What if Universities Put Education First?

In the TED Talk, Professor David Helfand presents an alternative to the modern university, one that ditches departments, levels hierarchy and places education first.

How to Recover from a False Start?

Experimentation and spontaneity can create a dynamic and exciting classroom environment, but what happens when experiments flop? For over three years now I’ve been teaching American Political Thought online. The students are required to complete weekly readings and short writing assignments in addition to a midterm and a final. But after a very successful summer course on Media and Politics where I had students create and maintain blogs on Tumblr, I decided to try something new. I scraped all of the traditional assignments and replaced them with a class blog called: what would the founders do? The idea was simple: our class would work together to provide robust commentary and insight on contemporary events based on key themes and arguments from our reading. In addition, I challenged the students to develop strategies to build a readership and offered extra-credit points for the articles with the most comments and shares. The possibilities seemed endless. But the project failed to launch. One, two, three weeks passed without a single student posting on the blog. Despite daily reminders, pleas, trouble-shooting technical difficulties only three students out of fifteen participated on the page. Frustrated and at a loss, I decided to change course. In an attempt to recover I scrapped the project and returned to my old syllabus. I gave students an option to pursue a dual track – they could continue writing for the blog or they could do reading responses. Only one student opted for the blog. By changing the syllabus three weeks into the semester, I risked my authority as the professor but it allowed me to reengage the bulk of students who were otherwise lost. While I survived the semester, I paid for it in the number of email clarifications I sent and perpetually tardy assignments. It also meant that this semester, I have been much more hesitant to experiment.

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