Cohort
The most powerful learning tool you will have available to you in this course is your cohort partners. A goal of this course is to have everyone thinking about, working on, and sharing findings about similar topics at roughly similar times. Please take maximum advantage of your cohort, both in terms of learning from it and contributing to it. We’ll all be better off for the effort.
Remember that your cohort includes your instructor. Most questions about the course should be directed to the cohort through the Slack backchannel, and you are encouraged to contribute answers if you are able. Your instructor may not always have the most relevant or timely answer, and we all benefit when we share our experiences and work in the open. (Of course, there are exceptions for items of a personal nature such as illnesses or discussions of your grades, which should be directed to the instructor via email.)
We’re going to try very diligently to break the deeply-ingrained habit of reflexively asking questions of the instructor first. Let’s try to create a new model.
“Our electronic networks are enabling novel forms of collective action, enabling the creation of collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed than at any other time in history. The scope of work that can be done by non-institutional groups is a profound challenge to the status quo.”
-Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody