14.2 Wrap Up
From Sense & Sensibility & Science
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An overview and conclusion of the course.
The Lesson in Context
The purpose of this lesson is to provide a wrap-up and review of the course. It gives the students a chance to synthesize different topics together and encourage them to try and apply them in the real world.
- This lesson harkens back to the utopia discussion from the first lesson. We'll look at the posters students made in the beginning and explore them in more detail using all of the tools we've developed over the course of the semester.
Takeaways
After this lesson, students should
- Be able to develop new decision making processes that draw on material from multiple lessons.
- Be able to synthesize multiple topics together so as to creatively recognize and apply them in the real world.
- Feel optimistic about your ability to respond to and solve the challenges we've identified in this course.
We don't need "desiderata" when we already have a decision-making process.
Students often confuse "desiderata," or goals of decision-making processes, with the processes designed to achieve those desiderata. For example, asked to come up with desiderata, they suggest "use a representative sample," which is a process which achieves the desiderata, "allow representatives of all relevant groups to have a voice," "ensure that our solution will work for everybody," or "avoid systematic bias."
Humans are flawed and there's nothing we can do about it. We should just give up.
After spending a whole semester presenting ways human thinking and decision making can go wrong, it's easy to feel pessimistic. That's not what we want! In recognizing these problems, we've enabled ourselves to find solutions, so we should be optimistic!
Useful Resources
Recommended Outline
Before Class
- Pick up the posters the students made in the first lesson.
- Pick up markers and other materials needed for the rebuilding utopia activity.
- Print and cut out the sub-questions for the rebuilding utopia activity.
During Class
| 70 Minutes | Spend most of the class on the rebuilding utopia activity. |
| 10 Minutes | Show the students their original posters and let them marvel at how much they've learned! |
Lesson Content
Rebuilding Utopia
We have different aspects of the world that we want to build into a utopia. For each of the following aspects of society, what would you want to see in an ideal future? Use course concepts! As many as you can! Be imaginative! 🌈
On construction paper write down the changes you'd like to make and how this would make the world better. 🌍️
Instructions
| 5 Minutes | Introduce the activity and distribute materials. |
| 20 Minutes | Each group picks a question and answers it on their poster. |
| 20 Minutes | After some time passes, the instructors come by and give the students the sub-questions. |
| 5 Minutes | Put the posters up on the wall. |
| 15 Minutes | Have a mini poster session where the students can go around and ask each other about their utopias. |
The Questions
- How is long term planning with a global impact done?
- How is it decided what issues are important?
- How to evaluate the effectiveness of an ongoing plan?
- How are plans changed if they need to be?
- How to incentivize sticking to the plan?
- How are people educated?
- How is primary and secondary education done?
- How is higher education and lifelong learning done?
- What soft skills would you like to teach?
- How do you evaluate student performance and teaching effectiveness?
- How are patients and the public informed and taken care of in a medical context?
- How are medical decisions concerning a patient made?
- How are medical facts and prognoses communicated?
- How are medical recommendations communicated to the public?
- How do you ensure that medical research is done ethically and equitably?
- How are people kept informed about what's going on in their communities and the world?
- How are news events sourced?
- What are the standards for presenting opinion or factual pieces?
- How are stories broadcast or amplified?
- How are consumers guarded against misinformation?
- How are government policies made and communicated?
- How is public opinion factored into policy?
- How are government policies and their potential consequences accurately communicated to the general public?
- How do you ensure accountability in the effectiveness and consequences of government policies?
- How are policies changed or reverted if they need to be?
- How does a court decide on criminal cases?
- Would there be a jury system? If so, how does the jury operate and what is its role?
- How is the evidence presented?
- How is a final verdict reached?
- How is bias minimized in the court system?
Discussion Questions
Instead of asking these particular questions, you can have the students vote on whether or not they would want to implement each group's piece of utopia.
- What are the practical challenges to arriving at this future?
- What are possible risks or negative consequences of this future?