Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [45]
If our experience with GEN is any guide, it seems likely that the structure of courses will become more flexible and less standardized. The format and delivery method of courses in most colleges and universities have changed relatively little over the years. Courses come in three sizes—large (lecture), medium (discussion) and small (seminar)—and all are of roughly the same duration, running for twelve to sixteen weeks in sessions of one to three hours at a time. Most courses are sequentially numbered and ordered hierarchically according to the degree of specialization and level of difficulty. College-wide faculty committees routinely review courses, but the control of the structure and content lies in the hands of the professor.
This standardized format works well and is even necessary for some courses. For example, one must learn basic mathematics before studying physics and must master fundamental chemical processes before proceeding to study organic chemistry and molecular biology. But there is no reason this needs to be the sole organizational principle. It is also possible to create courses that are composed of interrelated sections ordered and combined in different ways. For example, at GEN we produced three survey courses on modernism: modern philosophy, modern music and modern art. In contrast to the standardized format, people could take the whole course or, customizing, select parts of different courses and combine them in different ways. One person chose to combine sections on Hegel, Beethoven and Kandinsky to form her own distinctive course, which proved to be very effective. As the networking of knowledge grows, these webs will not be limited in time and space. Past courses will be stored online, and courses currently being offered at other institutions throughout the world will be available in real time or stored for use at a later time. For example, a class on Melville and a course on his Civil War poetry might be linked with another English class on British war poetry of the twentieth century and a history class on the Civil War. Or a class on James Turrell’s art could be linked to courses on Quakerism, perceptual psychology and Hopi spiritual practices, all of which influence his work profoundly. Finally, a course on twentieth-century Protestant fundamentalism could draw on a course about the use of media in religion as well as courses on the religious background of contemporary neoconservative politics and the philosophical foundations of neoliberal economics.
As these courses evolve, they begin to assume the structure of hypertexts. Courses, in other words, are composed by connecting and layering other courses or parts of courses. In this way the individual course is embedded in the constantly expanding and changing web of courses that constitutes the curriculum. Moreover, the curricula of different colleges and universities can also be linked to one another. To glimpse the possibilities this network of courses creates, imagine a catalog of readily available courses as rich and diverse as Google’s global library and then think how they could be combined and recombined to create different courses. This is what a truly global education network would look like. Such a design would enable students, with the guidance of professors and academic counselors, to appropriate materials from different sources and create multiple pathways through the courses they are taking. This could be done for hybrid courses that combine real and virtual components as well as for courses that are completely online. As delivery and distribution systems change, courses are no longer restricted to the broadcast model of one-to-many communication, but can become many-to-many conversations that allow for more interactivity than courses that are delivered