I’ve foolishly agreed to take on a teaching assignment in the spring semester, but am thrilled at the prospect of teaching a senior honors seminar to our honors program students here at Messiah College. The course is titled: “College, what is it good for?:  Messiah College and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Higher Education.”

I’ve decided to stick my pinkie toe in the crowdsourcing waters just to see what students, faculty, and administrators might make of the course or do with it if they had their way.  So I’d be very interested in any readers of this now nearly moribund blog taking a crack at the course google doc that you can connect with here.  (I’m so uncertain as to what I’m doing that you should please leave me a comment if you find it impossible to get to my google doc).  I’m not going entirely commando with the crowdsourcing idea, sin I’ve obviously created a moderately fleshed out skeleton on the google.doc that I think I would like to pursue.

On the other hand, I’m interested in how students in the course, professors, other administrators, persons outside the academy, might view such a course.  What issues would be taken up, what readings would be required, what case studies should we consider, what assignments would really work??  Etcetera etcetera.  I’m especially interested in ideas about how to make the “gamification” part of the class work effectively.  So I’m open to anything, retaining the right pick and choose what I think are the best ideas to form the course in the end.

The basic description of the course is as follows, with the longer version of my vision of the course available on the google doc.

Students in this class will have an opportunity to reflect on their education at Messiah College in the broader context of higher education as it exists in the United States today.  Especially, we will examine the widespread doubts and concerns about higher education in the United States.  In the United States, social discourse no longer takes a college education to be an obvious and unquestioned social good.  Critics contend that college costs too much, contributes to inequality, relies on old-fashioned technology, does not guarantee students good jobs, undermines patriotism (or religious faith) and in the end does not teach students very much.  Several central questions will focus our seminar, including but not limited to the following:

• What is the purpose of a college education?
• How is college represented in American culture, and why?
• Does a college education contribute to inequality in the United States?
• Why does a college education cost so much?
• Do new forms of information technology and educational delivery signal the end of the traditional residential liberal arts college?
• Do Christian Colleges have unique answers to the problems facing higher education?
• How does or should Messiah College respond effectively to the crisis of legitimacy in higher education?

If you don’t have any time for a google doc and would just like to leave some suggestions in the comments to the post, that’s great too.