Chronicle Article About Making Courses More Relevant to Students

An interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education (chronicle.com) about making courses more engaging for students. I appreciate the ideas, although it seems strange to me that we are only now approaching education this way. I suppose making courses more participatory and involving is a radical change for much of the acadame.

Highlighted Excerpt:

"We need to teach as if our students were colleagues from another department. That means determining what our colleagues may already know, building from that shared knowledge, adapting pre-existing analytic skills, then connecting those fledgling skills and knowledge to a deeper understanding of the discipline we love. In other words, we need to approach our classrooms as public intellectuals eager to share our insights graciously with a wide audience of fellow citizens."

Chronicle of Higher Education
Tim Clydesdale
Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology

Link:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i20/20b00701.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en