Dear colleagues,
I hope this email finds you well. I am looking for your help in disseminating this course offering.
Following the success of the President's Dream Colloquium on Making Knowledge Public (Fall 2018), I will once again be offering MKP as a regular course for both graduate and undergraduate students in the Spring Term 2021.
This course offers students, graduate and undergraduate alike, a deeper understanding of the public mission of universities, of their (and our) responsibility to share our work, and of the various ways in which it makes its way into society. It explores these issues while raising critical questions about incentives structures that reward citations (for us) and grades (for them) above all else.
The course ran successfully last spring with the majority of students coming from my own faculty (FCAT), but the topics will be of interest to those from all disciplines. One of the things that made the Dream Colloquium course so great was the interdisciplinary backgrounds and grad/undergrad mix of students.
Please see details below and circulate as widely as possible.
Assistant Professor, Publishing
Associate Director, Public Knowledge Project
Director, Scholarly Communications Lab
Simon Fraser University
How does research shape public policy? How is the public involved in science? How is research taken up by the public? Come explore these questions and more as we discuss the role of universities in public life and explore what it means to Make Knowledge Public.
This spring, join us for PUB480/877: Special Topics in Publishing [Making Knowledge Public]. Designed to spark conversations and engage students from across the university, the course explores the changing role of research, knowledge-making, and truth in the public sphere.
Taking place online on Tuesdays and Thursdays, this 4-credit course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. It builds on the success of the 2018 President’s Dream Colloquium on Making Knowledge Public, covering topics like fake news, public policy, science communication, and public scholarship.
Course Name: Special Topics in Publishing [Making Knowledge Public]
Instructor: Juan Pablo Alperin
Credits: 4
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays
Campus: Virtual
Prerequisites: Undergraduate students must have completed a minimum of 75 credits. Also open to graduate students from across the university (contact course instructor for registration details). Space is limited.
Questions? Email Dr. Alperin at jalperin@sfu.ca
For more, you can browse syllabi from previous years. Or, see what the students in the course had to say:
“The climate within the classroom and the kinds of conversations we were having was different from almost every other class I’ve taken.”
“The course made me rethink the question of, ‘What is my role as an educated person?’”
“If I had to define [the course] in a word it would be ‘engaging.’ It was fun to come to the class!”
“The most valuable thing that I learned from the course was about how academia works.... We have this idea that academics just need to write articles and publish them, and that’s all making knowledge public is. But it’s way more complicated than that.”