Minerva’s innovations certainly pose a challenge to a sclerotic university model … campuses across the world will at some point have to address the [model’s] deficiencies.
- Bryony Clarke, The Guardian
- Benedikt Bolza
countryside, in any place outside of a major city
really, it becomes the preoccupation of your life. You are vested, invested, in the property and its success. And that investment extends to the community around you.
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whether in their professional, civic or personal lives. This is why the Minerva education is centered around teaching concepts and skills that nurture critical thinking and decision making.
What Minerva Teaches
The multiple global challenges facing individuals today do not fit neatly into specific subject matter. Moreover, while there is a lot of talk about some jobs becoming obsolete in the
near future, we do not know whether technology will automate jobs or merely augment them. With the future, by definition, being unknown, Minerva focuses on teaching habits of mind and foundational concepts that transcend particular and known contexts. For
example, a Minerva curriculum will not teach students how to write essays, but rather the concepts of audience, thesis, composition, etc. that can be applied whether writing an essay, tweeting, or producing a video – all of which would endure and still be applicable on whatever new media the future would bring. The curriculum is intentionally designed to teach students how to apply skills in unknown contexts, through rigorously applying them across subject matters and discipline allowing students to learn as much from their peers as from faculty.
How Minerva Teaches
The lecture is a highly cost-efficient way of teaching. It is an equally highly ineffective way of learning. With studies showing that 60% of learning acquired in traditional lectures is forgotten after six months, Minerva bans lectures in its classes, as evidence suggests there are more effective ways to acquire new information. Relying on a Fully Active Learning pedagogy, Minerva’s classes are all seminar based. Information acquisition happens outside the classroom, and classes are for deepening and applying this newly gained knowledge. Through debates, live polling, collaborative writing, the professors are able to assess and give feedback on how the students have integrated and can apply what they have learned. The role of the professor becomes that of a facilitator or orchestrator of discussion, allowing students to learn as much from their
peers, as from faculty.
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The Minerva approach also allows student progress to be carefully tended and evaluated. during class, in conversation with instructors, and through formal assessments. The robust tracking and assessment tools Forum provides
empower instructors and institutions to deliver formative feedback, both in-the-moment and over time. The data can be shared across courses, instructors, and departments, leading to better integration of critique, support, and grading. Students can also follow their own performance and progress, encouraging self-reflection, intellectual growth, and skills development.
Where Minerva Teaches
Minerva believes the university experience is a major contributor to the journey towards adulthood. And in order to support its students on this journey, Minerva does not
believe that they should be sequestered behind campus walls. This is why education at Minerva happens in two places: virtually on ForumTM, its proprietary learning environment that was