UPDATE (3/11/24): Registration for this public webinar to be held on the Zoom Webinar platform is now open: https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZlTmDJkwQt2XDsDqpJYUOQ#/registration
My current registration limit is 500 and the course is half full, so reserve your spot now!
After years of people asking me if I would offer a public version of my Sociology of Guns class at Wake Forest University, I’m finally going to give it a try this spring.
I polled my social media followers on the best time of day for the webinar, but the responses were all over the place and people are in all different time zones. The bottom line was that everyone is on a different schedule. So, I had to just pick a day/time that works for me and hope for the best.
The webinar will meet for 7 consecutive Mondays from March 25th to May 6th from 6:00-7:00pm Eastern time. For those interested but who cannot attend live, a recording will be made available.
The syllabus is forthcoming, but for now some observations about the course follow.
Here are some preliminary thoughts. If you have questions or suggestions, please share them in the comments here.
(1) There will be no “tuition.” The model here is the MOOC – massive open online course – that had some popularity a while ago. I’m offering the course as a service to the community in response to a number of requests I have gotten over the years to have a public version of my Sociology of Guns course.
(2) Obviously, some of the best parts of the course I teach at Wake Forest cannot be replicated online. There will be no class field trip to the gun range, we will not be sitting down face-to-face in a seminar style and discussing the issues, and I will not be assigning or grading “homework.” The pedagogy will largely be lecture and Q&A.
(3) The course will run for seven weeks beginning in March and is structured around revisiting James Wright’s classic 1995 essay, “Ten Essential Observations on Guns in America,” as I did when I taught Sociology of Guns at Wake Forest in Fall 2016.
(4) I will teach the course one day per week for up to one hour as a Zoom webinar. This means only I can speak, but participants do have the option to chat with each other and ask questions of me live during the webinar.
(5) I will make readings available to those who register for the webinar, and registrants can ask questions about the readings in advance, which I will attempt to answer during the webinar.
(6) As befits a voluntary webinar course, I won’t expect people who sign up to attend live or attend weekly. There’s no “attendance policy.” I will make a recording of the webinar available to everyone who signs up, whether or not you ever attend live.
(7) I will look for opportunities to have guests join the webinar when appropriate. This has been a highlight of the course for Wake Forest students over the years, but my on-campus class met for 2.5 hours while this webinar will be 1 hour or less, so I’m not sure how exactly to fit guests in that time frame.
(8) I am thinking about ways to extend the conversation beyond the boundaries of the webinar itself, but in ways that do not require me to moderate the conversation as I’m only one person with a limited amount of time. If you have ideas on how to do this, please let me know.
What questions do you have? What am I forgetting?
David, as far as point 4. Are you saying participants can only “chat” or ask questions in those little chat boxes? I was teaching Fundamentals of Derivative Classification on Zoom (or one of those other platforms) during the pandemic and it was possible for students to talk in real time.
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Khal – In the Zoom WEBINAR, it is not possible for attendees to speak to the entire webinar in real time. This is a key difference between it and the Zoom MEETING. Not wanting to limit who can sign up, and therefore not knowing who and how many people will sign up, I don’t want to have a situation in which people can or expect to be able to chime in.
Basically, this is a lecture course not a seminar.
If the webinar goes well, it’s possible that if the seminar goes well, I might offer a limited enrollment (non-public) course as a Zoom meeting rather than webinar to allow people to speak in real time. This is how I envision the Virtual Book Club working. But that would only be about a dozen people.
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Ok, that all makes sense. I think I had 30-50 people at most at some Webex meetings when I gave online briefings during Covid and that was a challenge. Thank you for the explanation.
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David, I am breathlessly excited for this!
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Hope you can attend!
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That link, on a picture, is impossible for me to replicate. Got it in text form?
Richard Davis, dickblind@gmail.com
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Here is a link to register for the course: https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZlTmDJkwQt2XDsDqpJYUOQ?fbclid=IwAR1Pj-yTbLBtxxPBr9MBFMDEwhn7aumnF4L_aCcgjxa7tFedipmaWlQkyBY#/registration
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[…] 1995 essay “Ten Essential Observations on Guns in America” will be central to the Sociology of Guns public webinar I will be teaching this […]
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THAT was a brilliant essay. Looking forward to the webinar. Will there be further syllabus or reading materials? It would be fun to arrange to meet other participants, or even set up ‘range days’ especially for those unfamiliar with the experience of firearms use. Yes, I realize the logistics would be overwhelming.
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Belatedly, hopefully by now you’ve seen links to the syllabus which has the readings for every module. Of course since this is all voluntary you’re not required to do any of the readings and I will be discussing them during the webinar. But you will get a lot more out of it by doing the readings.
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