A reception in the Senior Dining Room marked the official launch of the pilot for the LSE 100 course, the new interdisciplinary programme for first-year undergraduates.
In his speech at the reception, LSE Director Howard Davies, stated that the idea for the course grew out of a concern that for all of LSE’s claims for being a school that prided interdisciplinary teaching, “[it] was not totally delivered” at the School.
This concern led to a series of lectures on ‘Thinking like a Social Scientist.’ He added that more than 400 volunteers in the pilot course was a representative sample of the LSE first year undergraduate population, with the same gender ratio and proportion of UK and international students. Students from every department were also on the course.
Course Director Dr. Jonathan Leape said that LSE 100 is an opportunity for LSE’s highest profile professors to teach undergraduates. Ultimately, it is a course about learning.
Students will also spend 15 minutes at each class deconstructing and forming arguments, along with one-on-one consultations in the LSE 100 writing lab on argumentation and writing structure.
The LSE100 course will also bring some new approaches to lectures. Whenever students feel that the lecturer was being unclear, they can text the word ‘MUDDY’ to a number. Lectures will also use electronic polling, where students can answer questions live during a lecture. LSE 100 will also look into using oral feedback, where instead of written feedback, students receive a record of their tutors speaking about their work.
The LSE100 curriculum is a mix of current events and social science. The first three modules will be taught this term, and the last three will be taught in Michaelmas Term next year. Students will embark on their first module on climate change, with a lecture from Lord Stern this week.
Elections for LSE100 course representatives will take place in week 4, with students using the system for LSESU elections to select these representatives. The course will be compulsory for first year undergraduates in the academic year beginning in September 2011.
“LSE has a tradition of engaging in the big issues of the day,” said Dr. Leape, “but this is a way of systematically engaging students.”
As a second year student at the LSE, I would have loved to have been part of such a program. Couldn’t LSE have opened up the program for second and third year students with a genuine interest?