Feels great!
Incidentally: Though not quite as perfect as Francis', my course Medical ethics and Bioethics was also rated 'very good' (but there were a few 'goods'). Of note, the mode of examination (in group, with presentation of individual papers) was rated 'very good'.
Consider it part of the ECCO package if this does any good.
Jan Bernheim
At 17:35 21/02/2005, you wrote:
I received the first formal evaluation of my course on "Complexity and Evolution", submitted anonymously by the students who followed it last year. Averaged over all aspects (lecture notes, presentation, exam, ...), it scored 19 out of 20 with the philosophy students (for whom it was initially intended, and who got it as a optional course) and 17.2 with the students in ethics (who later got it as an obligatory course, replacing a course on physiology). None of the aspects scored less than "zeer goed" ("very good").
The only written comment added to the numerical scores summarizes the feelings: "prachtig vak!" ("splendid course!").
Given that this is a truly novel course, on a subject that as far as I know has never been taught anywhere else before, this is very encouraging! It also shows that the ECCO subject, to which this course provides a conceptual, philosophical introduction, does capture the imagination of a non-specialized audience.
This also provides additional support for our plans, which I have been discussing among others with Laetitia and Mixel, to do some "marketing" to make ECCO better known outside university (e.g. in business or government) as a provider of expertise, consultancy and teaching on various issues to do with complex systems. The idea was to sell our services ("Diensten aan derden", in VUB parlance) so as to get outside funding to support our research.
Another very positive evaluation came in today, from a referee whom we selected to review the FWO project we submitted on "connectionist organizations" (in collaboration with Frank Van Overwalle). After giving us the maximum score on all aspects of the proposal (think he may have been overdoing it a little there ;-), he writes:
I am very familiar with Prof. Van Overwalle's work through his publications, and I have met him in person several times at conferences. I have read some of Prof. Heylighen's work, and met him once at a conference. I have been very much impressed by the breadth and depth of their work, and am happy to be able to support this project in particular. The research team consists of internationally renowned researchers; both their publications are in highly regarded journals, and their research work has been at the cutting edge of their respective areas. The project combines their research strengths and proposes to develop a model of "learning organizations" or a kind of distributed cognitive model of collective learning, information processing and decision making. This topic is highly significant; as far as I know, in the literature, there is no principled model of collective learning and information processing of the type proposed here; when completed, the result will shed light on a variety of areas of research - from social and organizational psychology to cognitive science and information technology. The methodology proposed here is solid; these primary investigators have used it successfully before, and they are very familiar with it. The project is innovative. Although they propose to make use of the well established connectionist technology, the extention planned here is quite new, and promises to produce intriguing results. This research strategy makes the project at once innovative and feasible; at one level, it is taking a risk to do something novel, but the researchers are well aware of this methodology, and makes it quite feasible for them to produce the results that they propose. Prof. Heylighen and Van Overwalle have been working collaboratively for some time now, and I have seen their joint products to come out in the form of joint publications and conference presentations. Given their individual knowledge and expertise, combined with their well co-ordinated effort, I am certain they will be able to bring the project to a successful completion. I support it fully.
Unfortunately, this doesn't yet mean we will also get funding for the proposal: many other factors affect that...
If we add to that the international media interest (Nature News, Technology Research News, ...) that Carlos's still unpublished paper on "Self-organizing Traffic Lights" has already gathered, it seems that ECCO has the potential to become a highly regarded and internationally famous research group. Now we just need to work hard on research and organization to make this a reality!
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Francis Heylighen "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition" research group Free University of Brussels http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
