New Science Labs for non-Science Majors

My goal for undergraduate students is to encourage awareness. Mindfulness about how we see the world is the first step toward understanding nature. So for my non-science majors at Boston University's College of General Studies I designed a series of lab exercises this year that introduce contemplative science learning through engagement with the arts.

For my first lab I took a page out of the book of my friend Maggie Macnab, a master designer and instructor at Santa Fe College of Art and Design. In Maggie's book "Design With Nature" she has readers design a personal logo for themselves. I think this is a great exercise for promoting self-awareness along with an aesthetic sense for visual impulses. 

Because my students will tweet much of their work in lab this year I decided to build on Maggie's personal logo idea. As part of our first lab, students will design a header for themselves in twitter. Once they have completed their project I'll have them tweet me the reason why they designed it this way. 

My objectives for this exercise are many. First, promoting visual awareness is key. It is also part of scientific inquiry. Second, as we explore the abstract signals of nature and try to articulate what they mean, I will be asking my students to re-abstract their findings through the condensed medium of twitter. We will be practicing this from week one. Finally, as we explore science through the interdisciplinary lens of art and the humanities, there is no better medium than the social universe of twitter. I want my students to get in there and play. 

I think this is pretty exciting stuff. And it's highly applicable to my students' majors outside of CGS. For example, my students who pursue a major in finance will find value in our exploration of scientific pattern, process, and prediction. I'm also excited about this because it's the first step I'm taking in BU's Arts Initiative, bringing the arts into every classroom at the University. Finally, as we work to develop a S.T.E.A.M. curriculum, I'm planning to get students thinking critically about science through engagement with the arts. After all scientists and artists have so much in common in terms of how we approach and solve problems. This exercise is the first step. 

The moat at the Louvre

The greatest attraction at the Louvre is da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" but there are so many things to do at this place, so much more than a museum. 

Deep under the Louvre the well-preserved moat is open to exploration. The Louvre was once a fortress, and the moat is a reminder. Militarism and culture. This theme reverberates all over Paris whether you regard the Housmann urban plan, the Pere Lachaise cemetery, or the bronze-age statuettes and spearheads at the Louvre. Certainly the moat itself tells that story. 

As a deeply historical city there is so much history in Paris that is buried or untold. An ancient settlement that pre-dated the Romans, the city has built and rebuilt itself, sometimes with little regard to the past, sometimes with a deliberate strategy to suffocate history. 

Baaaad Design: Think About Your Users

Baaaad. And I don't mean good. It's common to use the Blackboard system as a course aid and I've used it many times in past years. So I wasn't reluctant or wary in the least to get in there this morning and load some content for my new students. 

First I should say I had to click five or six times into my class list, in order to ask our IT people to build me a site last week. This semester I have 66 students in four sections. Don't ask me why they can't be listed together but they're not. This isn't Blackboard's fault, it's my school's but here's what I get after my first longish series of clicks. 

Oh there's that class list click. Easy. Just one choice out of about 20. Right. So here's how my four "sections" present on the screen:

Now, to write a note to my students I have to click on a little button near each imaginary "section" and then click "list." Then I click "send email," or as I did last week, "request to create Blackboard site." No biggie. I guess. If you like clicking. 

So this morning, even though our IT department promised they would notify me when my site was ready (they didn't) my blackboard site "popped up" after I felt, or clicked my way through the dark to find it. Kind of like the underground moat last week at the Louvre. Rocky and dank. 

Here's what the "home" page on Blackboard looks like:

Home sweet home. OK I can make my way through it, click and clack my documents onto the site, log off, go back into my class list and click five times to let students know their syllabus and introductory essay are ready on Blackboard. 

But wait. All the way on the lower left of the "window" (window in quotes because it's more of a dungeon), the "properties" click. Since I didn't take that clickable opportunity I neglected to make my Blackboard site available to the students. 

About a dozen emails from students and a dozen emails back to them, I call our IT department. They didn't design this nonsense. They just get paid to help us work around it. All fixed up and "available" I click into the group email and  let my students know they can now get into Blackboard. 

More trouble. Students still can't get in. I phone into IT again. This time it's not a six minute wait. The professors are all probably photocopying their syllabi and readings to hand out in lecture. How much hassle are you willing to put up with to save a tree? Or maybe they just killed themselves. 

The nice young person on the other line tells me my Blackboard site is open to 16  students, I guess when they "built" the site for me they forgot the other three "sections." OK. Easy to fix. Here at 3:30 PM all's well that ends well. I started at 6:30 this morning but PhD time isn't that expensive at our school so no problem. 

Design. A problem. When you design stuff, whether it's a spatula or a backpack or an imaging system, think about how your customers will use it. If it's Blackboard you shouldn't have to hear the chalk screech every word you write. 

Getting lost, evolving

Our short trip to Paris was instructive in many ways. Finding ourselves in a slightly bewildering physical space had its frustrations and benefits. With map in hand it was easy enough to find our way. We could in fact walk block to block buried in the street guide to Paris and "find" anything we wanted. Without a map we were in some ways more carefree but also more likely to get lost. 

I guess having a program to follow when you travel is a good thing. But experimenting with the landscape is better. The unexpected turn, following a bit of wall that looks interesting, deciding at the last minute to peek into that murky courtyard, all of these lead to discoveries and memories. The process is "time consuming" but following the map too closely consumes your ability to experience. 

Looking for ways to teach science to my undergraduates I've stumbled upon the fact that I don't "write" lectures and labs. I design them. This came as a bit of a surprise because I never thought of myself as a designer. The labs I prepared for this semester are designed to let students get lost. This is radically different from the way labs have been taught for centuries. My labs for this year are designed to help students experience internal cognitive landscapes where getting lost is the goal. Stumbling around in that landscape I expect that students will build experiences that help them grow intellectually. 

We'll see how it works. I have a smart bunch this year and they've been programmed to follow instructions, memorize well, and produce top level academic work. Lets see what happens when frameworks are looser, discovery trumps memorization, and deliverables are as "small" as a tweet. 

Ancient Paris

At the bottom of Rue Mouffetard sits the church of St. Medard, a 12th century site. Across from the church, like in many places we've seen, lies a fountain. As you walk up the Mouffetard there's a mural depicting a girl at a spring. Just up from that a bas relief of a person at a well "le bon source." How long ago was this a village? How long ago did a spring run here? What was on the site of this church? Its fountain? How did people use this space? I begin to imagine the wild landscape of humans here when the ice retreated and the climate moderated. 

I see a sign for les "Aranes de Lutece," the sands (or arenas--their floors were made of sand) of ancient Paris. Without a map it takes me some minutes to find it, but you can easily follow the road signs for walkers, progressing from one to the next. There, tucked in a corner not far from the Jardin des Plants is the ancient 3rd century arena, a stone structure surrounded by the contemporary city. Imagine this place in Roman times! I spend time there exploring and then trying to connect to the Internet, which is supposed to work in all the Paris parks and works in some. 

On the way out the Paris mosque and then a beautiful double stairway with an "eau de Paris" fountain as its focus, and all around a wall of flowers. You climb to a street roughly perpendicular to Rue Monge: Rue Rollin. Lovely and quiet, closed off to traffic, a slight bias inward to the center where storm water drains. Here was the home of Benjamin Fondane, Romanian-born poet and philosopher deported from here and assassinated at Auschwitz. 

I walk up the Rue Rollin to an elementary school. Like all the public elementary schools in Paris, it displays the required plaque commemorating students who were deported, and like Fondane, murdered in the holocaust. I walk back the way I came, stop at Fondane's house again and than at the "Place Benjamin Fondane," just at the top of the staircase.

I wonder as I look Rue Monge below and a corner butcher shop: Was this the last thing Mondane's eyes set upon as he was being forced down these stairs? 

Forms of Paris

The forms of Paris follow architectural plans laid down over centuries. Plazas, vistas, lines and spaces, curves and walkways all planned with a planner's intelligence. What is design and what is the designed landscape? Landscape is something people build, experience, and change. Designed landscape is a space experienced through the interpretive framework of the designer. I can appreciate the city as it speaks to me in its designers' language. 

Here at La Villete the plan is open, the spaces inviting and fun, but the constant here is in the vision that belonged to the builders. And it remains their vision. Old bright red metal follies, now closed, introduce some variation. People and nature add another dimension of movement, change, and uncertainty. But the place is as designed as the plaza in front of Musee d'Orsay, which we rejected today because of the huge line of tourists massing at its entrance. 

What then is "open design?" Is there, can there be such a thing? It seems to me that the less certainty, the fewer the prescribed (or proscribed) pathways, the more you can participate intuitively with a design, the greater the opportunities, the more "open" the design. This holds not just for landscapes. It's the reason we use iPhones instead of Blackberries. Does it make a difference?

In the bowels of the subway this morning, a place where we had to change routes (the line we wanted toward La Villette wasn't running), we were grateful for the single path we had no choice but to follow. So getting from one place to another, maybe it's best to reduce randomness. What about exploring the city?

My question has to do with "vernacular" spaces, like the village spaces I want to explore in Sri Lanka. Vernacular landscape is no more "open" than the planned facades and byways of Paris. In fact it may be more "closed," especially for the people who live in it. But it expresses something unique. Reading the genius of a vernacular landscape is different from reading the genius of a professionally designed landscape. Reading the genius of people is different than reading the genius of architects.

Paris: some impressions

Still only here 24 hours. How can you hope to get below the surface. We have found ourselves on many tourist streets as the "must-sees" are covered one by one. These I could skip without a qualm. 

We are treated to graceful streets and architecture but more memorable are the side streets, away from the grand arc of the Seine and its monuments. 

Why does a road curve or widen here? Why are these houses set back from the sidewalk? What is the meaning if the placement of this church? The small questions that accumulate and blossom here on the Rive Gauche are more important and more lasting than the Paris that is polished for our consumption.