College and Lifelong Learning | Gordon Thompson | TEDxSkidmoreCollege

Students often see the transformational four years of undergraduate study as the end of the educational road, only later to discover that college was only the beginning. And while the intensity of the residential experience has been unparalleled for at least two millennia, might the Internet allow us to sustain the developmental relationship between school and student beyond graduation? Many of the courses we offer on campus can be reimagined as video experiences similar to these TEDx talks, except that, rather than discrete disconnected lectures, we can shatter the notion of a linear course of studies to the benefit of both the teacher and the taught. Moreover, given that students and their families have already heavily invested in their education, we should offer continued intellectual enrichment gratis as part of our institutional responsibility.

Gordon R. Thompson (Professor and Chair of the Department of Music) is the author of Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (Oxford) and the author-producer of The Beatles: An Introduction, an experiment in online learning. In addition to having served on and chaired the college’s Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, he has organized the annual Beatlemore Skidmania concerts for the past fourteen years.