Discussion # 3: What is the future of higher education Background Information
History
of public education in the United States is a story of a remarkable achievement, but also struggle. It is one of the largest educational system in the world (Nagel 2017) and it is prized and demonized all the time (Falorus 2018). Has public education in United States failed many of its students and if yes, why? Multiple factors play the roles in the quality of public education. As I write this discussion background and the question, both the United States and the world are struggling to define what education will look like during the time of serious social upheavals, such as the high inflation and continues uncertainty with the
pandemic and its aftermaths.
For example, many colleges, included
ours, moved many of their classes online. You are taking this class online. The list goes on… Is the very nature of education changing before our very eyes…? Where does that leave public education as an American project? Where does that leave public education as a big system
and bureaucracy that serves so many of us?
These and many other questions about education, in general, and public education, in particular, constitute a myriad of social problems that we need to confront as individuals, communities, states, and the nation.
With all that said—here are directions for your discussion posts:
QUESTION for Discussion:
Imagine
that you are the Secretary of Educations in the Unites States, or a president of a university in charge of making the final decision, or one
of the experts in charge of making recommendation to policy makers. Pick any scenario that you want. Your job is to create an educational system on a national, state, local, university, or school level that will organize public education in a way that a) serves the students, b) serves the community (state, nation—whatever your level of analysis is), c) addresses socio-economic differences of your students so that all students can learn and thrive ( think about “digital divide”
and how to overcome it, for example), d) teach students how to think critically, e) provide students with skills they need in 21st pandemic/post-pandemic world, or anything else you can think of. Your
post should be a specific set of recommendations where you will provide
a minimum of a five and maximum ten specific, well-defined, well-supported, well-elaborated, and creative points on how will educational system you are in charge of designing look like. Please get as specific as possible in your directions/recommendations. The future of your country, state, university, school, etc. depends on how well you
design this plan (no pressure, by the way). Consider as many thinks as you can: type of educational instructions, forms of delivery–face—to-face-/online/hybrid, funding, and always give “WHYs.” For every suggestion provide at least one source.
IMPORTANT: Start your executive summary creatively. Introduce your fictionalized self. Who are you? US Secretary of Education? President of a University (let us always use fictionalized, made up places), Educational Czar of South Park City, Principal of School, or anything that you want to be. You come up with your title and add a few words or sentences that would want us to read your post. Make it fun, engaging, and proper. Have fun with this part, but please be appropriate and within the boundaries of netiquette and good taste. No allusions or words that belittle any one person or a group of people. Make sure this part is at the beginning of your post.
Instruction for posting, length of the blog/posting general netiquette…
Each
student will contribute to the weekly class blog, posting an approximately 500 and 1000-word response to the week’s discussion. (If you post has more than 1000 words that is fine but do not write a whole essay. This should be an exercise in concise presentation, an executive summary of the key points of your recommendations.) In addition to your post, please comment on at least two other persons’ posts or more in a thread. Your comment or comments need to be thoughtful, respectful of basic dignity of topic and other people positing, and courteous. PLEASE KEEP THAT IN MIND. Your discussion post needs to be substantive and well-researched. Let us respect and learn from each other in this week’s
discussion forum.
This discussion is worth maximum of 50 points and the number of awarded points will be based on the quality of your original post and quality of your response to other posts. You must post
before you can see the replies or comment on other posts. I would suggest writing your original post in a Word document, saving it, and then copying it and pasting it in the discussion box before you send it.
In that case you can have a copy of your work in case you lose the post
( it happened to me more time than I am willing to admit 🙂 Make sure your comments are VERY supportive and constructive of your classmates. We can offer different perspectives, of course, provide alternative ways
to see the problems and solutions, but we need to do that by fully RESPECTING other classmates and their positions. All of us need to conduct ourselves the posts as if we were in the physical classroom and to watch our tone and implications of what we wrote because we do not have the benefits of non-verbal clues. So, YES to critical thinking and engagement; and NO to inappropriate references in our own posts.