The first day at the workshop was great; on a simple note, it was really nice walking from where I’m staying to where the workshop is being hosted. Though a 35 minute walk may seem like a hike to some, it’s great not having to cram on a crowded Tube train and getting to experience the sights and sounds of Paris: people getting coffee in the morning, picking up groceries for the day, or just simply taking their dog for a walk. Perhaps it’s the romantic notion of Paris (or a naive one), but it definitely seems a little slower/laid back than London.
Anyway, it was great meeting everyone at the workshop and seeing how international the crowd is. There also seemed to be a common theme in disciplines as many people were from biology, physics, and engineering. The speakers in the morning set the stage, inspiring us to push at the boundaries of knowledge and think innovatively, and in the afternoon, we had a chance to apply that in a group activity, where we designed our own Education System on our own planet, with whatever parameters we decided. The group I was in really gelled well, and I thought we came up with some great ideas, such as the following:
- Open Access
- Equal Opportunity
- Project Based Learning
- Peer-to-Peer, Mentorship, and Life Long Educational Practices
- Personalised Education
- Intertwined Community
- Work/Life Balance
- Spatial Layout
- Environmental and Technological Sustainability
- Inter/Intra-Planetary Expeditions
As those involved in the workshop are like-minded when it comes to the importance of education and interest in interdisciplinary research, it wasn’t surprising to see many of these mentioned by the other groups. Though we conceived these ideas when thinking about planets of our own design, free from the constraints many commonly feel, perhaps we can apply these “alien” concepts to the programmes we hope to develop in this workshop to enact some real change in the way we approach education in our own work. Two things I’ve taken away from today are the following:
1. Project Based Learning and Personalised Education seem to be concepts that interest many in the group, so my own work may be going in the right direction.
2. Though we all come from different backgrounds, we all seem to share an intellectual curiosity that motivates us and a genuine concern in making an impact through teaching.