve their communication skills and to feel much more self-confident and self- directed. Even when the discussants were tired, because we had very intensive discussion sessions almost every day, they participated with the interest. I noticed that sometimes the sessions tended to transform in a general debate rather than a facilitation on a specific issue. Below are some comments from the discussion summaries that they developed after their facilitation sessions:

“…..The discussion was very fruitful. From the beginning I thought that it would be difficult to facilitate the discussion and I thought that I could not find the topic to concentrate on. However, after 5 minutes I already found out the right way and the discussion topics were flowing endless from the participants. I tried to be as relaxed as I could in order to create a friendly and free atmosphere for the participants of the group. However, I felt that I could not catch up with their discussion and have underrepresented Flip Charts.”

“…….First I thought that I could not manage to facilitate well, but piece by piece everything was put in order. I would say that the participants were totally involved in our discussion. They were contributing their ideas and helped me to concentrate on our not so interesting topic. …….I would proudly say that we managed to come up from the situation and, which is very important, we exchanged our skills and knowledge, and each of us learnt a lot about this issue.”

“………The process of facilitation was interesting. The participants came up with useful ideas regarding our area of concern… The participants were very productive, however I think that a skilled facilitator could get more ideas from them than I did.”

“……….There were just 4 participants in the discussion group, but in spite of this they all contributed actively and made a huge work. Firstly they were a bit unconfident, but during the discussion this problem was eliminated. ”

I think that the IF discussion process revealed the peculiarities in content and process of discussion about social issues in Georgia. First of all, the students found it easier to think about policy possibilities and the ways of their implementation rather than to identify the major area of concern. Why did this happen? To my mind, it happened because people in transitional countries like Georgia are much more concerned about social issues than people in developed countries, and it is very hard for them to identify which one is “the major” and which one is “the minor” concern. The discussion process revealed one of the “hottest” political issues in Georgia: existence of refugees from the conflict regions of Georgia.  Because of political reasons there are several hundred thousand Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from two breakaway regions of Georgia. One of our major concerns was the protection of human rights of IDPs.

I have learned several lessons from reflecting on the course I conducted using the IF process. First of all, I believe that discussants should have a least one week between each facilitation session. Students should have time to reflect on the previous facilitation session and to write their discussion summaries. Otherwise they might find the IF discussion sessions tiring. The course was quite demanding for my students, despite the fact that they were interested to learn the IF process, because we were conducting IF discussions almost every day. The course itself required a lot of reading and writing (discussion summaries and discussion notes) every day. To give to the students “a little bit rest,” I decided that each student would facilitate only once a week.

Secondly, to my mind it would be much more useful to devote more time to explaining the IF Mission and IF discussion process than I did during the course. Otherwise students might not understand the goals of facilitation sessions correctly. I found they enjoyed being a facilitator more than being a contributor of ideas. I think that they did not at first understand the role of a facilitator. They thought that their job was to record the ideas on the flip-charts (especially during their first facilitation sessions). The situation changed for the second facilitation session: they enjoyed being a contributor of ideas more.

I also believe that it would be much more useful for students if I were to lecture to them first on the topics that are directly related to their discussion. I was lecturing on assigned topics from the syllabus that were not directly connected with the topic of discussion. Of course it was about the social policy, but not about the concern areas that were discussed during the particular discussion.

In general, teaching by using the IF discussion process was helpful for me. I would like to admit that I personally gained a lot of knowledge from the students and from the teaching process itself, because the IF discussion process improved my communication skills and enriched my understanding of teaching methods and the content of the course I teach.

The problem is that students are a great deal more creative and engaged than we imagine.  Most times, when faculty provide discussion questions to their students, these questions are not particular robust and do not meet students where they are.  Some students may not have a full sense of what is meant by the question.  Other students may be able to think more critically and deeply than faculty imagine and may therefore be bored by the question.  Faculty talk a lot about “critical thinking,” but do we make enough space in our classrooms for this sort of thinking to happen?

The holy grail of critical thinking can, in its essence, be stated as an ability to identify a range of possible explanations, answers, questions, or possibilities and then to weigh a set of options using a rational logic.  In the digital age, it may be that the ability to imagine and to judge a range of possible explanations is needed more than ever but made increasingly elusive by the very nature of our times:  in surfing the web, reviewing emails, or managing the untold other gigabytes of information that appears before us each day, we are constantly having to make quick decisions.  Which page will I surf next?  Do I respond to this message now?  Later?  Never?  The more that information can be made succinct, the more appeal it has to us.

Could this be why big, complicated issues seem, increasingly, to come down to “obvious” conclusions that appeal to the gut instinct:  (1) Vaccines are dangerous because big corporations are marketing them without sufficient testing so that they can maximize their profits—even if it means that kids become autistic; (2) The earth is heating up, and humans’ reliance on carbon fuels is to blame; (3) A child who abuses an animal will eventually go on to be violent against people because anyone that could abuse an animal must be a cruel and dangerous person?  In fact, all of these conclusions are hardly the only possible explanations for the concerns they address.  But, anyone who is in the business of peddling opinion is well aware that the quick “gut check” is crucial:  an explanation that “just makes sense” to people is easily received—even if it’s not the best possible explanation by which to understand the data/facts.  An expedient explanation is most appealing in an age when information is seemingly never-ending.

In an effort to meet this “digital native” generation where they are, many faculty now use things like PowerPoint slides, YouTube film clips, and clicker technology that periodically asks students’ opinions or tests their factual understanding of the material being covered so as to keep lectures interesting and engaging.  The basic classroom structure largely remains, however:  the lecture hall, which was designed for a time in which texts were scarce.  Professors would literally read from the text they had so that the students could hear what the text had to say.  Multiple choice tests place a premium on the ability to memorize information.  When did you last rely on your memory for anything?  Even if I think I have remembered something correctly, I nearly always check Google to be sure I am correct.

The 21^st Century student always has access to any bit of information they could possibly want to know.  What is needed is an ability to imagine different possibilities and then to evaluate those possibilities—in effect, an ability to critically contemplate and examine the deluge of information that is constantly presented to us.  While these skills are not needed when deciding where to have lunch or which movie to watch tonight, these skills are what now distinguish the most valued workers from their counterparts and the most effective citizens from those who cannot seem to prioritize, communicate, and help to effect changes that resonate within their communities.

In the IF classroom, student-centered discussion is not characterized as students performing a teacher-generated task or series of tasks.  Instead, the students themselves are given the time and space to drive their own reflection of an area of concern—a broad question or concerns that relates to the course topic.  At first, students are very uncomfortable with the broad task at hand.  They fret:  am I doing this right?  Eventually, though, once reassured that the goal is to engage with the process rather than to do some specific task that is to be evaluated (i.e., write a quiz, test, or essay), students relax and engage with what is an exploratory, generative process.  Students are evaluated as a group by their ability to ask questions and to push their fellow students to think about the issue more deeply.

Once allowed reign to do this, students will make intriguing comments and observations and will ask provocative questions.  In fact, most faculty come to realize that a course is far richer when students are afforded space to ask questions and raise issues.  Faculty who view themselves as bearers of special knowledge who are meant to transmit insight to their students have difficulty in an IF classroom.  But, faculty who themselves as experienced mentors to their students know that students have a wonderful “beginner’s mind” and a capacity to ask remarkable questions.  The IF classroom allows students space to explore an issue and then to assess what would happen if various alternative paths were pursued.  Seldom are students given the time and space to do this sort of exploration, and yet this capacity for critical thinking is exactly the skill that they most need in the modern age.

I am glad that the course I selected for IF pedagogy – Community Psychology – seems to map well onto a discovery process, since concepts and principles that define the field are open to discussion and the skills students are learning as part of the course are useful for the practice of Community Psychology. I can imagine that if the course content I selected was more prescribed, or if I was using different reading assignments, I would have different concerns and dilemmas. I spent a lot of effort trying to design the course in a way that would allow students to do several things: 1) pursue a 3-stage IF process of developing questions, recognizing possibilities, and identifying consequences about community empowerment; 2) integrate concepts (from weekly assigned readings of primary sources); 3) develop group facilitation, note-taking, and discussion skills; and 4) apply discussion outcomes in tangible ways (students interview community advocates, research community organizations, complete reflection papers). In the first few weeks of class, students are supposed to develop questions (before moving on to possibilities and finally consequences) about community empowerment. Each week there is a “topic” for discussion which is informed by a set of readings that address related concepts. I am feeling pretty good about the potential of students to bring these elements together, although there are a lot of different things happening in the class, and I am getting a range of feedback from students about how they think it is going.

Regarding integration of content, what is different in this class from all others I have taught is that students are entirely responsible for connecting concepts from the readings with discussion content and their location in the IF process. Individual students and groups are finding their way, some better than others, with this responsibility. For the first few discussions, students were too focused on letting the concepts drive the discussion, on recording detailed notes, and on building agreement. Facilitators led discussion more than they facilitated and there was too much consensus and not enough question-asking. But every week, the facilitators and note-takers do a better job, and the quality of the discussions get better. I am also getting disparate feedback. A number of students tell me that this is the richest, most challenging experience they have ever had in college. They point out that they are making deep connections with concepts in the readings and their own experiences and they enjoy the group discovery process and the emotional bonds they are building with group members. They also see real value in learning how to work with others and hold each other responsible. At the same time, other students are bristling under or suffering from the imposed class structure. They point out that they don’t like how some group members don’t adequately prepare for discussion, or how others talk too much/talk too little. They want to bypass asking questions for posing possibilities and consequences. I am trying to encourage application of concepts, good group dynamics and proper use of the IF process in a number of ways. One way is having facilitators create a pre-facilitation outline (Laura’s brilliant idea!): the outline primes facilitators to aid discussants in applying concepts from the readings in discussion at appropriate times. Giving individual facilitators and groups feedback after each session (I complete evaluation forms for each of them), and having each group evaluate its own discussion process, also seems to be helping.

What I have observed is that the hardest thing for students to do in discussion is connecting their comments. But, when connections DO happen, a conversation occurs and students start to recognize different perspectives (transferal), incorporate concepts from the readings in ways that enrich the discussion (context setting), apply individual experiences (emotional acceptance), and produce more questions than answers (generalizing). So, I have been trying to give feedback to support these types of activities, emphasizing that this is a learning process and that they are all in this together.

As I stated before, I feel pretty good about the way the class is going. Nothing has gelled, but at least everything is moving forward. At the same time, I feel like I am juggling several balls in the air as I work with discussion groups – I have to encourage good group dynamics while supporting application of content in the midst of introducing them to a new process of learning.

I realize that I really am engaged in as much discovery as they are. We will see if my enthusiasm and anticipation hold up in the midst of this juggling act.

At first glance, some faculty will assume that, since they are largely observing students’ discussion in many of the class sessions, their work load will be lighter—no need to create lectures that imbue knowledge upon students.  In fact, though, nearly all faculty discover that carefully observing one’s students is challenging but engaging work.  These observations not only allow faculty to help students to develop their facilitation and leadership skills but also help faculty to really listen to and get to know their students.  Faculty in IF classrooms find that they develop more empathy for their students and that they are much more capable of identifying and assisting students who are having academic or personal difficulties.  This sort of insight is especially critical in intervening with at-risk, first-year students, for instance first-generation college students, before a student fails out or simply quietly drops out of school.

Nearly all faculty do find that the increased emphasis on student-driven discussion in class means that much less material is covered.  Some faculty worry that this could preclude the use of the IF process in certain kinds of classes in which core material must be covered in order to prepare students for the next course in a major’s sequence.  However, virtually every faculty member who reports that less material was covered in the class also notes that students learned the material that was covered in much more detail and could articulate that learning in tests and papers better than previous semesters’ students could.

By the end of a semester in the IF classroom, nearly every faculty member says that they would use the IF process again in future classes because they feel much more renewed in their teaching and connected to their students.  Faculty routinely marvel at the comments and insights students will develop on their own, in interaction with their fellow students.  Most of these faculty note that they never would have imagined that their students had such interesting things to say.  At the end of the day, this is the best source of faculty renewal:  instead of simply lecturing at one’s students, one can engage in a real dialogue with them—extending what they already know rather than presuming to know their current understanding.

The good news about my students’ presentations is that they went off very well, and were well-received.  They included a large number of artworks that we’ve discussed over the course of the semester, and one slideshow included a floating cartoonized version of my head floating around, with my jaw opening and shutting nutcracker-style while a computerized voice recited, “But is it art? But is it art?”  That drew a big laugh, especially from my colleagues.  What really made me feel good about the end was that I think that the IF process really helped my students do group work better.  It wasn’t great, but compared to some of my colleagues, it was quite successful.  Three colleagues I spoke to had planned to have their classes make presentations, but jettisoned the idea in the end.  All three are excellent teachers, but in one case the students had mutinied against the professor the previous week, refusing to do any more group work since they couldn’t get along, and in another case the professor dissolved the groups after two students ended up getting physically violent with each other (something I haven’t seen here at our all-women campus).  So it might just be that the personalities of my students meshed better, but I attribute part of the success to good preparation through the IF process.

The floating-cartoon head also illustrates a change in my class.  I realized sometime in early November that I was thinking so hard about how the course was going and how to get them to facilitate, and how to help them manage their own work, that I never relaxed in the classroom.  This is different from how I typically work.  Usually I build more of a rapport with the students in the classroom, but it wasn’t happening with my IF class.  They were stressed out, since I had given them some very difficult readings, and difficult writing assignments.  Some rose to the challenge (at least partly), but others more or less checked out, and probably put me in the category of hard professor you can’t understand.  What also made it difficult is that I wanted to teach them some philosophy, but they hadn’t signed up for a philosophy course, per se.  They signed up for a course on art.

So the last month was spent with more small group discussions with easier material.  I focused on the value of arts education.  They read a Psychology Today piece by Michelle & Robert Root-Bernstein on teaching creativity to scientists through art, a report about an art teacher who uses art as therapy for troubled high school students, and I assigned a TED talks online video on creativity by Sir Ken Robinson.  The material was much more accessible, and they did a better job with discussions in November.  One piece of the course I jettisoned was facilitated discussions with middle school students.  As my student assistant put it – “our students are so insecure and unsure of their skills middle schoolers will eat them alive”.  So rather than set them up for sure failure, I dropped a part of the course I had hoped would be very educational for them.  Instead, I added some classes where we did a blind chocolate tasting (to talk about aesthetic judgments and whether they are based on anything objective), we had a music-listening session, we visited a museum, and I took them out for dessert to a nice restaurant.  All these things helped loosen everyone up, and improved the course.  I kept their main, and very difficult, writing assignment, which I helped them through by commenting on several drafts for each person.

The end of one of the student slideshows sort of summed up their experience in my course: “We talked about art a lot.  We still don’t know what it is…in fact, we know less than when we started this course.  But we learned what kind of chocolate we like…and we learned to facilitate.”

Michael Gettings

In the best classrooms, you might see the students sitting in a circle with the professor attempting to lead them in a discussion.  Rarely, however, do the students in these classes get to pose the discussion questions themselves.  Instead, the professor orchestrates discussion, often using a poor form of the Socratic method—which is designed to elicit from a student the “correct” answer to a question framed and posed by a professor.  If you listen to students coming out of these sorts of classes, you will hear that the students are nearly as bored as they are in lectures.  In fact, a professor that is ten, twenty, or more years older than their students is unlikely to pose questions that will truly engage the students.  Many times, students know more than we think they know, and so we professors do not even pitch the question we may think is so provocative at the right level.  Moreover, professors often become saturated, over time, with their own egos, causing us to think that we have special knowledge.  We do have unique knowledge based upon our particular studies and experiences, but it is not special knowledge that could not possibly be divined or acquired by our students. In fact, what seems provocative to us may be obvious to our students.  Modern students often know more than that for which we give them credit.  What they do not know is subtle and often requires that we enter into a real dialogue with them.

The IF process for student-centered discussion offers something unique to students and faculty:  an opportunity for real dialogue.  We ask our faculty to step aside and, in part, turn the classroom over to their students.  Students are charged with initiating, directing, and managing their own discussions, extending from the broad questions that animate the course content.  Faculty give fewer lectures and usually cover much less material, but their students learn more.  Over and over again, we find that faculty who use (or adapt) components of this process walk away absolutely amazed at the discussions their students are having and by the questions their students are able to pose when given the space to do so.  At the end of class, faculty are able to highlight students’ comments and respond to the ideas raised by their students in such a way as to be able to provide a much more directed lecture.  Students are much more engaged by these lectures since the content refers to their own questions and comments.  Faculty can also use this time to respond to any misconceptions students expressed in their discussions without embarrassing any particular student.

The modern age requires that university graduates be effective communicators who are creative and self-directed.  The modern university needs to think much more about how we teach rather than simply adopting high-tech accoutrements that do little to advance what we are actually doing in class beyond the model in which the professor stands before the crowd of students and pontificates.  Students will undoubtedly learn some things from such performances, but what more could they learn if they were instead called to engage and perform themselves–using their own emerging knowledge?  Could their professors not better help them to learn how to best assess information if they started by listening to how the students themselves think?

One of the things I realized is that the readings I’ve been assigning my class have been far too difficult for them to understand.  In a lecture-based course, I would have had more time to explain a lot of the readings to them, but I chose instead to let them grapple with the texts in their own discussions.  This was too much for them.  Jeff suggested that I provide them with material they can more easily digest.  Since my course fulfills a university research requirement, I have to take them to the library to learn how to search databases, create bibliographies, and more.  So I took them one day last week to search for new material to read in the coming weeks.  Our next topic is the Value of the Arts in Education.  Since I know little about this topic, I figured they could find sources and I can sort through them and select the better ones for class readings.  They split into pairs, and they looked for newspaper, magazine or journal articles about the value of the arts in primary, secondary or higher education.  They are turning in their annotated bibliographies today, so I’m curious to see what sources they’ve come up with.  Certainly they’ll be easier to read than professional journal articles in philosophy!

I’ve also decided to make their small group discussions briefer, and include more full-class discussions each week.  This is so that I can break up the monotony of small group discussions, since they were getting burnt out.  This also means I can pull some activities out of my bag of tricks.  They will read a little David Hume (which I’ll help explain) on the standard of taste, then we’ll have a chocolate tasting and talk about whether judges come to consensus about what is of value in art (or chocolate, as the case may be!).  I’ve done this before with classes, and it’s been fun for them, and they learn something.  I’m also going to have them each submit a piece of music they like, and write a paragraph explaining why they find it aesthetically interesting or valuable.  Then I’ll put the class playlist together, and we’ll discuss how we write about art, and what the role of criticism is.  So a few of these activities, which have been successful in the past, will improve things I hope, giving them more variety.

Their groups have written rough drafts of group reports for our earlier discussions on the question “What is Art?”, and the results are acceptable so far.  Each report is 8-12 pages, and they seem to have done a decent job collaborating on the result.  I’m meeting with each group today to give them feedback and advise them how to best revise the reports.

Well, that’s it for now.  As I’ve gotten very busy I’ve fallen off my weekly posting schedule that I set for myself, but that doesn’t surprise me at this point in the semester!

Michael Gettings