Can a mandatory, reading-heavy course actually be the highlight of a student’s week? In many required courses, students often feel like passive containers for information—what Paulo Freire calls the “banking concept” of education. This session explores how the Ways of Knowing course at Northwestern University in Qatar flipped this script.
By integrating Freire’s problem-posing method, faculty and students transformed a daunting syllabus on colonial knowledge into an interactive laboratory for student agency. Presenters (faculty and students who have taken the course) will share how they utilized student-led facilitation (using Kahoot and role-play), sensory-based learning (field trips to the
Bin Jelmood House), and creative expression (collaborative drawing) to build a community of inquiry. Attendees will benefit from the lessons learned of teaching a course in a postcolonial framework and how activities such as reading outside the classroom or visiting museums can balance the growing use of AI in education by prioritizing deep learning shared spaces experiences.
Open Zoom