Read together.
Then think aloud.

Convened seminars

An hour goes like this. A member takes a seat at it here; the room opens a quarter of an hour before it convenes; the meeting itself happens on the leader’s outside link; and afterwards the room keeps what the hour left behind, the leader’s summary and the recording where one was kept.

How seminars are run today

These are live programs, held now by video call and in person. This page describes them so the software is built around the practice rather than the other way round.

• The two-year fellowshipNinety minutes each week, online, with an in-person summer component. Members of the first cohort said plainly that they would not have kept up their intellectual life without the structure of the group.
• Summer universityThree days in person, with mini-courses drawn from the seven liberal arts — the part of the year where the conversation continues over meals as much as in session.
• Mathematics conferenceA yearly gathering around the quadrivium, and the setting where much of the interactive geometry work in this Studium was first asked for.
• Fellows AcademyFellows teaching high-school students, with Institute faculty supporting the teachers rather than teaching the classes directly.

How the conversation is led

The Institute’s workshops on leading discussion teach a definite practice. It is stated here because everything this suite builds for seminars — the reader’s preparation, the leader’s plan — is built to serve it.

• The author is the teacherThe leader is a leading learner — the room’s first reader, not its lecturer. What the text says outranks what anyone at the table, leader included, would rather it said.
• The leader mostly listensOne question that can open the whole reading is put to the group — and then the leader waits, lets answers meet each other, and returns to the question from time to time to take stock aloud.
• Opinion owes evidenceEvidence the whole table can judge: the words on the page, or experience all share. When a passage is cited, the reading waits until every copy is open to the place.
• Conclusions are earnedA seminar often ends in honest disagreement. Seeing the real question more clearly is progress, and the good questions are expected to outlast the hour — the conversation that continues afterward is a sign of success, not failure.