In addition, the technologically-enabled, conversational format exposed students to a diversity of opinions and voices, many of which they would not have heard otherwise. This does not happen everywhere. I honor what we have created as a class. About one month into 2 Live Class, students decided to form governance committees, with the instructors serving as advisors on the curriculum committee. Since we had already addressed the question of philosophy by talking about course governance, we realized that we had already accomplished a third of the coursework.
Online conversation provides a place for students to explore issues on their own terms.
Yet in traditional formats there is often no time for this crucial, student-generated discourse to take place. As it develops, online conversation creates a matrix that easily supports the introduction or elaboration of technical terms. Because of the rich conversation on course governance, we did not have to belabor key terms through drill, practice, and testing. We simply put these terms into play. This diversity problematizes ethnocentrism and egocentrism at a basic level.