Target (E-CATTt)

Heuretics as logic of invention does not jump to conclusions, but assumes that the method (poetics, discourse) does not yet exist and must be designed and tested. Using the CATTt generator to guide our proposals for electrate education, we will introduce each resource dimension separately, before exploring their synergy as a unit. A good point of departure is Target, establishing the contemporary circumstances calling for fresh thinking. The MIT Recommendations outline a plan of desired innovations that correlate concisely with apparatus projections. The most relevant proposals documented in the Recommendations include the following:

Initiative for educational innovation (#1)
Engaging in bold experiments (#2)
Strengthening teaching of communications (#4)
Creating service opportunities (#5)
Extending new pedagogical approaches to the world (#7): modularity, game-based learning, partnering to encourage blended learning, seeding global discussions, increasing diversity.
Harnassing the knowledge of a lasting global community (#8)
Engaging with the world (#10)

The implied scenario imagines students combining residential, blended, and online modalities of pedagogy and curriculum, undertaking a holistic learning integrating pure and applied study, engaging with real-world, global problems directly in their actual setting, ones that challenge and resist business-as-usual public-policy solutions, performed through service learning, interships, flexible residencies, and partnering with relevant institutions, in collaboration with peers and cohorts from the broader community of schooling as well other institutions of society. The electrate character of this vision is its commitment to relational, holistic, collective dimensions of education, needed to overcome the isolated, hard divisions separating the various institutional dimensions of the life-world, resulting in significant obstacles for an ecology of learning that is at the same level of complexity as the problems inhibiting global thriving.

The remainder of the CATTt resources supply the materials for a poetics generating instructions for how to conduct schooling that accomplishes the intentions of Target.

About author

Gregory Ulmer |

Gregory L. Ulmer is Professor of English and Media Studies at the University of Florida. His most recent publications include Avatar Emergency (Parlor Press, 2012), and Electracy (the Davies Group, 2015).

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Consultancy (Educational Impact)

The heading "Extending MIT's Educational Impact" includes five recommendations, most already included within the EmerAgency project to invent electrate consulting. 7d especially resonates with programs already explored in a number of collaborations.

Using open problems to seed global discussions. Problem-based learning is at the heart of an MIT education. While understanding the foundation and principles of a particular discipline is essential, the Task Force feels that the investment of students in learning is most successful when they apply their learning to real-world problems. Many such problmes do not have clearly defined solutions and they enable a continuing conversation that also often spans departmental silos. The Task Force recommends encouraging departments to develop classes or series defined by the challenges they seek to address. For instance, one mmight imagine an MITx series on air pollution. Within that series, a student would find a number of classes--including air purification, urban planning, politics, and poverty--that are intended to aid the understanding and examination of air pollution from a variety of perspectives This might require a student to work on projects with students from different corners of the world who may already be addressing the nuances of air pollution in their individual communities. This connection will help create a global commnnity of thought and practice around global challenges, and a cadre of sophisticated problem solvers.