Crowdsourcing the Curriculum

By Michael P. Ryan. Undergraduate students should join professors in selecting the content of courses taught in the humanities. This is the conclusion I came to after teaching Humanities on Demand: Narratives Gone Viral, a pilot course at Duke University that not only introduced students to some of the critical modes humanists employ to analyze new media artifacts, but also tested the viability of a new, interactive course design. One semester prior to the beginning  of class, we asked 6,500 undergraduates -- in other words, Duke's entire undergraduate student body -- to go online and submit materials they believed warranted examination in the course. Read more...