An Idea: Having "Public" Components of Intro Courses

I have been thinking more about what I wrote about last time.

First, I tried this thought experiment:

The Anti-Transcript

Go through your university's course catalog. Look at the listing of majors and minors. Make a list of all of the majors or minors that you never took even one course in, in college or graduate school. This is your "Anti-Transcript": the shadow-side of all of your intellectual accomplishments!

(Humbling, isn't it?)

A Practical Idea

What if everyone who taught Intro courses created a lecture series that formed the backbone of this course but could also stand on its own, and opened the lecture series to anyone who was interested in attending? Maybe there would be one lecture per week, lasting a an hour. Not only would interested students audit these lectures, to fill out their education more fully, but professors would attend as well. What if it were the part of our university's culture that every student and faculty member "audited" at least one of these lecture series per semester?

The credit-bearing version of the Intro course would consist of more than just these weekly lectures, of course. These lectures would be integrated into the full Intro course that some of the students would be taking for credit. Those students then would have extra time with the professor above and beyond these weekly lectures. They would have time for additional in-depth discussion, for covering more material, and for reading, writing, engaging in laboratory sessions, performing, creating portfolios, etc. For those students, it would be pretty much like Intro courses already are. The only difference is that for one hour per week, some extra people would attend to hear the lecture of the week.

So, some questions for professors to think about:

• Could your Intro course be adapted in this way?
• Would you like this opportunity to give a "what I wish everyone knew about my field" lecture series (without this actually adding to your current responsibilities!)?
• Would you attend such series offered by your colleagues in other fields? If so, which would you attend first, and why?