What is the future of a college education in the USA? The recent economic downturn seems to have sharpened the already well-known trend toward seeing a college education largely in terms of enhancing one's economic security. And as our uncertain economic times...
I've got a couple of very unrelated "possibilities" to pass along. Easels or "flip chart" stands. A few of you--especially those teaching IF-related courses this fall--have asked whether we have any specific recommendations on flip chart stands. I think Jeff...
Sydney Pollack's phrase in reference to Frank Gehry that "talent is liquified trouble" may be helpful in thinking about the ways participants in sanctuary-style discussions may be troubled and frustrated as they engage in creative thinking.
Picture for a moment two very different kinds of citizen “discussions” that took place this summer. Both were focused on issues surrounding health and healthcare in our society. For the first, you might think of any of a number of the so-called “town hall”...
This entry describes the third stage of the IF discussion process: using the exploration of consequences to help revise the policy possibilities.
This post gives some examples of what we mean by taking a more conceptual approach in your discussions.
There's an interesting section on "Thinking as Doing" in Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft that can help shed light on what we're trying to convey in our approach to collaborative and developmental discussions (my earlier post on Crawford's book is here)....
This post describes the second of the three stages in the Interactivity Foundation's discussion process: generating and developing some contrasting possibilities to respond to the big questions about the area of concern raised in the first stage of the discussion process.
Our focus in the blog and in the Summer Institute is on exploring connections between the Interactivity Foundation's "sanctuary discussion process" and the classroom. In earlier postings I've talked about the character of our approach to collaborative and...
I'm uploading here a series of "Conceptual Essays" on IF and our approach to public discussion. The essays complement our other more hands-on documents by placing our work in a larger context and exploring the reasoning behind why we do things the way we do. They...