Getting ready to teach our Georgetown Foundations seminar
Bryan Alexander 2024-08-19
Tomorrow I start teaching a class. It’s one I’ve taught before, but now with some major changes, and I haven’t ever blogged about it, so I thought I could share it now.
It’s for Georgetown University’s Learning, Design, and Technology (LDT) program, and is called the Integrated Introduction to Learning, Design, and Technology seminar, which we usually just refer to as Foundations. The class is the official introduction to the program for new students. Foundations introduces them to the faculty and staff who lead it, each of whom presents on their relevant work. The seminar also brings up the major topics we study, to the details of how LDT works, and to Georgetown as well.
Students in our Foundations 2022 class.
There’s still more going on. LDT has a small cohort, so we really want to help the students get to know each other, to socialize, to connect. To that end we emphasize belonging, both as a practical matter as well as scholarly topic. It’s also the first grad school experience for most, so we have all kinds of things we’d like them to learn, from bureaucracy to reading hard scholarly literature. And it’s about design thinking, so they get to work together on a design project from the first day… and present it on Friday.
I have several jobs in Foundations. I have been redesigning it for a couple of years now. I organize the faculty, staff, and grad student involvement. I’ve arranged for outside speakers (a fantastic crew this time). I’m the class leader: instructor of record, as well as the person who guides each day. And I present on the topic of technology.
All of the faculty and staff will provide a mix of discussion facilitation, short presentations, and informal meeting.
Students will do all kinds of work. On the learning management system (Canvas) they post introductions and responses to our readings and topics. They will participate in live conversation. They will also build a projected learning experience early on (in one week), then devise a new university by the seminar’s end.
Most of the students are in person, but not all, as we have remote uses. My job is to blend the two in a solid HyFlex experience.
Foundations has an unusual timeline. Half of the class takes place in a single, intensive week in August (starting tomorrow!), while the other half occurs in seven weekly sessions running from September into October.
Here’s how the intensive week is going to go:
MONDAY, August 19 | 1:00-4:30pm
- Welcome and introductions; Introduction to LDT
- Syllabus, Course Overview, & Tech Tools
- How LDT works: Program Administration
- Being in Grad School (one reading: Paul Edwards, “How to Read a Book, V5.0”)
- Conclusion and Looking Ahead
TUESDAY, August 20 | 9:30am-2:00pm
- Welcome & Agenda
- Technologies for Portfolio: (with Lee Skallerrup-Bessette)
- Introduction to the American higher education ecosystem (Randy Bass)
- Creativity and design
- Design thinking and design challenge group work
- Lingering questions
WEDNESDAY, August 21 | 9:30am-2:00pm
- Welcome & Agenda
- Belonging Exercise
- Introduction to Learning Design
- Being an International Student
- Working Lunch
- Design challenge group work
- Lingering Questions
THURSDAY, August 22 | 9:30am-2:00pm
- Welcome & Agenda
- Introduction to Thinking About Technology
- Statistics, Research Methodology, and Analytics
- Reading: David Staley, Alternative Universities
- Working Lunch
- Design Challenge Group Work
- Lingering Questions
FRIDAY, August 23 | 10:00am-12:00pm
- Welcome & Agenda
- Group presentations
- Conclusion & Looking Ahead to the rest of the semester
After that week, here’s the second half of the seminar:
TUESDAY, September 10 | 7:00-9:30pm
- Education and technology topics
- Introduction to ed tech in higher ed
- LDT graduates visit
TUESDAY, September 17 | 7:00-9:30pm
- Design thinking (with Dawan Stanford)
- Technologies: audio and video production
TUESDAY, September 24 | 7:00-9:30pm (Lauinger Library entrance)
- The library and technology: Gelardin Center, Maker Hub.
- Generative AI and higher education
TUESDAY, October 1 | 7:00-9:30pm
- José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson, Teaching with AI A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning
- Enterprise strategies and issues
TUESDAY, October 8 | 7:00-9:30pm
- The world of educational technology (with EDUCAUSE president John O’Brien)
- Technologies for the web: Lee Skallerrup-Bessette
TUESDAY, October 15 | 7:00-9:30pm
TUESDAY, October 22 | 7:00-9:30pm
- Presenting campus design projects
- Conclusion: on to the rest of your degree and career
That’s the plan. I’m excited to see how it goes, and especially to meet students.
I’m also teaching another class, and will post about it as soon as I can.