Week 4 Futurity

I plan to develop a new General Education course FUTURITY (within the science and technology theme).  Here's the course description from my proposal:

What will our future lives look like?  Students examine past predictions (and their accuracy) and then move forward to glimpses of our future.  A diverse range of topics are introduced, including medical breakthroughs and research such as gene therapy and personalization of medication, scientific and technological advancements such as the digital evolution and driver-less cars, the future of crime, evolving privacy standards, demographic and population trends, and environmental and climate change.

Critical thinking will be a major theme threaded throughout the entire course.  Students will analyze a wide variety of source materials and evaluate information and categorize data into fact, fiction, or exaggeration.  Media, cultural, and technological influences will be examined.

Futurity topics will be discussed at an introductory level, designed for an audience of cross-disciplinary students.  These topics include:

• Medical breakthroughs and research such as gene therapy and personalization of medication, global pandemics, evolving diseases and human evolution;
• Scientific and technological advancements such as the digital evolution and driver-less cars, travel, food supply and distribution;
• Sociological trends, including demographic, population, religion, crime, evolving privacy standards;
• Environment and climate change.

I'm not a science major.  So why do I want to develop a FUTURITY course?  And how will I manage such a broad range of topics (not being an expert)?  Good questions, for sure.

I want to create this course for two reasons.  First reason:  these topics really interest me (which makes my prep way more enjoyable).  But what about college students, are they interested?  I didn't know...so I polled students on a few ideas for courses to see what they liked best, and FUTURITY was the winner (by a landslide).  Job one accomplished - I have (implicit) engagement, this won't be a course they "have to take".  So that's my second reason:  student engagement.  My job engaging students is a whole lot easier when they're interested in the content from the start (I've just gotta keep their interest piqued and the enthusiasm going).  Believe me when I say this is important to me - I taught Accounting for 10 years (it's REALLY hard to make Accounting exciting!)

Next question:  how will I manage such a broad range of topics, not being an expert?   Futurity will be the third Gen Ed course I've developed, I've also developed Paranormal and Pseudoscience and World Mysteries (these courses were also developed based on a popular interest poll - when you don't know - ask!).  All three courses have critical thinking themes, and for all three courses I don't consider myself a content "expert".  I should re-state from the description above that the course topics are taught at an introductory level, meant for a wide (diverse) audience, all college students.  Seeing as General Education elective courses are taken by every college student, my classes are an interesting mix of students from every discipline, from nursing students to engineers to early childhood education students.  So what's ideal about the FUTURITY course is that students will have a varied level of expertise and education depending on the topic of the week.  For example, the health sciences majors will be able to contribute a lot about medical breakthroughs during those weeks of instruction, and the computer tech and engineer majors can bring knowledge in weeks where we are covering the digital evolution and driver-less cars.  What's my role?  I do teach a short lecture, introducing the topic content and covering the basics (and I'm well prepared).  But then I make it clear - I'm NOT an expert.  We go to the Internet, we look at sources (some provided by me, some provided by students both on the spot and for homework), we evaluate content, students have a highly interactive role in the selection of source content, the evaluation process, and they learn to critically analyze information.  Is it fact?  Is it fiction?  Is it exaggeration?  What are the underlying motivations?  Sources? What are the media, cultural, sociological, and technological influences at play?  So not only are they learning about the topic itself (interesting stuff!), they are also learning how to research and gather information, analyze veracity, synthesize a variety of information, evaluate, and make informed decisions.  Win, win, win.  

And now, the futurity of education.  The role of teacher has changed.  Dramatically.  I have strategies for facilitating my classes instead of straight up teaching.  I do teach them some science, straight up, but I also teach students how to research on the Internet, how to create artifacts of their learning, how to use tools for collaboration, how to think critically.  Along the way we all learn about the topic content, and keeping up with new trends and innovations is much easier when there's 201 people "keeping up" instead of 1!  What also interests me is that most students really enjoy learning about digital tools too, this feedback is positive.  They learn collaborative ways to work, and cool tools they can use in other courses and other presentations, they appreciate it.

Here's a couple of links about the future of education, if you're interested:

Edutopia: Education Trends

A 2016 Look at the Future of Online Learning Part 1