{"id":4935,"date":"2011-02-11t07:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-11t13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=4935"},"modified":"2011-02-01t10:25:41","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01t16:25:41","slug":"leveraging-diversity-the-wisdom-of-crowds-in-university-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2011\/02\/leveraging-diversity-the-wisdom-of-crowds-in-university-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"leveraging diversity: the wisdom of crowds in university teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>in the wisdom of crowds<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, author james surowiecki describes an interesting phenomenon.\u00a0 when county fair visitors are given the chance to guess the weight of a cow, the average of the guesses is very often right on target.\u00a0 in fact, the average guess is frequently more accurate than any single guess, even guesses by those who know a great deal about cows.<\/p>\n

why is this the case?\u00a0 surowiecki identifies several reasons, but here\u2019s one key factor: the fair visitors bring a diversity of perspectives and experiences to the task of estimating bovine body mass.\u00a0 surowiecki goes on to describe a number of other ways in which the diversity of a group of people is a real strength when making decisions and solving problems.<\/p>\n

so why is it that we often find it challenging to teach a diverse group of students?\u00a0 our students bring a rich array of knowledge, skills, experiences, perspectives, interests, and values to our courses.\u00a0 and yet, during a cft conversation on teaching first-year students last year, a number of participants noted how challenging it can be to teach students from diverse academic backgrounds.\u00a0 might the wisdom of crowds<\/em> and other books on the topic of crowdsourcing<\/strong><\/a> (such as clay shirky\u2019s cognitive surplus<\/strong><\/em><\/a> or chris anderson\u2019s the long tail<\/strong><\/em><\/a>) provide some ideas for leveraging diversity in the classroom?<\/p>\n

join cft assistant director derek bruff for an exploratory teaching workshop, \u201cleveraging diversity: the wisdom of crowds in university teaching,\u201d on tuesday, february 22nd, from 4:10 to 5:30 p.m. at the cft.\u00a0 this workshop is co-sponsored by the center for the integration of research, teaching, and learning<\/strong><\/a> (cirtl).\u00a0 register now<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

image: \u201ccolourful army<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d maistora, flickr (cc)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

in the wisdom of crowds, author james surowiecki describes an interesting phenomenon.\u00a0 when county fair visitors are given the chance to guess the weight of a cow, the average of the guesses is very often right on target.\u00a0 in fact, the average guess is frequently more accurate than any single guess, even guesses by those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":4936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[105,82],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wp0\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2018\/07\/09153643\/3014414972_fd8de03f5a.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}