Massive Change in the GV Classroom

In the GV Classroom

GVSU Faculty are encouraged to make connections between Mau's work and their classes. These connections might contribute to a framework for crossdisciplinary discourse and give context to Mau's lecture and dialogue with students.
Here are some suggested classroom approaches:
1. Use the Massive Change resources to learn about broad global issues, problems, and innovations.
2. Use the Massive Change model as a framework to research and propose other critical areas of change.
3. Study Mau's work as an example of work that spans disciplines and applies knowledge to real problems.
4. Look at the Massive Change project critically in the context of other comprehensive theories and projections about the world.
5. Engage the dynamics of learning, technology, work, and growth by reading and discussing Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.
6. Coordinate a project with a class in another discipline.

Faculty Example: Ed Wong-Ligda, Art and Design

A major component of Introduction to Illustration is visual and cultural literacy. As such, we explore and question the objectivity and subjectivity of images and ideas - their origins and evolution, validity of context and mutability. This fall we will be using these insights to allow each student to realize the possibilities for social change within illustration. For the first half the the semester we will explore Massive Change philosophies and projects and then create a series of illustrations that focus on issues to be decided by the class.
Preliminary Process Outline
1. Class explores Massive Change site.
2. Class explores how artists have historically worked to effect change.
3. Class discussion of significant points.
4. Divide class into three groups of six.
5. Each group decides on a significant social problem.
6. Problem is researched. Problem could involve products, systems
7. Solutions researched.
8. Illustrations to promote solutions are produced.
8. Attend either the forum or lecture.

Faculty Example: Ander Monson, Writing Department

In the traditional model of the Fiction Workshop, the writer composes a story, submits it to the workshop who collaboratively critique it, then the writer revises, and submits again. This encourages a number of assumptions about the writer's role as an individual (the romantic vision of the individual artist working outside of or beneath the lump of the culture, unaffected by it), the importance of product (the finished and effective story rather than the glorious and abortive failure), and the privileging of quality over growth. The traditional workshop only deals with text as an idealized thing (all stories are submitted in double-spaced "standard" fonts, with images, typography, and other design elements discouraged if not forbidden), with the writer's job as a creator of crafted text, a potential filler of books.
We will do what we can this semester to work against these ideas.
We will use the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth as a touchstone in the work of the Intermediate and Advanced Fiction Workshops this Fall--focusing in particular on the ideas of collaboration, imitation, the elision of disciplinary boundaries, the idea of experimentation, and the privileging of process over product.
Specifically, students will:
. collaborate on a story or text object, with one student developing another's initial foray
. attend either the forum or lecture
. consider the writer's roles as producer / designer / social creature / publishing force / editor / creator / craftsman / artist
. think about the the story and the book as an object, an artifact, a technology
. in groups, incorporate design elements into their fiction
. emphasize at times arbitrary processes in fiction creation and prose generation, try to embrace the idea of writing as focused play

Please contact Paul Wittenbraker with ideas about how you or others might make Mau connections in the classroom. You can also inquire about collaborating or coordinating with another class or professor.

Dialogue with Students Tuesday, October 18th, 2pm -Cook-DeWitt Center

In addition the the evening lecture at Loosemore Auditorium Bruce Mau will have a dialogue with students at 2pm on Tuesday, October 18th. The title of the dialogue is borrowed from the Massive Change project, "Now that we can do anything, what will we do?" Bruce will give a short introduction and then engage in dialogue with a panel of students from various disciplines. If you have student candidates for this panel please contact Paul Wittenbraker.

Learning Resources
The Massive Change book and web site contain image, text, and multimedia resources. The web site is divided into two parts: 1. Learn and 2. Act. The act section includes some interactive fora and ways to generate local action. In addition the project has just launched Massive Change In Action, a collection of learning resources and tools for understanding and investigating Massive Change in more detail.