DROP it! A post-pandemic acronym for cross-curricular learning

Post-pandemic days are defined by the word DROP. Musicians drop songs, publishers drop books, economists drop financial forecasts, and the Nobel Prize Committee drops honors upon physicists, economists, literati, and others. This interactive presentation reveals that a DROP is a new acronym in education, uniting administrators, teachers, and learners in ways that may not have been considered before. A basis is proposed for the educational DROP and participants are invited to add to it. The presentation is interactive and uses mind-mapping techniques to engage.

First, an outline of the acronym DROP will be proposed as a groundwork for brainstorming. D will be seen to mean diversity, disruption, discovery, and other things, as participants may suggest; R indicates reflection, recapitulation, re-examination; O opportunity, observation, openness, and more; P means participation, perspective, problem-solving, etc.

Mind-maps will be deployed to show conceptual and practicable connections among participants’ suggestions.
Sharing and discussion of mind-maps will stimulate new, different, or enhanced ideas to add to the presenter-proposed DROP elements. As each DROP letter is set aside to consider the next, participants will propose how the DROP may be included in curricula in their own disciplines. Finally, a group-produced mind map will be born to serve as a template for curriculum development across disciplines.

Participants will see tangibly that D is no longer just disruption; it is diversity and discovery and other things, not necessarily dependent upon any single interest. For its part, R is not just remediation for the community college; it indicates reflection and re-examination too. O stands for opportunities arising from the acquisition of new observational skills, and P implies participation for problem-solving. Community college personnel will learn new ways to stimulate learning and achieve progress by sharing "drops" across the curriculum.