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February 25, 2006
The Cluetrain keeps on chuggin'
Last semester in my WRT 307 class, I asked my students to read the 95 theses from The Cluetrain Manifesto. They had to post a responsive comment to at least two of them in a Blackboard post, and respond to the comments of at least two of their classmates. You talk about filling up a discussion forum! I was most interested to see how many of these aspiring management and marketing types disagreed with the theses offered. Their belief in the wisdom of the corporate structure was surprising.
This is a lesson I intend to keep in my future professional writing classes, and to build on. So I was pleased the other day to run across this over on Presentation Zen.
I'm also really interested in developing a more polished theory about how these lessons apply to teaching. When I first came to my graduate career, I brought with me a long history of teaching professional continuing ed seminars, general financial fitness seminars, and formal academic courses for professional designations. I also had some in-depth experience with facilitating seminars, which is much different than teaching. I've tried, over these past few years, to bring the things I learned there to my teaching. I've had some success, but I've also lost touch with some stuff I used to know. Stay tuned - when I get the revision worked out, I'll post it here.
Posted by cageyer at February 25, 2006 05:00 PM