Comment on The Hunger for Humanities in Today’s World by Brett Netto

“This is why great works from the past, like Shakespeare, will never be obsolete and will continuously show the power to endure for generations. It helps us understand the different cultures, what goes into a work of art of how history is made, while influencing our language. Once we develop the ability to understand them, it will provide the ideal foundation for exploring the human experience.”

Yes! In teaching international relations to my undergraduate students, I emphasize that an understanding of another country’s culture and history is needed in order to truly have the best diplomatic relations with a country.

Comment on Overwhelmed… by Brett Netto

“It also does not help that some of our engineering instructors perpetuate the notion that engineering courses are more important to their degree than their non-engineering courses.”

This statement saddens me as someone who was once a STEM major and eventually decided to be a liberal arts major. I agree with your post that there needs to be a better integration of the liberal arts and humanities into other disciplines. I think this is why Virginia Tech has developed the Pathways to General Education program and the minors that are associated with it. http://www.pathways.prov.vt.edu/

Comment on What is school for? by dalya88

This statement sums up most of the challenges we face as future educators: “The students should become the center of the learning process. They should know why to learn, how to learn, and how they can make a difference by using what they learn in school.”

From my experience in teaching outside the US, students do NOT want to get involved in the learning process, which after taking this course, I think I understand why. The learning process is too traditional with systemized assessments. They attend classes waiting for them to end. So our role is to ensure they ‘enjoy’ what they learn in order for them to make a difference by using what they learn in school. Its a cycle.

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Comment on The Hunger for Humanities in Today’s World by Monica Mallini

Thank you for your articulate post. You have helped me know how to make the case for integrating humanities and engineering, which I will do now with greater resolve. I have come to believe that the humanities part of an engineering education is the greater part, the more important part. I have an idea; let’s teach humanities graduates for engineering! Seriously, let’s do it.

Comment on The last GEDI, I think not! by Dan Li

Great ideas! I like how you compare the contemporary teaching to the star war movies. That is very interesting to see how you connect them. I agree that the new generation of the teachers and teaching styles has arrived since now we are facing a much more diverse world than ever. We need to open our mind and try new things to fit into the changing situations. Even if this is the last post of the course, we will keep thinking and practice in the future. We will never stop being a GEDI. Thank you for sharing and inspiring!

Comment on Overwhelmed… by Hanh

“And most importantly, our higher education system should rethink the workload that we give our students; students should be given a reasonable amount of time to have a positive and balanced learning experience, allowing them to devote just as much time to discipline-specific as well as professional/humanities/liberal arts courses.” As a graduate student, it is not easy to find the balance point between a limited time until graduation and the workload from school and research; between research and coursework; and between major courses and elective courses. I do not deny that liberal art/humanities/professionals brings have their own benefits on student education, but at graduate levels, I will give the priority to major courses and research. So can we try to integrate liberal art/humanity/professional education into major courses?