Best Case vs Fears and Anxieties

The 'modern' thinking in course design is to think backwards- how do you get students to become inspired innovators for the 21st century? Or more likely, what do do students need to know before they can be expected to adequately describe the foodchain? As a student, I didn't realize that all classes weren't designed this way, but in retrospect, it does explain a lot of things.

Currently, I am reflecting on what I want my outcomes to be. In my dreamland, I inspire a generation of scientifically trained silver tongued mediators who descend on humanity to clarify the confusion surrounding modern bioethical debates. I am recruited to be a White House adviser, helping politicians understand science before they pass policy. More realistic though- especially for this first pass-, my pilot class is meeting from 3-5 on Friday afternoons. Ideally, they'll talk about it after we wrap up. Maybe some of them will sign up to take the real course. I won't have to do most of the talking (aha! I need more questions to ask, less 'things to tell them'). While my murky idea of success is marinating, I tried contrasting that to my worst case. No one does the reading. Not a soul talks, I say things that are embarrassingly wrong to fill the silence, debate gets too heated, students spend all weekend talking about the meltdown that resulted in f-bombs, tears or other unsuitable classroom material.

What I want is to filet the material, leave it out for the students to examine as raw as they can. At some point I am going to be asked to 'assess' this (what, give grades? Ack!), which means I do need to clarify what we are ALL getting out of the experience. There is a personal aspect to ethics, and bioethics is murky only in that it mixes the black and white of science with the personal and political. Not that it is too complex for undergrads to understand. I hope.

My first 'pilot' is set to be Oct 22. !! We are going to talk about Research Integrity- easily the MOST boring subject to tackle. This is the basic stuff of 'don't lie about your results' something that is not too distant from the 'don't cheat on your exams' stuff students get anyway, but something that is rarely explicitly stated in research. So, it must be done. I am going to take Noel's approach- try to help them understand that the public will believe them, as scientists, and that this gives them an onus to be responsible with the public trust. At the moment, what I mostly do is day dream and blog about it, but I like to imagine this is an essential component of the creative process.