Professor Sharon

        I drove down today to attend a conference at Fairfield University: Innovative Pedagogy & Course Redesign IX: Integrative Learning in Practice.  After a pretty nice dinner, participants were led through several exercises where integrative thinking, learning and creation were necessary.  Being academics, it was quite possible!  I think that there were some folks who weren’t able to be creative to save their lives (which if you were in attendance, you would find funny, as one of the activities was that we were given a list of 15 items that we had use of on a lifeboat and we had to prioritize the list).  Actually, they were creative in a sense with integrating some thinking; yet it seemed to be the same old same old structure, format, style that all academic courses are.

My take away for the night is that this could be really fascinating, interesting, and yet it means change and I begin already to wonder if change is really possible at the level it is needed to create some really dynamic first year course at my own college.

At any rate, it’s  a great change for me.  I’m in a four person student suite with three other women from other colleges.  Sometimes when I get to experience these kinds of settings, I wonder what I missed by not having had that residential college experience; most times I know that I would not have enjoyed it for the most part!  Growing up in a small apartment with so many other folks in residence was enough of that type of living for me!

I’m looking forward to a couple of days of thinking about learning.