Brainstorming Class

I met with a colleague today to brainstorm a course outline for a new course for the department. The idea is that lots of people would be able to teach the course, but we (as a department) really want to accomplish fairly specific goals with it.

I had a bit of trepidation about it, but it went really well. We kept the outline really open as far as texts, and fairly specific as far as assignments to help students learn what we want them to learn. I think we did a really good job giving the course time to teach the skills and then have the students do them, rather than expecting them to learn well by doing some assignment on their own.

My colleague was really great to work with; she had good critiques of some of my ideas, and good ideas of her own. We were able to incorporate the things the department folks had asked us to bring in pretty darned well.

The outline feels coherent and flexible, and I can imagine different colleagues using it successfully with their own take on the flexibility.