Hi, everyone!
I wanted to share a very unusual approach to course planning that my professor is using this semester in Ed/Psych 366 Psychology of Creativity (I am the TA). He is letting the students plan the syllabus -- the topics and the assignments. He set up a wiki that students can edit. For the first class session, students got in to groups and discussed topics they'd like to cover. Then, the discussion was continued on the telesis discussion board and on the discussion part of the wiki. Students could go to the wiki and edit up to four class sessions each day (in other words, they could only change four sessions today and htne they would have to wait and come back to the wiki tomorrow; this was to keep someone from changing the whole course at once). Then, in a later class session we did the same thing with assignments.
Of course, this would not work in every class, but in a "special topics" or other kind of course where there is a lot of flexibility, this is a great way to get student buy-in and to help ensure you are providing some of the things they came to the course wanting/needing to learn. It also generates a lot of really good conversation about the structure of the domain and about how certain topics may lead to or support others.
Having taught this same course using a syllabus I designed carefully to trace certain themes, I have found it a little bit challenging to give up the control one gets by being able to select topics and sequence them -- and I think in many cases there is a value in having a more expert person do this. And there is also the problem that the topics and organization students decide on early in the semester reflect a limited understanding of the domain -- but then again, we have left open the possibility of doing revisions later. At the same time, many of the concepts in this field of study can be introduce on an "as needed" or "just in time" basis, so maybe I just need to relax.
As far as assignments, the students were quite reasonable, or even a little more demanding than we would have been if we have made the assignments. We'll have to wait to see what kind of quality we get.
Anyway, it's an interest experiment, all based on the affordances of a wiki.
Stacy
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I know that Carter is using a wiki in the class that he's co-teaching, too.
Perhaps we'll hear from him.
Last year I created a wiki for the graduate students in my department. It's beginning to get some traffic, though it might be some time before it takes on a life of its own.
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