A public online Harvard course on civil disobedience

Students of the school of management named after John F. Kennedy together with experts and teachers developed the online course “Resistance”. School of management named after John F. Kennedy’s prestigious faculty of Harvard University, consistently holding top rankings of the institutions that train future public managers, policy analysts, and economists. The motto of the institution — Ask what you can do (“Ask what you can do”).

3 April news company CNN reported that a group of enthusiastic students of this faculty have developed their own online program with a great name “Resistance”. The idea of course, in the words of one student, the Creator, arose by chance, during a lively pre-election correspondence between students and teachers.

The result is a pair of the most enterprising students decided not to dwell on internal discussions and to collect some political analysts and active politicians, to develop a series of lectures and to hold them open. Agreed with a private University, knocked the pad, quickly built a site using the web designer, has prepared educational materials and resources for online translation.

The landing page of the course opens with a statement, often attributed to Thomas Jefferson. When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. The course is divided into 4 session first began on 5 April. Listeners have the opportunity to visit Cambridge, may take the course live; for the rest of the lecture will be broadcast online. Links to the broadcast will be posted as you progress through the lectures. In addition to lectures the course participants are offered interactive exercises and lists of further reading.

Forms of participation are closely associated with substantive since the course focuses on legal and effective forms of expression of disagreement with government action and public policy, students can register in droves.

According to the creators, for 2 days they received 10 000 registrations, among which are a group of activists, consisting of about 700 people.

The creators themselves did not expect such a flow of interest — it seems, in front of them in the first launch day have serious issues about scaling, organization of training of several thousands of people, assessing effectiveness and obtaining feedback.