Outline of commitments for the course
Revised 27 March 2019, final
Agreed
- Course members commit to attending the sessions, and sending their apologies if they are unable to come (can be posted on Yammer or sent to Sophia)
- Course members will produce an individual reflection on some aspect of their experience of the course, in a format of their choice. This will be posted on the WordPress site by 5 Jan. 2019. Course members will produce a second reflection at the end of semester 2, to be posted on WordPress by midnight on 26 Apr. 2019. Second semester reflections should respond to one or more of a set of questions prepared at the session on 27 April (see below), and should include a separate section at the end stating what the implications of the reflections in the piece are for next year’s course members.
- Course members will be responsible for providing comments/suggestions on the individual reflections of two other specific course members in each semester, and encouraged to comment on the work of others as well. (See week 21 minutes for some suggestions on what comments/suggestions can include.) Names are listed for semester 1 (see records for week 10), and will be allocated on 3 April for semester 2. If the course members listed for a reviewer to review have not submitted reflections, the reviewer can choose another person’s reflection to comment on. All comments are due by 10 May 2019.
- Once the two reflections have been submitted, and four comments completed, each course member should e-mail Sophia by 11 May 2019 with the links to these contributions.
- Two reflections and four comments on reflections (as listed above) are required for course members to pass the course.
- Course members will participate in one or more group projects.
- Each group/project (see below) will organize one session in semester 2 for which they will identify one or more readings, around what they are working on.
- Groups/projects will contribute readings for the course Resource List.
- Groups/projects will post materials on WordPress that can be useful for other groups/projects—e.g. ethics related materials.
Questions for semester 2 reflections to address (from week 21 minutes):
Forming the final reflections – questions for ourselves:
- A list of questions generated in this session that people can focus their reflection on and that can be passed unto the course next year
- What activities did you learn most from and why?
- What activities did you most value and why?
- Did you use the course resource list?
- How could more reading have facilitated the course activities?
- Did we hold ourselves accountable to our commitments – why, why not? What are the implications of having commitments?
- Reflect on the group dynamics – how does community-formation fit into this?
- Focus on what we did do rather than what we didn’t
- How did your experience of the course fit into what you have read about alternative education?
- How does this course fit into your larger university experience?
- Compare the course to other courses
- Reflect on the course in relation to horizontal structures, such as relationships between students and tutors
- Reflect on structure and autonomy within the course
- How do we learn without reading? Can we?
- Explain your understanding of the topics of the course
- Why was this course perceived as different to our other academic work?
- Explore our structure of decision making – how do you feel about it now that you have seen consensus decision making in action?
- Explore theory vs research
- Reflection on the future of our university
- Include a separate section on what the implications of these are for next year’s course (so these could be collated into one document for next year’s group)
