As part of the program, the professors attend a conference each semester in which fellows nationwide meet and exchange ideas about their research. The most recent conference was held last month near Atlanta. Several hundred students take the course each year, with 45 students in a section. Besides Kleingeld, other faculty also teach the course. She plans to regularly divide the 45 students into interactive small groups.
Students master philosophical terms, and they practice arguing.
Defending your opinion and having a good argument for it is very important in philosophy. She also is focusing on ways to teach students how to write papers that contain effective philosophical arguments, and she is conducting research on how to structure writing assignments so students receive regular feedback. What I hope is that by making the course more interactive, students will ask and answer certain philosophical questions for themselves. I think it's great that Washington University supports teaching in this way. Hypertext is a form of computer software that adds dimensions to a document so particular words or phrases on the computer screen lead to other related texts.