Teaching
Teaching is a core output of this initiative — not a service obligation beside the “real” work, but one of the primary ways the philosophy becomes practice. We state this explicitly: a course that changes how a student thinks is exactly the kind of catalytic, hard-to-measure impact we are built for. Andrew Maynard’s teaching philosophy distinguishes playgrounds from playpens — open, generative learning environments rather than restrictive ones — and worries about what happens when “metrics of learning take the place of actual learning” (andrewmaynard.net/llms.txt, 2026). Andrew’s courses below were designed from scratch around that stance (per his CV); Sean Leahy’s teach a strongly convergent stance in structured foresight form.
The courses listed here are the initiative-connected teaching as of August 2026 — illustrative of the approach, not an exhaustive history (earlier courses include an archived 2023 prompt-engineering course, one of the first for-credit undergraduate offerings of its kind in the US: course archive).
Andrew Maynard’s courses — designed, taught, documented; paused as of August 2026
Status: established fact (both courses ran for years and are fully documented); both are honestly marked “currently not being offered” on their futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu course pages as of August 2026 — paused with Andrew’s move from SFIS to Thunderbird, and he is currently on sabbatical (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05). They are not currently enrollable.
FIS 338 — The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future (taught 2018–2026)
An undergraduate course, open to any major, that teaches emerging technologies and responsible innovation through twelve science-fiction films watched whole, in class — from Jurassic Park (gene editing, chaos, profit-driven science) to Ex Machina (AI, technological hubris, manipulation) to Contact (science, belief, and wonder). The textbook is Andrew’s own Films from the Future (2018), one chapter per film (course page; Fall 2025 syllabus).
What makes it pedagogy rather than movie night (source: FIS 338 syllabus, Fall 2025):
- Active viewing — a formalized watching discipline: come primed, attend to everything (music, soundscape, body language), track three pre-identified topics, embrace serendipity, make cross-movie connections, stay critical without losing enjoyment.
- A scaffolded weekly cycle: chapter reading → “Five Most Important Sentences” → “Pre-Movie 1-2-3” (one question, two things learned, three things to watch for) → film and discussion → reflective journal.
- A nuanced AI policy: generative AI is “actively encouraged” where it helps learning — except in the reflective journals, which must be authentic and in the moment: “absolutely no generative AI” there. The line is drawn to protect authentic reflection, not to police tools.
- Self-assessment as capstone: students grade their own learning against the outcomes, with evidence — and are explicitly invited to include serendipitous, unexpected learning. Assessment as reflection, not surveillance.
Andrew describes it as “a stealth class where students come in looking for an easy class, and leave completely transformed in their thinking” (andrewmaynard.net, 2026).
FIS 394 — Pizza and a Slice of Future (taught 2023–2026)
A one-credit course whose syllabus opens “This is not a conventional course!” — built on the idea that transformative learning happens when you are so engaged in a conversation that you forget it is a class. Students explored emerging technologies and the future of being human in free-wheeling discussion, over pizza, in the initiative’s third-space community room (ISTBX 102, Tempe — retired with the 2026 Thunderbird move; see Identity) (source: FIS 394 syllabus, Fall 2025; course page).
Two design choices carry the philosophy:
- 70% of the grade was for showing up and being in conversation. Attendance and engagement were the assessment — a deliberate wager that presence and dialogue, not deliverables, are where this kind of learning lives (source: FIS 394 syllabus, Fall 2025).
- The community norms were the initiative’s five guiding principles, quoted verbatim in the syllabus — Obsessive Curiosity, Radical Creativity, Respectful Inclusivity, Grounded Exuberance, Catalytic Serendipity. This is the clearest curricular embedding of the initiative’s ethos anywhere.
The result we care most about is the unmeasurable one: students came back after their enrollment ended, for no credit — the kind of impact our non-KPI stance says to look for (andrewmaynard.net/llms.txt, 2026).
Sean Leahy’s courses — the foresight studio model (active, 2025–26)
Status: active work. FIS 307 and TGM 598 Global Energy Futures ran Spring 2026; TGM 568 is running Summer 2026 (Summer B, through August 11); TGM 598 Global Digital Transformation ran Fall 2025 and is scheduled again for Fall 2026 (source: Leahy syllabi, 2025–26; Leahy CV, 2026).
Sean Leahy teaches the same stance in structured foresight form, at Thunderbird and in ASU undergraduate teaching. As one syllabus puts it, the design is “an applied strategic foresight studio rather than a traditional content-heavy survey,” with the emphasis on “reperception — shifting how leaders see and act in the face of complexity, uncertainty, and emerging transformation” (TGM 598 Global Energy Futures syllabus, 2026).
- FIS 307 Navigating Futures (undergraduate, online) — a full futures-methods apprenticeship: Intuitive Logics scenarios, horizon scanning, Causal Layered Analysis, Three Horizons, plus dedicated weeks on narrative and imagination as futures methods (including Afrofuturism and Chicanafuturism) and on games and simulations as foresight. Every student builds scenarios for a named client, and the culminating Visual Futures Artifact asks for “a designed, creative expression of a future world” that works through image and narrative “rather than through expository prose” (FIS 307 syllabus, Spring 2026).
- TGM 568 Metaverse & Global Enterprise (Thunderbird MGM) — treats the metaverse “as a lens rather than a product”: Ready Player One is a required text read as a design artifact, a VR field trip grounds analysis in embodied experience, an in-class “MetaFutures” world-building game does serious work, and the capstone brief and pitch are addressed to “a real or plausible decision-maker… not to the class.” Most of the grade sits in weekly provocations and dialogue, not exams (TGM 568 syllabus, 2026).
- TGM 598 Global Energy Futures (Thunderbird MGM) — global energy transitions through 2050+ taught as a foresight studio: the midterm is run as a futures game, Causal Layered Analysis goes down to worldview and myth, a dedicated session on energy justice asks “who wins, who loses, and why,” and the team capstone backcasts from a preferred future to present-day action (TGM 598 Global Energy Futures syllabus, 2026).
- TGM 598 Global Digital Transformation (Thunderbird MGM) — business-school case method (Nintendo, Klöckner) hybridized with the futurist’s toolkit; each student masters and critiques a foresight method of their choosing, and teams deliver a strategic foresight portfolio with named scenarios and early-warning indicators. It is the most conventional of the four (it keeps a traditional midterm exam) — the 2026-designed courses show the trajectory away from that model (TGM 598 Global Digital Transformation syllabus, Fall 2025).
All four carry transparent AI policies. In the three Thunderbird syllabi, AI use is “generally welcome and even encouraged” with attribution, and must “support, not replace critical thinking and analysis”; FIS 307 carries the same stance in undergraduate wording, with disclosure to the instructor. Accountability runs through disclosure and process transparency (students may be required to submit their AI chat transcripts documenting their process), not detection software (Leahy syllabi, 2025–26). This is the classroom version of the initiative’s broader stance on thriving with AI — openness plus protected human thinking — the same line Andrew draws around authentic journals in FIS 338, and the subject of Leahy and Maynard’s February 2026 FOLC Fest workshop, “Thriving with AI: Ethical, transparent, and human-centered teaching.”
Beyond the classroom
The teaching extends past enrolled students — deliberately, as knowledge mobilization. This is also the initiative’s live answer to learning beyond ASU: rather than a proprietary online course, we publish open teaching infrastructure anyone can pick up. Andrew maintains free, open education resources including the Instructor’s Guide and AI Companion to AI and the Art of Being Human (built for community colleges and universities), the Teaching and Learning in an Age of AI hub, and So You Want A PhD? (2026). See Outputs: Tools and Experiments for more.
Where teaching goes next: the Thunderbird phase
Status: aspiration and active development (August 2026).
With the initiative’s 2026 move to the Thunderbird School of Global Management, teaching becomes central to the new phase described in Identity: forming leaders for an age of transformative AI and other transformative technologies. The raw material is already on the table — Andrew’s playground pedagogy and its record of transforming how students think, and Sean’s foresight studios already running inside Thunderbird’s management programs, teaching reperception to the school’s graduate students. The ambition is to make the initiative’s approach — including this way of teaching — a differentiator in how Thunderbird forms undergraduates, graduate students, and executives — formation for a future that marks an inflection point from the past (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05).