Before we started the Designing the Future(s) program at Georgetown, we engaged a task force of thoughtful faculty members to seek advice. We asked them how we could launch a set of experiments in educational programs that might interest faculty. How could we investigate new programs that rethink how education is delivered in ways that enrich the lives of students and faculty? They were blunt in advising us not to ask faculty to engage in blue sky thinking that yields such abstract outcomes that nothing would ever happen. “Give us concrete ideas and make it clear something is going to happen,” they said.
“Designing the Future(s)” differs from last year’s Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning (ITEL) in two important ways. ITEL was chiefly focused on individual faculty innovating inside single courses. Designing the Future(s) is focused on groups of faculty in departments/areas/programs who want to experiment with whole new programs (sets of integrated courses).
After months of talking to students, alumni, and faculty, yesterday we sent out a blast email announcing the document, “Five Pump-Priming Ideas for New Ways to Deliver a Georgetown Education and Experience.” (You can download at Experiments.) The document is our attempt to forward concrete program features from which faculty groups can build their own ideas about new programs.
The five ideas aren’t proposals. They’re attempts to stimulate faculty and staff to invent innovative programs. Some of the ideas may offer more attractive cost structures than our current programs. All of them challenge old assumptions about the boundaries of Georgetown. Can we improve what we accomplish by combining the co-curricular with the curricular in new ways? Will constructing smaller bite-sizes for educational experiences help us (challenging the 15 week, 3 credit course)? By integrating in new ways across the bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD levels, can we increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our educational programs? Why must our educational programs begin no earlier than high school graduation? Are there programs whose educational outcomes can be articulated clearly enough that we could certify eligibility for a degree based on demonstration of the knowledge instead of assemblage of a set of courses over a fixed time period?
It could be that some new programs can be built by combining various features of the five pump-priming ideas. It could be that there’s a completely different way of challenging key assumptions to the benefit of our faculty and students.
Led by Vice-Provost Randy Bass, we will be engaging in discussions with sets of faculty who are interested in taking a shot at experimental programs that challenge traditional boundaries.
We want to empower faculty to experiment with building programs with new features that reach educational excellence with new tools and that are freed of traditional constraints when they seem unnecessary.
Take a look at the document; talk to your staff and faculty colleagues; we’re open for business.