Quote:Hey friends,

Once we get some kinks ironed out, especially as it relates to exact purview of leadership and how that would fit within the Regional Affairs thing that's going on right now, this can become an official legal proposal, but I don't think we're quite there yet. There has, however, been ongoing discussion in #legislators-lounge and in this hall about the possibility of forming a TSP University. I see this as a fantastic idea, and since I was the Dean of XKI University for about two and a half years over two different terms I'd like to give y'all my vision for what a University of TSP might look like, and offer my assistance in getting such a project off the ground.

Above all, I see a university as a regional hub for learning about, discussing, debating, and organizing events around the specific interests of the community, whether they be IRL or NS-related.

What exactly does this mean?
First and foremost, the community drives the content of the University. It is absolutely dependent on an active and interested community taking part in the active topics and starting topics of their own. Yes, having a dean and possibly a deputy dean to keep things running and drumming up activity is important, but it's impossible to keep going without community contributions. The idea is that all of us have our own interests and can learn about or discuss interesting topics that might not exactly fall into the other boards on the forum.

How does it work?
How we have it set up in 10ki is that there is a main board for currently active classes, clubs, and discussion areas, and then there is a subforum for the "grand debate hall," which is where people both post interesting topics they'd like to have a debate about, and where the University holds occasional formal debates over a preselected topic as a competitive game. Classes and clubs are led by members of the community. As professors, they create a thread and interested parties can learn about the topic at hand. I can talk more on how these work best in a future post, but I'm just trying to outline the basics here.
Basically:
• Classes - professor-led seminars or workshops focusing on a specific topic people are interested in learning about
• Clubs - generally function as discussion groups related to a particular theme. Some clubs also host events related to their theme or, as is/was the case with the chess club and a few others, run leagues or tournaments every so often.

Relations to the MoRA/other things that could be done through the university
Though I'm still catching up on what I've missed since I was last a legislator, I've been reading up on the debate about the MoRA position. I see the university, and the position of the dean, as a great way to offload some of the work that might otherwise cause the MoRA's job to be burdensome. In addition to its function as a university, I've also seen the idea of an advisory council or group of deputies to the MoRA of some kind. The university dean could function very well in such a capacity as one member of said council and/or serve as a deputy to the MoRA to assist in certain capacities of the job. While the university probably isn't the end all be all solution to the MoRA problem, I think it could be a good step in the right direction.

Just as an example, the University could play host to regional or interregional culture events, have a journalistic publication of some kind, do AMAs with government officials, conduct straw polls for regional offices, really a lot of the things that Viet listed in this post in the MoRA debate. A lot of this is possible and would fit well under the purview of a university, depending on the form it ends up taking.

This is just a very basic sketch of my vision for it, based largely on my experience as 10ki's university dean. TSP is a different community, it might have different needs or visions, and I'm interested in hearing what you all think about such a proposal. Fire away, you political fiends!

• Who decides when to hold classes?
  
• Does this concept include a library of sorts, where documents describing things that were learned are stored? Who would curate that library?
  
• Could you imagine a scenario in the future where new legislators go through a mandatory university course or two?
  

1. It's up to whoever is teaching the class. Discord could be a huge boon to course meetings etc. If they want to have meetings on Discord at certain times during the week or just run it as a discussion thread led by the professor, it can take whatever form the participants/group leaders want it to.
   
2. Yes. We could archive old threads and accomplishments in a university library or archive of sorts. Courses that are finished or club/debate threads that haven't been used could be archived in such a place. We could also keep university records there, like who participated in what courses, who's been a professor, etc.
   
3. I think we could definitely experiment with any number of "new legislator training" or other NS/TSP-related courses, and whether they end up being mandatory or not would be at the prerogative of the Assembly obviously. But it's definitely an idea. NS how-tos, R/D-related courses, there's a ton of possibilities.
   

(02-18-2019, 03:03 PM)Roavin Wrote: We'd probably need some method of categorization. Dewey Decimal System + setting the forum to sort by name, or something.

(02-18-2019, 03:13 PM)Nakari Wrote:

(02-18-2019, 03:03 PM)Roavin Wrote: We'd probably need some method of categorization. Dewey Decimal System + setting the forum to sort by name, or something.

A few sub-forums for the specialised topics, plus an index of all documents, perhaps?

The SPSF is currently working on a series of R/D guides - those could go into the University some day.

(02-18-2019, 03:18 PM)Kurnugia Wrote: Holding classes is impractical due to timezones IMO. A library is much better.