The Circled Square

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“The Circled Square: Buddhist Studies in Higher Education” explores practices of effective teaching and learning in a diversity of higher education contexts.

Episodes

Wednesday Nov 02, 2022

Kate Hartmann: Online Teaching Beyond the Pandemic

Wednesday Nov 02, 2022

Description

Trained in religion at Harvard, Kate Hartmann started her teaching job in Wyoming during the pandemic and has heartily embraced the challenges and possibilities of online and virtual modes of teaching. She also speaks eloquently about what her students in Wyoming need and want from her in person teaching about Buddhism. Founder of the new Buddhist Studies Online course platform, Kate shares academically and historically grounded studies of Buddhism with the wider public. She emphasizes the importance of applying Buddhist texts to contemporary issues such as structural racism and climate justice. In this episode you will hear Kate share numerous tips and strategies to engage students and use new technologies for teaching.

Quotes

“A world in which religion is treated with a kind of sense of history and diversity and respect is a world that I want us to live in.” Kate Hartmann

“I created my classes to be taught hybrid… I could really start from scratch and say, ‘What is the thing that I want to get across and how can I make this work for my students?’” Kate Hartmann

“It's hard to talk to the public. One, it's hard to get their attention, two it's hard to do it kind of responsibly, and three, it's hard because you don't get a lot of institutional recognition for this. None of this stuff counts for tenure or job applications for many of us in the field.” Kate Hartmann

“What we wanted to do is take the resources of the academy, the kind of rigor, the scholarship, the training, and bring it to this general audience that's interested and that otherwise might be consuming garbage nonsense on Instagram and YouTube. There's a lot of stuff out there and we as academics should be proactively reaching out to that community.” Kate Hartmann