the courses operated as self-study, largely, but the important part to *any* course of study for anyone I knew who went there, whether as fellow student or, later, when i taught there, was the one-on-one with tutors.
anyway, the goal of a course was negotiated by prof and student. so, if I had a nursing student who wanted to do sociology, it was possible to shape the course to her particular interest - say the sociology of work with most of the readings geared to understanding nursing. other students would sometimes just wanted to study whatever someone told them consituted, say, u.s. history from colonial era to 1877 or something.
I went to a tutor with that idea in mind for a lit course. I sat down in the chair near her desk and said, "I want to read all the great books that people are supposed to read in American lit."
Basically, a short discussion ensued as to what I meant by this thing she kept calling a "canon". That fucking term just irritated the shit out of me by the way. She basically was pushing me hard not to approach this course as some sot of am-lit-in-a-box course to tick off key thinkers or something. Leaving, she handed me this stack of copied mimeographes. It must have been 8 inches thick. It was a series of debates about the canon, rationales for alternative canons, how canons had been created, who they included and left out and why.
She said, "Read that. Then come back and tell me what you want to read and why."
WEll, what she'd given me was copies of material that had circulated during the late 60s and 70s that would eventually be summed up as "canon busting".
Now, in that exercise, this exchange where she sent me out with the material, some critical questions to ask myself, and told me to come back and make an argument - I probably learned more in that two weeks, in those two office sessions, than any student at a traditional uni ever learns in an intro lit course.
A similar exchange ensued when taking a course I thought would be "easy" -- History of the Family. The tutor and I decided that would be a good course to take given I was a new mom. Oh yeah, I thought, a gut course! Easy peasey to study the very thing I do every day. ha ha. I kept coming up against the word "culture". Culture does this and culture does that. Drove me nuts. I kept asking my tutor, who taught at Cornell, what the hell "culture" meant when used this way.
Back and forth it went until finally he said, 'YOu know what. Your next course is going to be "What is Culture" and he handed me a copy of that seminal article on the term that explores all the different ways academic use the term culture.
Now, that's the way the courses are supposed to work on an open university model. Basically, you are given the tools to explore questions and issues on your own, shown how to hone them, and then expected to come back at the end of the course and "teach the tutor" what you learned.
Also, evaluations; no grades.
It's hard work to teach this way. It's easy to
At 07:40 PM 2/25/2012, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>but, yeah. I mean there's the open u in the uk, right? But afaik they
>basically do everything online.
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