David Wishart

ELLA has always been a really enjoyable opportunity for me.  It’s a chance to teach people that are pretty much my own age and probably with similar experiences to me. It’s also been a chance to develop courses that are both fun and interesting to me and I hope for others. 

We often don’t get a chance at university to create courses sort of spur of the moment to pursue topics that are maybe a little outside our specified discipline. The normal process takes up to five years to get a course implemented. ELLA gives us the flexibility and opportunity to put together a course in less than six months. 

It also enables us to put things in that are really current.  We can talk about, or bring up, things that have happened some time in the last few weeks. That’s always entertaining.

What we have is a class of like-minded individuals who are really keen to learn and not worried about grades or tests. That makes for a wonderful teaching and learning environment.

I enjoy the questions that people ask during class. Sometimes we devote almost the entire hour to just answering questions.  It’s fun because it really engages.  We’re not worried about a strict deadline or teaching a mandate. Just having conversations and asking and answering questions are some of my favorite memories.

I so much enjoyed teaching my first course that I was happy to be asked again. I’ve been doing this about every two years for ten years.

I would happily do it for free — actually I don’t know why they have to pay us. I just appreciate the fact that they are able to help organize these things. I think the organization has been really wonderful and it’s also been a very comfortable environment to be in.