Hi Anna, I loved your post, specially how you highlighted and described ‘modern’ teaching. Modern teaching may mean so many different things to each of us and it would vary when we talk about different specializations.

Thank you for this interesting post. When I was reading it what I was reminded of his Humero’s example, when he came to the class and explained how difficult it was to convince the department people to agree for PBL strategy to be used for a class. And I think more such brave people are needed in this profession.

I consider it very courageous of you to speak out about your experience. Your post also highlights the fact that it is so important for the peers to interact amongst themselves (with diverse groups) as there is so much to learn about each other. And this learning will not only add to their knowledge but will also prepare them to better understand people they are going to meet in future and identify their biases if may present, and possibly act on them.

I cannot agree more with your thought on ‘Our judgment is a product from accepted cultural norms, our experiences, and upbringing.’ And one of the more effective ways to get past that will be to open up, discuss and mingle with more and more diverse groups. Moreover, the exchange of ideas in diverse groups also result in exchanging of values and cultures and that is how one can be more aware of each other’s diversity.

I found this post to be very engaging, especially the way you talk about intellectual and non-intellectual (or identity based) diversity. I would also like to add that though a number of times intellectual diversity is taken into account with more and more multi-disciplinary work being done at the university. It is the identity-based diversity which is often discussed in the pedagogy classes but is difficult to be applied in teaching.

Just to add a bit in this regard, people who are developing their research proposals and research plans are switching to blogging, networks like researchgate to develop their idea into a plan using the inputs from the researchers in their field, which I think is definitely a good start.