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Gender, Race, and the Complexities of Science and Technology
(WoSt 597, Spr '09)
Initial Goals
Offering a course through the Graduate Consortium for Women's Studies would allow me to get enough students to run a course on science in its social context, to experiment with making a course entirely based on problem-based learning (PBL), and to interact with a co-instructor.
The course as proposed and approved by the GCWS aims to subvert barriers to wider access to the production of science and technology and stimulate interdisciplinary inquiry, pedagogical, conceptual and practical innovation, and epistemological self-consciousness through provocative PBL cases that put into play a variety of resources (see full overview of course)
We expect that students will enter this course with different levels of preparation in science and technology, in interpretation of the dynamics of science and technology, in feminist, anti-racist, and other critical theories, and in collaborative, reflective processes of inquiry and exchange. By the semester's end, students should have:
- experienced and appreciated a "developmental" model of teaching/learning, which aims not for a common final standard of work, but to guide and support each student to develop or improve as much as they can given their background and current circumstances;
- learned and practiced tools for engaging with provocative cases designed to stimulate interdisciplinary inquiry and exchange;
- clarified and pursued their particular interests in teaching, research, or activism around the complex production of science and technology;
- acquired resources, tools, guides to help navigate a manageable number of substantive bodies of knowledge in interpretation of the dynamics of science and technology, especially using feminist, anti-racist, and other critical frameworks;
- synthesized these knowledges into resources for future students and others in the form of reports from cases, annotated references, and additional cases;
- initiated ongoing patterns of subverting barriers to wider access-for themselves and others-to the production of scientific knowledge and technology; and
- explored the theoretical and practical implications of the question "What can we do with the knowledge we generate for ourselves and others?" with respect to engagements with/in the complex production of scientific knowledge and technology.
Challenges and Responses
(5/09) See pdf compilation of course process and students work.
The main challenge was to locate (in our files, brains, and contacts) appropriate sources that the students would follow up. Eventually this became less of a strain as students became self-directed in their inquiries and projects.
Another challenge was that a number of students dropped out, with regrets, when they weighed the work they had to do to make good use of the course with their other student obligations.
Future Plans
(5/09)
0. The same course description and structure will be retained because the approach is working well this time and we want a chance to build on that.
1. More word-of-mouth publicity to recruit additional students with the expectation that a fraction will withdraw once they appreciate that the course requires an equal commitment to their required courses, thesis preparation, etc.
2. Require group work in one of the instructor-designed cases (so as to fill out the students' experience of the range of approaches to teaching using PBL cases).
3. Establish a routine of reflection/synthesis/feedback in the last 10 minutes of every class.
4. Incorporate required common readings at a few selected points in the semester, following or followed by mini-lectures by the instructors.
5. Do more with evolving annotated bibliography.
6. Bring back an "alum" of the course to help students see what's ahead and be less stressed at the beginning (as mentioned in student evaluations).
7. Pursue each PBL project myself to keep in touch with the student experience and gain the intellectual stimulation.
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