I am compelled by Jack's observations about how far his students' facilitation skills have come in just a semester-- observations which echo my own in the years I used the IF process in the classroom as well as those of many of you as told in blog postings and...
I recently caught up with one of the Frontline episodes on my DVR. This one was called Storm Over Everest, and it initially aired on May 13,2008. You can view the episode here, if you like. The episode recounts a violent blizzard trapped numerous climbers at...
A recent Frontline episode (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=bigimage&utm_source=bigimage_) exploring the vaccine controversy was fascinating and suggests several openings by which a couple of our less...
A recent NOVA episode (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/money/) pits the rational actor theorists within the discipline of Economics against the behaviorists. As a sociologist, I've always been more partial to the behaviorists' approaches (like Gladwell and the ...
The raucous debate last month (March, 2010) over the health care bill was hardly unexpected. For more than one hundred years, efforts to provide better access to decent health care for all Americans have been thwarted. And, in fact, when universal health care was...
Many faculty complain that the current generation of students are different. This has probably been said of every generation of students that has come before, but there is an interesting Frontline episode ("Digital Nation") that explores whether the digital...
When many faculty hear the term “student-centered discussion,” they imagine students leading a “discussion” that is really just a bull session. In fact, this is typically the sort of discussion that happens when faculty allocate small-group discussion time in...
Numerous questions have arisen regarding the nuts and bolts of planning for and then conducting a citizen discussion. Theses discussion can seem rather daunting, particularly if engaging in community discussions is outside of your experiential range. So far, Jack...
Within the collaborative IF classroom, sanctuary is emphasized. Students will be most open when the feel safe. And the most compelling fear among this generation of students is that they will be publicly belittled by peers. This can make the idea of doing peer...
Greetings Summer Institute '09 (and '06) Faculty, I have said this to a few of you specifically but would like to underline it more generally. Each of you are working to apply the IF method within a variety of different settings. Some of those settings serves...