Haiz's discussion plan for Tuesday September 5

Here is my extremely rough plan for Tuesdays discussion using our meeting Friday and Joe's email as jumping off points:

I am going to begin by asking the students to consider why are we here, what is the purpose of discussion groups, how can we operate to maximize the potential of our group, what is the purpose of education? My hope here is that students will begin to become more conscious of their own learning and start to take charge of their own education and feel empowered to do so. Also, ideally I hope that we will establish some group expectations around the idea of maximizing the learning potential of our group such as staying on top of the reading and being respectful of each other by making sure everyone has space to speak.

Next I am going to move into discussing Freakonomics and possibly utilize a version of the "social science exercise." We will begin by taking a look at the reading and discussing how they construct their argument. I am not yet sure how i will use the social science exercise. One goal i have is for my group to reach an understanding of how the authors’ methods of analysis lead to a world view which grows as much from their particular assumptions and methodology as from the evidence. I may accomplish this by constructing with the whole group an incentive based explanation for a question and then investigating with them the assumptions which underlie our very question and methodology, but as of know i am unsure of what I am going to do. Ideally i would like to bring guns, germs, and steel into the picture and ask the students to think about how diamond's methodology and assumptions shape his conclusions. Hopefully, the students will start to notice the underlying dichotomous nature of Diamond's and Freakonomics' arguments and will see how a more accurate explanation of the world may arise when we try to bridge dichotomy. I am not finished, and I will try to elaborate further n the next couple of days. Please post any questions or comments which may help me by clicking on comments below. Also, if anyone else wants to make a new post for their discussion outline please do so.