teaching practices that establish boring, soul-sucking, uninformative classrooms

With few exceptions, engineering instruction at the university level focuses almost entirely on solving idealized, glorified math problems and simply renames “solving real problems” to “engineering design”. We then spend in the ballpark of 120 out of 128 credit hours solving ‘idealized’ math problems, and only bother with ‘real’ problems in a generally-final-year-long “design capstone” involving little actual instruction.

The internet was invented to empower collaboration and augment human intellect. The web has made these possibilities available to a staggeringly diverse global citizenry. Let's shutter our "learning management systems" and build "understanding augmentation networks" instead, moving away from educational assembly lines toward intellectual ecosystems of interest and curiosity.

Notice also that I do not count whether a lecture is inspiring or not. No doubt many lectures are inspiring, but being inspired and being taught are not the same thing, and just having one’s thoughts provoked doesn’t mean that one has interacted with the lecturer in any real way.

But on a deeper level, the courses allow students to make connections across cultural barriers, develop confidence, and enhance awareness for others. I never got to sit in on a class, but from what the students told me, every session was full of high energy activities that pushed them out of their comfort zones while also helping them feel connected to their fellow classmates.