Friday, February 3, 2017

A student asks, what the hell is going on?

One of my students honestly poses the question of what the hell is going on in this class? He doesn't say "hell" - he's too polite - what he actually says is:
This class is very different than any other class I have ever taken in my academic career. The class is structured in a way that allows the students to determine and teach the content of the course, rather than having the Professor lead the class. Not gonna lie I am still hesitant about the class, however I know that it is going to be a unique experience and believe that it will help me develop into a future professional of the healthcare industry.
 rest here: https://hmp722unh.blogspot.com/2017/01/hmp-722.html

So my comment back:

Interesting question, what does it mean to "lead"? Have I abdicated my responsibility?

In a world where you have, in the form of a smart phone in your pocket, access to more information instantly than any other human being who lived before 2008, or if you want to date it back to commercial access to the internet in 1995 or so, what does it mean to teach?

I did my dissertation on the thinking of Adam Smith, the founder of modern economic thought. One of the books I had access to was a compilation of student notes from his classes on moral philosophy. Smith would literally come to class and read to the students from his notes, and they would copy them down. That was teaching in 1750. He was very popular as a teacher. Does that even make sense in today's era of smartphones?

How much sense does it make to assign a text book today when the information is out there, and one of the key managerial skills of today (not the future) is to pull information together and create a coherent vision of the environment and the opportunities in it?

That's where I'm coming from. You guys may not cover as much material as you could have if I was the one telling you what to read, but even if we did that format, there would be limits of how much we could cover. When I was doing my MBA in org behavior, I took a whole class on "self leadership". I took another whole semester course on theories of leadership. What I'm saying is, even if I dictated to you what to read, we would only be scratching the surface of a huge field. So if you get to a little less material than you would have, I'm not sure the loss is that great. The question is, at the margin, will you gain more knowledge about leadership and organizational behavior by trying to collectively run an organization than you would have if I had pushed more material at you to read? If the former is more beneficial, at the margin, then the course will have been a success.

I'm glad you're willing to try, though!

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