Liquid Learning: The Case for Franklin’s Academic Travel
Caroline Wiedmer with Grace Bacon, Franklin University Switzerland
The article “Liquid Learning” offers an analysis of Academic Travel from within a number of contexts: the planetary, the global, the university, the classroom, travel sites and, finally the brain and the neurological processes that accompany learning. In circling inward through these increasingly smaller contexts the article explores shifting conceptualizations of what constitutes productive teaching and “useful” knowledge against the background of rapid environmental deterioration, and the social and epistemic transformations in reaction to it. How, following its central questions, do today’s universities need to change to remain relevant and to furnish students with the kind of knowledge they will need on the other side of their BAs to tackle the unpredictable challenges of a world coming apart? And how can the kind of teaching and learning enabled by the out-of-classroom experience typical for Academic Travel help create the nimbleness of mind our future generations need? Two academic travels – one to Poland, the other to Greece – serve as case studies to explore these questions; a running commentary from research assistant Grace Bacon adds perhaps the most important perspective: that of the student.
KEY WORDS: Academic Travel, Anthropocene, Experiential Learning, Neuroeducation, Jeff Wall