Adapting an Inquiry-Focused, Radically Student Directed Classroom to the Virtual Environment

Keywords: Pandemic course design, student directed learning, virtual classroom

Abstract: Radically student directed classrooms, such as a Classroom as Organization (CAO) (Thomas, et al, 2020) are typically delivered face-to-face. This is partly to facilitate student to student interaction and partly because there has been little need to move to virtual delivery. Harkness Learning (Williams, 2014) is one such CAO design that has been used to structure a course designed around student-led discussion. How can such a pedagogy be modified for pandemic virtual classroom needs? I’ll contrast virtual Harkness Learning in my Capstone course with FTF CAOs. Then we’ll engage in roundtable discussions to explore and develop possibilities for your courses.