@Maru del Campo

Thank you for the links and the comments, Maru. I had heard about this article, but not yet seen it. Gives me some more to read this evening!

In thinking more about this topic, my own assessment is that traditional teaching, where the teacher is the center of action and attention, is a hard habit to break. Effectively, we are struggling to break the very methods that we learned and developed within. I have gone to formal schooling for more years than I can count, and nearly all of them have been faculty-focused. I am sure this is similar–everything that comes into and flows out of the class should be sanctioned from the professor. Organizations are like this with tight and limiting controls on firewalls and networks, and even the US government does this with phone conversations in the name of national security.

I wonder if what this professor did is really far-off from what many others would do in the same situation–how do we handle encouraging free-thinking but simultaneously afraid of the possible results?