Knowledge creation and sharing around the Untraceable University will take place through various outreach as well as teaching-and-feedback efforts. Teaching involves university students as well as members of the public. By involving a larger audience and by teaching the philosophy and principles behind the Untraceable University, we aim to both engage more people to actively think about the possibilities of such an initiative, but also to help shape the ideas through feedback, assignments, and other exercises that are done as part of the teaching programme.
The Education & Outreach programme not only aims to further the conversation around our Untraceable University (and the specific sites we have in mind). The programme also aims to encourage people to think about the opportunities that might exist within their region to build their Untraceable University. By teaching people how to approach such a project and what the thinking is behind our own ideas, they might also apply the same kind of thinking to their own setting. We will actively encourage this and if an active community forms around another location then we will consider including this place and this community in our larger project - if they desire to be part of this.
Throughout the different activities that are developed, the goal of the Education & Outreach programme is never to present a single "best" vision. Like the rest of our work, this programme should consider a pluriverse approach and embrace a participatory, collaborative, and situated method. Instead of teaching the "best" principles from a specific field, the focus should be on explaining the different approaches that exist, and what their trade-offs are. This should equip listeners, viewers, and students to make their own informed decisions and come up with different visions for their own context.
We are seeking to roll out these activities through a network of collaborators, grouped together through Thematic Action Committees (TACs). Each TAC is formed around a specific theme, and we encourage the creation of overlapping committees that seek to unpack the same theme from a different perspective. The TACs help organise and guide the Education & Outreach efforts, but simultaneously invite a wider range of researchers to feed into this programme as it develops.
Activity Framework - Education & Outreach
The activities below outline the general activity framework that Thematic Action Committees (TACs) are expected to develop.
Year 1
- Interviews At the inaugural workshop, a number of radical and innovative thinkers in your field should have been identified. The first step in the Education & Outreach programme is to record written, audio, or video interviews with some of these people. In these interviews, people are asked to specifically apply their thinking to the context of the Untraceable University, and to elaborate on what they consider to be the challenges as well as the opportunities within this context. The interviews serve as the basis to introduce a wider audience to radical new ways of thinking that can be useful when thinking about how to apply ideas from your discipline to the Untraceable University. Depending on the recording format, the interviews will be disseminated to the general public with the help of the Untraceable University Research Institute. With the help of the network of your TAC, these interviews will also be shared with peers in your own field. The goal of these interviews is to get a wider discussion going on the possibilities and impossibilities of these radical ideas.
- Blog posts These are written opinion pieces by committee members or invited authors in which opportunities and challenges are framed. They can build off some of the ideas shared in the initial interview series. In these blog posts, authors share their own dreams of how they see the Untraceable University and the contribution of their own field. After publishing a few initial blog posts, a wider audience is asked to contribute similar pieces to share their own thinking.
- Podcast episodes The Untraceable University Research Institute provides a podcast production unit, which will collaborate with your TAC to co-produce documentary-style podcast episodes. These will form part of a larger series, covering different themes that all look at the Untraceable University through a different lens. The role of the TAC is to help our podcast hosts create a clear story, a narrative arc, that frames the ideas from your field in a way that lay people can understand it. The interviews you recorded before might be used as source material, and the same interviewees or blog authors can also be interviewed again to elaborate on their ideas. The goal is to develop a small series of 3-5 episodes which will cover the basic principles of your discipline, its relevance to the Untraceable University, and the most radical ideas and visions, and their challenges.
Year 2-5
- Lectures and webinars This entails organising guest lectures and online webinar discussions for students, researchers and the general public. The goal is to have direct engagement with people in the audience about the topics presented, and to reach a wide variety of audiences (people from your field, from related disciplines, from other countries, etc). The lectures and webinars should lead to further discussions that help gauge what this audience thinks of the way your TAC presents their ideas in the context of the Untraceable University.
- Course modules Development of course modules that teach the theory, method, and vision for your subject in the context of the Untraceable University. The development of these modules start out by teaching the basic ideas - an introduction - of your field and the relevance to the Untraceable University. Top-level ideas are reviewed in this introductory course. This particular module will be part of a larger online course that introduces the Untraceable University to a large, international audience. Each TAC develops this top-level course which allows students to get a general understanding of the role and potential of different disciplines within the Untraceable University context. Once this introductory course has been created, the next step is to develop more in-depth modules that students can take as a follow-up course. The goal is to develop open-access course material that might be rolled out not just as an online course, but that can also be used by lecturers elsewhere to integrate within their existing curriculum.
People that are interested in engaging with this research are recommended to consider setting up a Thematic Action Committee, or to contribute in one of the other ways we offer.