General Structure of Programs and Classes

[Naiya]

Sounds good Naiya. I pretty much agree with all of your ideas about the DVA. I think pre-reqs should be abolished. I also think that SoS and SP do not need their own classes. Really I think we could get by with just Dream Signs & Recall, WILD, DILD, Dream Control. Those should be the four main courses running consistently. Then I would also like to see a few more classes taught every once in awhile, perhaps if the demand is high enough...and we can poll people to determine this. These can be done like classes or workshops, and I would love love love to attempt to bring some sleep/dream experts in to give a lecture or something. I think it would be a great idea to attempt to find some experts in the field who would be willing to helps us out in teaching a class, and then we'll promote their book or whatever all over the place. It could be a nice mutually beneficial arrangement.

[Naiya]

As far as how the classes themselves go, these are (mostly) my ideas: Building on what Nina said, we'd have a handful of basic classes. DS & Recall, DILD, WILD, and Dream Control. SP and sleep stages would be discussed briefly at the beginning of the WILD class (although it might be beneficial to mention them in DILD too). Other than that, I think each teacher/professor could offer classes of their specialty. For example, someone who is great at VILD would teach a VILD class, or there could be a lucid combat class (cough Walms cough). That kind of stuff. So since those classes are mainly based on one person's technique, that person would have their own. As far as the structure of the classes themselves, I think what we did before worked fairly well. That is, set start and end times, workbooks/DJs, and a program to go through. IMHO, for these classes relatively small groups are better. My reasoning is this: I think people join DVA and adoptions because they want more one-on-one time. They want to have someone looking through their DJ, helping them step by step, and giving them advice when they are having trouble in some areas. At MM we do big workshops which allow everyone to join up, but they're mainly based on each individual person doing the work on their own. Normally the people who run the workshop aren't able to work with each and every person doing it. It's not exactly impersonal, but I think it works best for people who have more self-motivation and more confidence. So while it's great for MM, generally I don't feel it will do as well here because we have so many newbies who are really looking for as much personal support as possible. I was talking to Jeff about this the other day and he had a brilliant idea--why not have it both ways? We could set up our four core classes to be smaller groups with a lot of individual and group help. These classes would ideally be ongoing. At the same time, we could hold shorter classes, workshops and seminars. These would be open to anyone who wishes to join. The teachers wouldn't be quite as involved in helping people individually and the classes would be geared more toward self-motivated people. If possible we could bring in guest speakers and teachers for these kinds of events, which would make them perfect as all inclusive events. When it comes to which will be which, I think it will depend on the teacher and the subject. If the subject is very general and doesn't require the use of DJs and workbooks, it could be a seminar (for example, held only in chat for whoever wants to sit in). If the subject is very broad and doesn't have any specific goals, like dream interpretation (we had one like this at MM), it would be a workshop. And if the class requires a lot of one-on-one help or group help, then it will be an exclusive group or class.

[Naiya]

A bunch of the students are asking for a shared dreaming class. Anyone have thoughts on this? Personally I think it might work as a workshop as long as it has a giant disclaimer that it's still unproven and the class is for experimental purposes only, something like that.

[nina]

Absolutely. That is one thing that is good about shift leaving. She was adamantly against teaching anything BD related....yet so many people are interested in this stuff. We should definitely have a shared dreaming and an OBE/AP course available.