Structural overview  (Page 2/3)

The diversity harnessing cycle

In the Diversity Harnessing "cycle", input from the students is harnessed through the use of questionnaires. The questionnaire seeks to find applications and ideas "outside of the box" for use within the course. As the students witness aspects of their own interests entering into the course material, they find themselves truly engaged in the course.

The content from the questionnaires must be analyzed and fed back into the course material. It cannot be assumed that all inputs from the students will create useable materials for the course. Some inputs may be tangential to the instructor's intention for the question. Other inputs may fall too far beyond the expertise of the instructor. Even the best materials are likely to require massaging to place them into a form that allows the students to recognize the connections between the topics being studied and the application being suggested. In any case, the instructor can expect to devote significant time into facilitating the integration of the material back into the course.

With the material harnessed from the students fed back into the course as homework problems, test problems and both closed- and open-ended designs, the students will have the opportunity in class to apply their new found skills and have impact outside of the course boundaries. Having already succeeded in having impact beyond the course, it is believed that many students will find success in applying their skills beyond the classroom beyond the semester's end.

For myself, the term ``harnessing'' brings forth an image of a horse hitched up to a cart. In this analogy, I wonder who is driving the cart and who the horse may represent. The traditional thought of the instructor driving the course seems to leave us thinking that it is the students who have been harnessed, but this view is truly misguided.

Within the structure of diversity harnessing, it is the students who ride in the cart, all of them holding tight to the reigns and assisting in guiding the harness. Does that leave the instructor as the solitary horse? Without proper course structure (eg. Cooperative Learning techniques), this may very well be how the instructor will feel as he tries to achieve the goals of diversity harnessing. With cooperative learning techniques, the instructor becomes the reigns and harness; the instructor connects the students to the horse in a manner in which they can control the progress. The burden of the work should be carried by the course structure, itself!

Pedagogy founded on the three c's

The three c's

• Community
• Collaboration
• Accountability