Design Forward
An emergent exploration of critical instructional design.
Design Forward
Portfolio Part: What Do You Want to Learn?
Free Writing: Flexibility
What Do You Want to Learn?
In Design Forward, we talk a lot about flexibiliy and how we go about embracing a more emergent approach to teaching while still designing courses that feel coherent. What is the most rigidly structured class you teach or have taught in the past? If you were going to redesign this class to incorporate more flexibility and space for student choice and agency, how would you start? How do you think it would feel to teach this redesigned class compared to the existing version?
I am thinking of teaching an online course that my college or a community college needs taught. Design Forward is causing me to think about what courses I might teach, or not teach. I think I would stay away from math courses or courses with a highly prescribed curriculum. Some courses that would have room for students to engage in differing ways might be: politics and current events, modern literature about current hot topics, financial planning, cooking for nutrition and taste, the impact of prior history on life today.
My preparation to teach the course would not be to write a syllabi. It would be to extend my own knowledge of the subject matter and to develop a list of resources that might be used to support learning. It would be to form questions that would help the students to develop class goals and class rules.
