Abstract:

In the age of consumerist society, our students tend to view education as consuming massive amounts of facts. This information is organized in a formidable structure of scholarship, research and reference, guided by reason, delivered in the most accessible manner, and provided by brand name institutions.

Understandably, in order to survive the fierce competition, our educational institutions also adopt business models to effectively cater to this culture. As a result, three essential goals of the traditional education are largely compromised: wisdom, creativity and human intuition. Given this setting the “Scientific Method” becomes “Scientific Brand”, foreign to human belief.

Suppose we start with a group of undergraduate students, well immersed in factual knowledge and momentarily take them out of this existing educational pressure cooker. Give them a taste of an alternative educational experience in which facts are not the “Truth” but merely agents of belief, human experience becomes valuable, human intuition is validated and reflection is an essential part of research. This can result in exceptional creativity.

This article shares our experience with student projects in a course titled “Measurement and its limitations”. The main goal of the course is to create awareness about the role of human experience in the process of belief formation. Students are asked to combine three elements of knowledge, enthusiasm and reflection in a project.

An example of such a project, “Measuring Death”, hence the title of this article, is authored by a bright nursing student. In her writing the student presented an alternative perspective in measuring health of a person. Another creative project, authored by a student of Architecture, presented a radical view of sustainable design.

In this article we present the background in which an alternative experience is legitimized and encouraged. We showcase some examples of creative projects developed by the students, and we demonstrate how they tie in with the course's focus and objectives: a careful analysis of complex nature of ‘belief’, rooted in our language and routine methodologies. This article will also discuss the benefits of this focus of attention.

Keywords:

Alternative curriculum, integrating human experience in higher education, measurement and its limitations, project base learning.