News
Online courses to launch next week
By Dan Snyder ’17
February 27, 2015
In an effort to join the growing market of online learning, Hamilton will launch two courses with the online learning company edX starting March 1. The courses, entitled “Spirituality and Sensuality: Sacred Objects in Religious Life,” and “Incarceration’s Witnesses: American Prison Writing” will be open to the general public.
edX is a non-profit online education company founded by partners at Harvard and MIT in 2012. It aims to expand educational access for everyone by offering classes in a wide range of subjects for free.
“Spirituality and Sensuality,” which launches March 1, will be taught by Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies Brent Rodriguez-Plate. According to the edX website, the course will focus on how religion interacts with the five senses, switching between overarching theories of religion and specific case studies. The seven-week course will include an introductory week, a week dedicated to each sense and a concluding week. In the informational video on the edX website, Plate explains, “Through this course we will be looking at art objects, reading poetry, reading philosophy, talking with scientists, talking with religious clergy and other groups of people who have used objects in their religious lives. Through this we hope to bring religion to its senses.”
“Incarceration’s Witnesses” launches March 2 and will be taught by Professor of English and Creative Writing Doran Larson. The course description on the edX website points out that the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country. The course will look inside prisons through literature written by incarcerated people to understand the rise of mass prisons and determine why the system does a poor job of rehabilitating prisoners. In the informational video for the course Larson asks, “What has gone wrong? What do our prisons actually do, to whom, and for what practical purpose? And who can we trust to tell us the truth?” He later suggests that the only people truly invested in the truth, and willing to bear witness to it, are those who are imprisoned. Larson is well versed in the study of the prison system and the literature of incarcerated Americans. As he explains, he has been “teaching inside Attica Correctional Facility and reading, collecting and archiving prisoner witness for nearly a decade.”
When asked why it is important that colleges and universities offer opportunities like these, Plate said, “What Hamilton and other ‘highly selective’ schools are doing through edX is providing access to information and ideas for a broad range of people from diverse backgrounds, and offering it for free. Really, all you need is an Internet connection.” He added, “People signed up for my course come from over 125 different countries.”
The College initiated the partnership between Hamilton and EdX. Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Pat Reynolds explained that the College was dissatisfied with its involvement in the growing online education market. He said the College “grappled with how to simultaneously respond to outsiders asking us what were our institutions doing about online education, while advocating for and recommitting ourselves to the residential, liberal arts, educational model and while also wanting to understand the potential benefits of online educational technology to educating our students.”
Plate commented, “We are trying to be part of a new group of small liberal arts colleges who are experimenting with the online possibilities, and asking just what liberal arts might have to offer online education. I don’t think we’ve got the answer yet, but the experimentation has been fun.”
According to Reynolds, the program hopes to offer another platform for faculty to share their research with society, engage alumni academically and contribute to educational opportunities at local schools, prisons and more. “In the longer term, we want to be engaged in the national conversation about online learning, represent the liberal arts in doing so, and learn more about applying online technology to our on-campus pedagogy” he added.
The partnership between edX and Hamilton is a three-year arrangement and the plan is to offer two courses a year, but Reynolds acknowledged that “we are on a steep learning curve and continually we are better understanding what we can accomplish, and probably refining what we want to accomplish.”