Landscape ecological urbanism and social-ecological urbanism &
Urban ecology and sustainability sciences
W7 Moderator’s guideline
Date: 2019.10.22
Mediators: Karl, Min-Sin & Mei-Yi
The two weeks had similar designs of the group discussion and class meditation, although it had some differences and changes based on experiences of the first of the two weeks. The group design (seminar speed dating) the first week was three groups of four students (preferably more than 3) each discussing different articles, after a set time (15-20 min here) two of each group rotates to discuss with one of the other groups, repeat this a second time so all groups discuss with each other. Preferably, we would have liked a third rotation back to the original groups to see how the discussion and understanding of the material had volved. However, duo to time limitations and history of class discussion with the teacher this summary was done in a class discussion instead.
The organizing principles that we had in mind with this principle is individual participation and co-learning/co-creation of knowledge. Since there were smaller groups and the rotation happened in pairs individual participation by more silent students was planned for, and experienced in class. The co-learning/co-creation of knowledge was designed through the notion of emergence in discussion between the groups, making every rotation and input from different groups expand the depth and breadth of discussion. This was largely a great success as many people enjoyed being able to discuss in a small group setting with a larger number of different students. An unintended positive consequence of this method was that several students reported a better understanding of connections between different theoretical frameworks and discussion from the different articles. One experience that the class mediators had in both weeks was the feel that 15-20 minutes was not enough, especially in the last rounds as the introduction of previous discussed topics and bringing the discussion further took more and more time as the students had discussed with more groups.
The method was a success and was implemented the second week running, this time only two articles. This made the second discussion lead to larger groups as two and two groups were combined. This had some negative consequences, chief among them that the participation that had been a success the first week were less successful the second week as the larger groups in the second round led to quiet students not talking much, and thus impeding the full potential of this method. In the second week, we introduced a picture show-and-tell as a conclusion to the class. Students were tasked with sending the mediators a photo that they linked with theories from that week’s reading. The idea behind this was that the different photos and connections would motivate further debate and allow the students to connect sometimes quite abstract topics to everyday experiences. This would then lead to a better understanding of the discussion topics and a new way of internalizing abstract concepts through connections to the everyday experiential objects and places.