Application Deadline for Fall 2024: October 2

Course redesign Workshop

Fall 2024 (Virtual)

deadline: October 2, 2024

Expect great discussion with community college faculty colleagues representing a number of institutions and academic disciplines. Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted online through Zoom.

The online Workshop

The Great Questions Foundation Summer Course Redesign Workshops focus on helping faculty members incorporate the discussion-based study of transformative texts in general education courses they teach at community colleges. In each workshop, 10 community college faculty members will collaborate with two experienced faculty leaders on developing discussion-based pedagogy, student-centered study questions, assignments and a redesigned syllabus for a general education course they teach at their home institution. Expect to have meaningful and helpful discussions with community college faculty colleagues representing a number of institutions and academic disciplines from all over the country. Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted through Zoom.

open book

Focus

Each workshop will focus on a grouping of transformative texts from The Great Questions Foundation’s Transformative Text List. Workshops pair an ancient/classic text(s) with a modern or contemporary text, emphasizing the persistent human questions raised by each text across spans of time, place and culture. These workshops are less about engaging with these texts as experts and scholars and more about learning how they can help us productively raise persistent human questions with our students in the courses we teach. Each workshop will include four meetings over Zoom lasting two hours each, running for four consecutive weeks. Some texts will be read in excerpt. Upon completion of the workshop, faculty participants will each have incorporated the discussion-based study of one or more of the texts we will read into the curriculum of a general education course they teach.

Workshop Impact

girl reading book

1,500-1,600 Students

at 28 different institutions have completed courses impacted by our summer curriculum redesign workshops.

teacher

92% of faculty

respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their participation in a TGQF Summer Workshop helped them incorporate more discussion-based learning in the classes they teach.

owl on books

enhancing confidence

The workshops played an important role in enhancing the confidence of the faculty in facilitating student-centered, discussion-based courses.

hand holding leaf

Students reported that these courses were among the most meaningful they have completed at their institutions.

These courses stand out at the institutions where they are offered in providing students with an opportunity to engage in discussion-based learning. 98% of student respondents reported that their TGQF supported redesigned courses, which included many opportunities for participation in class discussion when compared with other courses they have taken at their institution. In these discussion-based courses, students felt free to engage with a diversity of viewpoints and ideas. 89% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they felt free to explore opinions and/or points of view that are unpopular and/or not widely held in these redesigned courses.

Join Our Workshop

Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted through Zoom. 

eligibility

This opportunity is available to current community college faculty members who teach general education/core curriculum courses at accredited US institutions.

Deadlines

The application deadline is Wednesday, Oct 3

Notifications will be sent to selected participants on Friday, Oct 5

Stipend

Participants will receive a $600 stipend stipend from The Great Questions Foundation upon successful completion of the workshop

Fall 2024 Course redesign Workshop

odyssey

Workshop

Four consecutive Wednesdays, from 2 pm-4 pm Eastern via Zoom for 4 sessions:

October 16
October 30
November 13
December 4

Led by:

Candice Mayhill
Anne Arundel Community College

and 

Dio Moralas 
Linn Benton Community College

Organizing Questions

Who am I?  Where am I going? And what difference does it make?
 
How do Individuals Know What They Know?  Are there limitations to the human ability to think, perceive, and understand?

Workshop texts

Why is this text Transformative?

Discussing The Odyssey is a productive way to begin an undergraduate education. Many first-year students see themselves in Telemachus, who is struggling to find his identity and to establish himself in the world as an independent person, worthy of respect and happiness...The text productivity raises questions about the conflict between safety and freedom, desire and devotion and helps students weigh their competing priorities as they begin their college journey.

Homer

Why is this text Transformative?

Here are two reasons students might experience the text as transformative: Alice is a stranger-in-a-strange-land tale par excellence. It illustrates how one’s sense of self can be undermined in a new context. We may know ourselves in our own world, but who are we in a world that operates with rules we don’t understand? How do we respond to that which seems nonsensical? Readers are confronted with fundamental questions about the relationship between self and environment.

Lewis Carrol

Join Our Workshop

Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted through Zoom.