Special note on INTER-LS 215 lecture strategy for summer 2020

An interactive lecture presentation by the course professor (me) to all of the students in all of the different discussion sections at once, has long been a key component of this course -- lecture is intended to build both a shared community of learning and shared base of knowledge. However, with the current pandemic crisis and the resulting schedule uncertainty that many students face (whether due to upended work schedules, family healthcare obligations, or troublesome internet connectivity), I've decided that rather than lecturing "live" over Canvas this summer, I will draw on a series of prerecorded lectures from the past year, which students can view asynchronously.

I think these recorded lectures capture my instructional design intention of presenting this material to a group of students in an interactive way -- each week, walking through a set of ideas and arguments to come to some tentative conclusions -- better than a re-recorded slideshow would. And these lectures are still recent enough to be relevant to our course material.

Most of these lectures were recorded in Fall 2019, while being delivered in person to a room of about 120 students on the UW-Madison campus. All lectures have been trimmed and edited for reuse, although I was not able to cut out all of the corny jokes, I'm afraid.

One note: Sometimes you will hear gaps in the audio, while students ask questions or offer ideas -- this is because students did not have microphones and weren't recorded on the audio track. However, in almost all cases I restate or summarize what that student said on the lecture recording. (Thank you to all my past students for your engagement!)

Lecture material for this week

For this first week, please view the following three lecture videos:

(1) An introduction by Professor Downey where he talks about his own "career narrative":

(2) A discussion of why you are in college -- and how your liberal education will connect to your future career:

(3) A brief introduction to SuccessWorks, the career center at the UW-Madison College of Letters & Science:

Questions or comments on the lecture material

Please go ahead and use the "General INTER-LS 215 course questions" pinned discussion to provide comments and questions on this lecture material if you like!