Literature and Social Online Learning: Interdisciplinary Teaching in the Humanities

Speaker(s): Petra Dierkes-Thrun and Sebastian Thrun

In this talk, Petra Dierkes-Thrun (Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature) and Sebastian Thrun (Research Professor in Computer Science, CEO of Udacity) will discuss their jointly developed, co-taught new course, Literature and Social Online Learning, which was offered for the first time in Fall 2014. 

As a 200-level project course in which undergraduate and graduate students from Computer Science, Comparative Literature, and English worked together on interdisciplinary projects designed to advance and promote the study and enjoyment of literature in the 21st century, the class posed new challenges and opportunities for pedagogical innovation in the Humanities and the new CS+X initiative at Stanford. Focusing on course design choices, student projects, and students' and instructors' candid reflections on the experience of ten intense weeks (from an initial "five crazy ideas" assignment to eventual product launch), this talk is a hands-on introduction to project-based and design-thinking-oriented teaching and learning in the Humanities.