Connections Unbound

Connecting people to ideas related to writing and through writing have been critical dimensions of the WAC Program from the start.  In fact, one of the first across-the-curriculum events sponsored by WAC and some other new initiatives in the late 1980s was a large-scale reading of Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic novel, Galapagos.

Common reading projects are a great way to engage students in a larger consideration of ideas than a single classroom experience can typically provide and, of course, are a great way to integrate relevant writing opportunities into courses to any degree an instructor desires. 

Faculty who've participated in recent common reading projects at Longview, such as The Plague and Affluenza, can attest to the value of having students read a book and connect it to what they are studying.  Many are already planning to incorporate Huxley's Brave New World into their courses next semester.

With Here Comes Everybody, we took a slightly different approach by informally inviting everybody at LV to check out some of Shirky's ideas and just play with them. Reactions to the book have been varied: some are struck by Shirky's analysis of social patterns, some feel they already had a grasp of the ideas he explores, others regard his ideas as ground-breaking and transformative, and a few don't agree fully with the way Shirky accounts for some of the social changes we've seen in the last two decades.

What matters is that people were considering these ideas about social media, social networks, and human behavior, probing the relationships between them, talking about them with others, and trying to put them into a broader phenomenological context.  Getting these important perspectives into circulation was really the point since not everyone's schedule could accommodate participation in the meet-ups.

Something else interesting happened with the read-along: Honors students discovered it and joined in the discussions.  As it turns out, the major theme for Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) this year is the "Democratization of Information," coincidentally a rather perfect fit with the book we chose to feature in this new way of engaging our Longview community.  (Although after reading Shirky's take on the six degrees of separation and social networking, I'm reluctantly beginning to doubt the existence of coincidence since he makes such a good case for how principles of probability rule.  And can I just say I think the notion of coincidence, while considerably less scientific, is way more fun?)

Keet Kopecky, LV Honors Program director and LV WAC Cadre member, explains how PTK and the Honors Program are connected: "MCC-Longview's Honors Program and the national honor society Phi Theta Kappa both require students to achieve and maintain a 3.5 GPA in order to join. Participants in both programs benefit from enhanced engagement in the classroom and through campus and community involvement."

Keet added that generous scholarships are available for active members of the Honors Program during their time at MCC-Longview and that there are significant scholarship opportunities for active members of PTK upon graduation and transfer to a 4-year university. Keet says that there is a large overlap between the membership of the Honors Program and PTK at Longview, so many of his honors seminar students are also members of PTK.

Keet is facilitating two honors seminar this semester, both entitled "Democratization of Information," since that is the 2010-2011 national PTK theme.  Keet said, "I always involve the students in designing my seminars, and when I mentioned Shirky's book, they enthusiastically embraced discussing it as part of the seminars."

He notes that students brought "generational and life-experience perspectives different from those of most Longview employees, making our monthly book meet-ups involving honors students, faculty, and staff quite rich and insightful."

At last week's seminars, Keet said his students "offered unsolicited comments in strong support of the faculty/staff/student book discussions and hoped that the college understood how much they liked the engagement with employees and hoped it would be repeated in the future."

I certainly can't speak for everyone at LV, but the WAC Program is definitely up for another read-along after our last meet-up for Here Comes Everybody this Friday, Nov. 12, at 2:00, at Next Door Pizza.  As always, you are more than welcome to join us!