Collo book club?

I hate myself for even making that the title of a post. This is approaching Oprah territory and, well...yeah. Anyway, this seems like a possible way to make Collo more Colloquial. Obviously not everyone needs to participate, but if we have a handful of people all reading the same thing, it might make for good, focused discussions both online and off. If that sounds at all appealing, you should indicate that to me in some way, and consider this an invitation to nominate a book.

Collo for freshmen

I like the idea floated a while ago of essentially dividing Collo into "Collo for freshmen" and "Collo for everyone else." If we go that route, what are some things that freshmen should be required to do? What are the things (if any) that you've done in the past in Collo that you think are useful? We'll still do the program of study, hopefully with some older people helping out the freshmen. What about the Basler challenge course? Good, bad, indifferent? Study abroad info? That seems like a good thing to hear, especially if coupled with some students who have actually studied abroad. Alcohol education? What else? The beauty here is that you're not subjecting yourselves to any of this, just the incoming class. If you were designing classes they had to attend, what would those be?

You lead the class

In a twitter discussion a while ago, someone suggested adding to Collo some classes that are taught by students. I am 100% on board with that idea. But we need to fill in the details to take it from idea to actuality. So here are some thoughts:

1. I envision this working a lot like GRGs, especially the ones that are more substantive (not that there's anything wrong with ones that are entertaining, but that's a different animal.) You would need to propose a class/session/etc. and schedule it. It could be during regular Collo hours or at some other time. Unlike GRGs of the past, this would count as class, not something over and above the normal class hours.

2. I worry that we won't have many of you volunteer to do this, so we need some incentive. What would actually get you to put in the time and effort it will take to organize and lead a class? It's a valuable experience on its own, but I wouldn't count on such intrinsic motivation. Part of this will depend on how grades end up being calculated. If they do end up being based on hours, then the hours you put into preparing for the class would all count and would lessen the hours you needed to spend doing other Collo related tasks.

3. What would the substance of these classes or GRGs be? I think they could cover a lot of territory. It might be a way for older folks to give valuable information to younger folks. It could be helpful for the program of study. It might be a way to talk about your study abroad experiences, or service projects, or getting into a particular program, or your internship, etc. You might discuss the thesis process or discuss current events. This could also be a way to teach other useful skills--changing a tire, baking a cake, making an origami rose.

4. There's really no cost to making this an option and putting it on the table, but it would be great if you actually took advantage of it. If we had a enough of these, it would be a way to offer more classes, increase options and flexibility, and get class size down. All good things. So think about it.

HC social media and newsletter

The Honors College needs more of a social media presence. In addition to any benefits it might have for current students, it is also (maybe more so) important for connecting with prospective students and alumni. This is probably something that should be spearheaded by the council, but if anyone out there has an interest in helping manage social media for us, or at least advising us old people on what we should do, let me know. Doing so would certainly get you some Collo credit.

We would also like to get the Honors College newsletter up and running again. It used to be published once a semester and then it just kind of died out. We would like to publish a smaller newsletter more frequently, perhaps monthly. Again, this will probably run through the council, but they will need help. If you are interested in and have the skills to help with the newsletter, let me know. Obviously this would count for Collo credit as well.

Grading by the hour...

So here is an early, quick draft of what grading based on hours might look like in Collo. I welcome and encourage comments and suggestions. None of it is set in stone and it might ultimately end up on my scrap heap of bad ideas.

The benefits I see of something like this are that
(1) it provides an easy way to encourage you to do Collo related things throughout the semester
(2) it allows for a lot of flexibility
(3) it rewards doing something instead of just some finished product
(4) it allows for the same activity to be weighted differently for different individuals based on how much time and effort went into it (e.g., a program of study for someone who just changed majors and picked up a new minor vs. a program of study for someone who hasn't changed anything since the last program of study.)
(5) it makes grading as transparent as it can be and almost entirely up to you.

One concern some have had is that filling this out would itself become tedious, especially if we try to make it as hard as possible to BS your way through it. I think that's a real worry. I'm inclined to err on the side of making it easy and pain-free and just take my chances with folks trying to cheat the system. Perhaps frequent, gentle reminders that filling these out falsely is cheating would help, along with some random audits of the reports. I'm open to other ideas.

Collo grading for non-freshmen (draft)

Total hours:

A: 30 hours

A-: 27 hours

B+: 24 hours

B: 21 hours

B-: 18 hours

C: 15 hours

F: < 15 hours

 Distribution of hours:

Time: You will record your time spent on Collo related activities (what exactly these are still needs to be spelled out in some detail) and submit them every three weeks. You must have a minimum of three hours on each submission.  Any three week period in which you have fewer than three hours will result in a reduction in your final grade by 1/3 (from A to A-, A- to B+, etc.). You can have a maximum of ten hours per three week period. No hours over ten will count towards the total. 

Activity: In total, you need at least five hours in class, five hours on personal/professional/academic development and/or enrichment (some of this can be double counted with class time), three hours of service and two hours of being collegial. Failure to meet the minimum hours in any category will result in a reduction in your final grade by 1/3 for each category that is short of the minimum.

Keeping track of hours:

You’ll keep track of what you’re doing for Collo on a simple spreadsheet with columns for activity, date and hours. For activities in which there is something that can be handed in, that will be required in order to count the hours. For things that don’t have something that can be handed in, you are on your honor to report honestly. Also, I will audit some number of these each time they are due. For those audited, we will set up a meeting and briefly discuss what you’re doing for Collo.

This land is your land

In part this post is just a quasi-official, on the record, symbolic passing of the torch. I really do want Collo to be yours and I really do want it to work. I remember saying when I interviewed for this position that my nightmare was for one of you to ask what the point of Collo was and for me to not have an answer. I believe one way to make it relevant, useful and less redundant is to give some power and control of the course to you. I'm happy to play the Pete Seeger role. I can strum G,C, and D and call out the verses, but you have to sing. So there's that.

The other point of the post is to say to Midways and FPAs, this class is your class too. I think it sometimes happens that UHS folks dominate these discussions (note: not a criticism, still love you all). But it's your class, too, and you may have different ideas/wants/needs for the class. Midways, you tend to be older and don't need to be treated like freshmen, but you are also new to the university and to the program, so you also don't need to be treated like you've been here for two years. You have less time together as a cohort than those in other programs. You likely have other unique needs. If there is something that you think would be helpful or beneficial for you, let me know. Same thing for FPAs. What can we do in Collo that would be beneficial to you in particular?

Part of the goal of Collo is to bring everyone from all of our programs (minus HIDs) together, but that doesn't mean we can't also tailor some things to better suit your individual and collective wants and needs. I can't do that if I don't know what those are, though.

Program of Study

The program of study came up today and that got me thinking about it. It isn't going anywhere and most of you seem to agree that it is an important exercise (at least early in your academic career), even if you don't appreciate it at the time. But it seems to me the format of the program of study could be improved. The bold, italics, underline, and sometimes combinations of those gets confusing, at least to me. It seems to me there ought to be a template we use that has things broken down by semester with the appropriate boxes to check for gen. ed. requirements, intensives, major requirements, minor requirements, etc. Surely such a thing is possible. I'm happy to attempt to make one, but if anyone wants to take that on and get some collo credit for it, that would be great.

Grading Collo

Some thoughts on grading:

1. Grading is a challenge in Collo because, unlike other classes, there isn't really any content to test you on or to master. Additionally, there are few "deliverables." There are some--e.g., the program of study--but others are somewhat artificial and that tends to not work out well.

2. On the one hand, I want to trust you to do what you should be doing. On other hand, there has to be some kind of accountability.

3. I still like this idea, but I don't really know if it would work in Collo.

4. One thing it would allow for is dividing things up so that grades are dispersed throughout the semester. This, I think, is one of the biggest problems with Collo grading. When the majority of the grade is based on things due at the end of the term, many wait until the end of the term to do anything. That's a problem. We need the grades to encourage doing Collo related things throughout the semester.

5. Basing the grade on time spent also reinforces that what's important is what you're *doing,* not the thing you're producing that actually gets a grade. I like that.

6. I also like the flexibility. Within some parameters, you could spend your time how you want. If you get involved in a project that takes a lot of time, that would offset the time you have to spend doing other things for Collo. If you teach a class (more on peer teaching to come), the time you spend preparing would count.

7. Even if this works in principle, I'm still not sure how to make it work in practice. In particular, I'm not sure how to satisfy (2).

8. Also, how many hours should you spend on Collo? Per week? Per semester? This would be good to know anyway, however the grading works out.

9. I'm open to any and all ideas here. I don't like grading to be mysterious and I don't want it to be meaningless. Outside of that, I'm open to trying almost anything.

What do honors students need?

So here's one person's definition of what an honors student should be:

a highly motivated, academically talented, intrinsically motivated, advanced, and curious student who has broad interests, a passion for learning, and excitement about ideas. The student should also be sufficiently different or unique from the institutional norm to need, indeed require, a different, more challenging curriculum and other learning opportunities to satisfy his or her drive to learn, know, and do. 

Obviously the definition is not necessarily descriptive, and certainly not universally so. Still, as the Platonic form of an honors student, it seems pretty good.

For Collo purposes, it's the second part of the definition I really like. I think the way to think about the curriculum in general and Collo in particular is to think about what needs the ideal honors student has and how we can best satisfy those needs. We need to identify needs that aren't being met through other courses and figure out if and how we can satisfy them through Collo. That's what it's there for.

This is really just another way of stating and maybe partially answering the Stockdale questions. Collo is here to help meet the needs of a unique population of students. That's the criteria by which we should measure assignments, requirements, classes, etc. We need to be clear about what needs we are addressing and how the requirements are attempting to do that.

June was for rumination, July is for action. It's time to start making the syllabus and thinking about the concrete particulars of the course. That means now is an excellent time to break the impressive streak of not commenting at all. Knowing is better than guessing and it would be great to know what needs you think Collo could satisfy. What's happened in the past that has met the criteria above? What's happened that clearly hasn't? Keep in mind that we're dealing with the ideal version of you. So pretend you are instantiating the Form of an honors student and think about what you want or need in this course that you are not or cannot get elsewhere.    

Putting the colloquy in colloquium

col·lo·qui·um  (k-lkw-m)

n. pl. col·lo·qui·ums or col·lo·qui·a (-kw-)

1. An informal meeting for the exchange of views.

2. An academic seminar on a broad field of study, usually led by a different lecturer at each meeting.

col·lo·quy  (kl-kw)

n. pl. col·lo·quies

1. A conversation, especially a formal one.

2. A written dialogue.

Dictionaries don't solve real problems and I instantly hate papers that begin with dictionary definitions. So with that understanding...

It would be nice if Collo were actually more of a colloquium, with a bit more colloquy. 

I'm not sure how to make that happen. In its current incarnation, the current events requirement seems to get closest to this, but I'm not sure it does a particularly good job of it. The informal round table discussions we had were fairly successful, I think, and we could do more of those, and in general, expand the discussions to a wider range of topics. Maybe we can redefine 'current events' as anything that currently interests you. But the logistics of doing that with 160 people are a problem. 

This is an area where moving things online seems to be a good solution, and in part we do that with the D2L discussion boards. I don't think they quite work, though. I take at least partial responsibility for that. I hate D2L. Passionately. That probably keeps me from trying harder to improve things on D2L. But more than that, I think the format is not particularly conducive to real engagement.  

So I like the idea of the discussion boards in theory. There exist plenty of vibrant online communities where really good discussions take place. I have no problem with online colloquy. But we need a better avenue for that. Suggestions welcome. It doesn't have to be one place or one thing. Everyone doesn't have to participate. Ideally these would be discussions initiated and led by you and driven by your interests, and hopefully we end up with pockets of good, engaging, ongoing discussions on a variety of issues and topics. 

For those who want more of Collo to be online, here's your chance. How do we make this happen? 

  

If you build it

One of the enduring Collo complaints is about the actual time spent in class. One way to deal with that is to make the classes better and more worthwhile. That's certainly something I've tried and will continue to try to do, at least in part by shifting the burden to you.

But there are two parts to this equation. The complaint, I think, is that you are required to attend classes that you find not worth your time to attend. In addition to making the classes themselves better, it might also be worth thinking about the attendance requirement. I would like to think that if we offer valuable classes, we don't also need to require attendance. Of course, there is the danger that you won't realize beforehand that a class is valuable and you'll not attend when you would have gotten something out of it.

The price of avoiding that, though, is a lot of folks in class who don't want (and maybe don't need) to be there. Having people there who are there entirely of their own volition tends to make the class better, I think. Apathy and resentment can be contagious and minimizing their presence in the classroom is important. Giving you more choices about the classes you attend was a step in that direction. Better classes would accomplish some of that, too. And maybe that's enough. Or maybe we need to pare down the requirement even more.

The big worry with not requiring attendance is that there will be classes where no one shows up at all, or that we have many classes where very few people show up. That's obviously not ideal. On the other hand, twisting arms to get people in the seats is also not ideal. What would be ideal is for you to come to classes as often as you would if they were required, only you come because you want to and not because you have to. I guess my hope is that if we get the classes right, we won't need the requirement.

All of this would depend upon trust and maybe a little faith, which is definitely not my strong suit. You'd have to trust me that the classes are designed with your wants and needs in mind and I'd have to trust you to recognize that and act on it. Maybe someone can play the role of Terence Mann and convince me that people will come.



  

The "selfie generation?"

There is a lot to like here (possibly behind a paywall now). If more universities are attempting to change curricula so that they better connect with students' lives, yea for them. But...

(1) "Selfie generation?" Really? I'm not a millennial and I'm pissed off for them. It seems pejorative and about a breath away from yelling at those kids to stay off your lawn. I also doubt that students today are any more "me-centric" than the generations before them were at 18 years old. Hell, I'm in my 30s and I'm blogging and tweeting, which on the narcissistic scale is somewhere just below looking at your reflection in every window you walk by.

(2) The article has a lot of non-millennials talking about what this generation wants and needs in a curriculum. Speaking for others is always fun, and guessing what others want is good sport, too, but maybe somebody should actually talk to students about what they want and need. There is surprisingly little of that here. The older I get the more I realize that I suck at guessing what students want. It's much easier to just ask. (Though, of course, they might not answer. Yes, I'm talking to you.)

(3) My guess (see, it's fun) is that the changes these universities are making are for the better, but mainly because they are taking the time to think about the curriculum at all and to make thoughtful changes. I'd guess it doesn't have much to do with some revelation that kids these days are so me-centric. Curricula get stale. They need to be rethought and revised from time to time. This needs to happen even if the next generation happens to be incredibly other-centric.

(4) On a less critical note, this seems absolutely right to me:

Some curricular experts note that students' professional preparation, academic training, and personal development need not be separated as much as they often are.

Part of what we're trying to do with Collo is help connect all of these dots. Easier said than done.

So I'm on board in general with rethinking the curriculum along the lines suggested here, but I doubt that this has much at all to do with the unique needs of this generation. These students need what all students need--a curriculum that makes sense and teachers who can teach it effectively.

Collo as caulk

I'm going against everything I said here and for the purposes of this post, talking about Collo as what happens inside the classroom. In looking over the evaluations again, there were a few particular classes that got consistent, positive feedback--the discussion about grad school, Dr. Koterbay's session on writing a creative thesis, and the current events round table discussions. Others classes got mixed feedback, but feedback on these classes was all positive.

So what went right in these classes? A slightly more arrogant version of myself might note that I am featured in most of them and call it a day. I doubt that's the real story, though. My guess is that these classes filled a gap. They covered things or offered something that you don't or can't get elsewhere. I know from teaching Foundations of Research that there are a lot of questions about doing a creative thesis. I also know that Dr. Wachs and I are not great at explaining it. So having Scott come in and talk about that filled a real gap. A lot of you are planning to go to graduate school of some sort and having a forum for discussing a range of issues associated with that filled a real gap. The current events discussion is trickier to fit into this. You can talk with others about current events any time. But these discussions brought together a slightly more diverse group and were at least loosely moderated, which is perhaps not something you get elsewhere.

In addition, these particular classes were fairly small and I think that makes a difference. For the most part, you don't have a need for someone to come lecture to you about anything for an hour. Even though we got the size down a bit, I think the numbers were still a barrier to the career services sessions being more effective. They ended up being lectures instead of discussions. The smaller classes, overall, seem to have gotten more positive feedback.

If this is right, then at least one thing we need to do to improve Collo is aim for smaller classes that satisfy a real need or fill some gap. Class size is its own logistical issue that we'll have to figure out when we get to the nuts and bolts of designing the course. But what kinds of classes would actually fill a need for you is something I need your help with. (That means at some point I need some actual suggestions.)

One idea is to have some classes that cover some really practical things or "life skills." We could have classes on financial literacy, buying a car/house, doing taxes, navigating health insurance, basic car maintenance, home maintenance, etc. Obviously we wouldn't cover all or these in a semester or a year, but we could do a few classes like this a year and not repeat the same ones every year. I have no idea if people would be interested in classes like this or not.

Other ideas? Would it be helpful to have more opportunities to talk about study abroad with folks from International programs? Would career focused sessions be more helpful if they were smaller? Are there other things we should be devoting some class time to? Other gaps we can fill?

Keeping time

I first read this article by Joel Marks years ago when I was just starting to teach. As a teaching assistant, I could implement exactly none of these ideas. By the time I got my own classes, I had forgotten most of what was in the article. I discovered it again after some of those first classes crashed and burned. I was never brave enough to fully implement this kind of scheme in a philosophy class, but I did adopt the use of self-reporting and some other elements of contract grading. I was reminded again of the article while thinking about Collo and I think the course might be well suited for something like this approach to grading.

There is a lot of interesting stuff in the article, but the part that interests me here is the strategy of determining grades based entirely on the number of hours spent on the class. I like that idea a lot. It works by having a variety of assignments and a number of hours that need to be spent on each to earn a particular grade. Students are in charge of keeping up with and reporting the hours they spend on the class. For Collo, I imagine this would work by establishing broad goals for the course and a certain number of hours you need to spend on each and in total to receive various grades.

I see a number of benefits here. One is that it is a way of implementing the menu approach I mentioned in a previous post. You could choose where to put your time and energy. You could go to more classes, work on a group project, do more service, go to more outside events, talk about those with others, etc. You would not all have to do the exact same thing and you could alter what you spend time on from semester to semester. Hopefully with more flexibility on how you spend your time, less of your time will be "wasted."

Another benefit is that it provides an easy way to spread things out over the entire semester instead of allowing you to ignore Collo until you can't ignore it any more and then scramble to meet all the requirements. We could divide the hours required for certain grades into weeks or quarters or some other subset of the semester and require at least some minimum number of hours throughout the course.

One challenge is figuring out exactly how many hours you should be spending on Collo. According to this document, "the rule of thumb" is that you should count on spending "an average of two hours per week for every hour spent in a reading or lecture class." I know that's a bit of a joke as a general standard, but for Collo, that would mean 3 hours/per week, or 45 hours/per semester. I really have no idea if that is a crazy number or not. What say you? Could an approach like this work? If so, how many hours is it reasonable to require you to spend on Collo related tasks (keeping in mind that I would like to expand the definition of "Collo related task.")?

 

Burden shifting

I've been mulling over Rebecca Schuman's "Confessions of a Grade Inflator" for a few days now. It's honest and insightful and I can relate to a lot of what she says. I don't, however, share her admiration for those professors with the "intestinal fortitude" to give out 'C's. Some of them, sure. But the mere willingness to make it difficult to get an 'A' is not by itself admirable, and the reason it isn't connects with another reason I sometimes tend towards grade inflation.

My worry with teachers who pride themselves on giving out 'C's is that they sometimes lack the self-awareness to realize that students aren't succeeding because they are not teaching effectively. Poor performance is automatically attributed to some failure on the student's part and never as a reflection of poor teaching. That is not admirable.

My own tendency is to take things in the opposite direction. I see disengaged students not doing well in a class and immediately think I must be doing something wrong, that I have somehow failed in the design or implementation of the course. This inclines me to give students a break on grades since I'm nagged by the feeling that it isn't their fault but mine.

Obviously the truth is likely to fall somewhere between these two extremes, but given my tendency towards the latter extreme, I have tried a lot of things over the years to mitigate its effects. I've settled on some version of contract grading as my favorite. The basic idea is to establish at the beginning of the course exactly what is required for attaining various grades and allow students to essentially choose the grade they want and then proceed down the path to attaining that grade. Most assignments are graded pass/fail and, if done right, no student should ever have any doubt about exactly where she stands and what grade she will get. All of this goes a long way towards eliminating the kinds of complaints that often lead to grade inflation.

It has a lot of other benefits as well, not least of which is that it gives some power back to students. To some extent I've already implemented something like this approach in Collo. Grades are spelled out clearly, assignments are basically pass/fail and there are a variety of ways to achieve the various grades. While I think this has in general been an improvement, it doesn't quite work as well as I would like it to. One problem is that the "menu" that is currently available is too short. We need more options. I would actually be fine with a more genuine contract each semester where what you do for Collo is entirely up to you (subject to my approval, of course.) I'm skeptical that that can work, at least immediately. But we can get closer to that if we can expand the classes offered and the range of things you might do that count for some kind of Collo credit.

I also think this is the key to making Collo less repetitive. If you think Collo wastes your time--and many of you do think that--then figure out how to do something with it that isn't wasting your time. There's a good chance I'll be open to that. As a bonus, I get to shift the burden back to you--not just for grades, but the direction of the course itself. Nifty trick, that burden shifting.

Friday open thread...

So I've read through the SAIs and there was some really good feedback and suggestions. Thanks for that. I would love to hear more and be able to have a conversation about some of the suggestions/worries/criticisms of the course. So here is an open thread where we can do that, provided you leave some comments. (My prediction is that you won't, but here it is anyway, in hopes that you will. I think anonymous comments are enabled if that helps.)

The differential gear

The differential gear is a beautiful, elegant solution to the problem created by the fact that the wheels on a car need to rotate at different speeds. When you turn, for example, the outside wheel needs to rotate faster than the inside wheel. The differential gear allows that to happen.

I came to appreciate the differential gear in an undergraduate class I took on pragmatism. I don't remember much else from the class--C.S. Pierce's name is pronounced like 'purse,' William James is a nut, and that's about it. By far the most memorable thing about the class was the differential gear. I don't remember exactly how the conversation started, but it ended with the professor pulling out a laminated piece of paper he kept in his front shirt pocket that had a diagram of a differential gear on it. He put it in his pocket every morning and had done so for decades. It apparently really bothered him that he couldn't keep straight exactly how the gear worked--how the gears meshed, turned, etc. So he made a cheat sheet and kept it with him for all those times he happened to think about the differential gear and couldn't quite get a handle on how it worked.

Other than confirming that philosophers are in general a strange bunch, this episode resonates with me because I think it embodies what it means to be curious, motivated, self-directed, etc. He found something he was interested in, was bothered by the fact that he didn't understand it, figured out how it worked and made sure this knowledge wasn't just fleeting. He didn't learn it in a automotive mechanics class and there was no test he needed to memorize the workings of the gear in order to pass. It was born out of a desire to understand something and the motivation to do so.

As a bonus, it helped make him one hell of an interesting person. (He also had an obsession with the Levitron and had three different ones on his office desk, each of which he was happy to demonstrate if you visited.) I seem to recall him being a bit embarrassed by the fact that he had revealed his laminated differential gear diagram and, in response to the laughter, telling us we needed to cultivate more eccentricities. I think he was right.

I'm not exactly sure what the point of all of this is, except that I would love to teach a class where I could give some credit for deciding to carry a laminated diagram of a differential gear with you everywhere you go.

Collo is everywhere

There seems to be a burgeoning (by which I mean two people) movement on Twitter to make Collo "online." This got me thinking about what that would possibly mean, and that got me thinking about a more fundamental question--where is Collo?

My sense is that we tend to think of it as existing in a classroom and since many of you don't particularly like having to be in the classroom once a week, you suggest making it online. Then Collo would exist on D2L, I guess. So the options are whether Collo should exist in a classroom or on D2L, or maybe some combination of the two. I don't really like those options.

I don't think a lot of what Collo attempts to accomplish is well suited to a large lecture hall. There are times when it is beneficial to get everyone in one room, but those times are not abundant. There are some things I think we can do in smaller classes, though that raises a number of logistical problems. In general, though, I don't think the essence of Collo (does Collo have a haecceity? Colloqueity?) is in any classroom.

It also doesn't (and can't) live entirely online. My sense here is that there was a time when the D2L discussion boards dominated Collo (they shouldn't) and that inclines some of you to think of Collo as existing there (it doesn't.)  Other than that, there isn't a lot of the course or the objectives that are really conducive to being online.

I think the desire for Collo to be online is really just a desire to not have to come to class at 5:15 on Tuesdays in Rogers-Stout. I'm actually sympathetic to that, but that is a lot different than moving it online. A lot of what Collo is or should be about can and should happen outside of the classroom and D2L. It should happen when you meet with each other, when you go to campus events/lectures and just generally when you're being "consciously Honors." That is, Collo is everywhere. It's in and out of the classroom, it's on and offline, it's (I need a third thing because lists are better in threes but, alas, I don't have one.)

So instead of trying to move Collo online, let's think more holistically about how to frame and structure the class so that it no longer tempts you to think that it exists in Rogers-Stout at 5:15 or on a D2L discussion board.

(Note to self: use fewer parentheses.)

Consciously Honors

So what is Collo and why is it here? We can start with what it currently does or attempts to do and work backwards from there. It serves as a kind of orientation for freshmen and transfer students. It encourages you to prepare for your future both as a student and after graduation. It encourages you to be engaged with the wider intellectual community. It encourages you to foster a sense of community within the Honors College. It encourages you to serve the community in some way. (And it gives us a time every semester that we know all of you are available.)

I don't think those are terrible things for a course to (attempt to) accomplish, but it's a pretty long list and such a list encourages thinking about the course as a series of boxes you must check every semester. Grading all your checked boxes also encourages me to think of it this way, and I don't like the idea of the course being a bunch of boxes to check. So we need to consolidate the list and put it under some larger umbrella that makes better sense of it all.

Some aspects of the course are unlikely to change--the orientation-type stuff, e.g., but those things comprise only a small part of the course. The rest of your time is largely filled with all the other things and it's those things that we need to make sense of. So here's a first stab at a unifying theme--be a more interesting person. Be curious, ask questions, try new things, learn new things, develop new skills, experience new things, etc.

I think that's what education should do. There is a lot you can learn outside of class. There is a lot you can learn from your classmates. There is a lot you can learn from others on campus. There is a lot you can learn by serving the community. In short, there are a lot opportunities to do new things, learn new things and develop new skills. The current syllabus attempts to capture some of this, but it only captures a fraction of the things you could be doing to meet this goal. Ultimately I would like to widen the scope of the requirements and use this course as a nudge towards doing those things.

As I've said from day one, this class gives you credit for doing things you should be doing anyway. I think you should be curious, inquisitive and motivated to make yourself a more interesting person and I think, at bottom, that's what an honors education is about. That's still really broad, but it gets close to what I think the course can and should do. It should encourage and motivate you to take advantage of all the opportunities you have to engage, experiment, interact and learn. To put things even more concisely, maybe we can think of Collo as an attempt to make you consciously Honors. That is, it's an attempt to get you to think about what you're doing, what you could be doing, why you're doing it and how it relates to your education, broadly construed.

So that's a start to answering the Stockdale questions. Maybe it's kooky talk, but for now it's spring and I'm pretending the tomatoes I plant aren't going to once again be decimated by blight.

The Stockdale Questions

In the 1992 vice presidential debate, Admiral James Stockdale--Ross Perot's running mate--began by asking, "Who am I? Why am I here?" This was later parodied by Phil Hartman on SNL, but they're good questions we should all ask more often. I give them as advice for writing and revising papers--if you can't answer those questions about a sentence or paragraph, it shouldn't be there. It now strikes me that they are equally good questions to ask about a class and about a syllabus, especially a class as nebulous as Collo. So to open what will hopefully be an extended conversation (or soliloquy) about what this class can and should be, I'm starting with the Stockdale questions.

Let me ruin the surprise and say upfront that I don't have (good) answers. The easy answer is that it's a class UHS, Midways and FPAs have to take every semester because someone put it in the curriculum, but that's not very helpful. I think the better answers will involve thinking about the goals of an Honors education and how what we do (or could do) in Collo contributes to those.

These are big questions that we aren't going to answer any time soon. For now, let these questions serve as an invitation to join the discussion (or at least follow along.) Whatever Collo ultimately becomes, I want that process to be transparent and for those who will have to live with the results to at least have an opportunity to be a part of those changes. I make no promises about the frequency, relevance, originality or linearity of the posts to come over the course of the summer, but I hope those of you in Collo will occasionally check in and play along.