Here it is
Scroll down to the bottom of any page on this blog and find the words “GET THE NEWSLETTER.” Enter your email there and click Subscribe. Near the end of each month, you will receive an email with summaries of and links to the posts I’ve published that month. That’s all.
I will not tell you how difficult it was to choose a platform and get it set up and working. Suffice it to say that there is more internet on the internet than is good for the internet.
The first time I used the internet was in 1983 (or 4?), when I had a job helping other students use the BITNET-connected VAX system at my university. That internet felt clean and clear and supple. It had a lot of space inside it. This internet feels like my knees feel after I do too much with them, like they have blown-up balloons packed into them. There’s too much packed into this internet. It needs a clearing out, and I don’t think it’s going to get one.
No course signups yet
I have had a few sign-ups to the PNI Practicum web site so far (thank you people!) but no course signups. This means that the two scheduled (May 2026) courses will probably not take place (though I’m ready to give them if they do).
(Actually, one person did sign up for the June course, but they changed their mind and decided on bespoke consulting instead. That is an option, you know. If you want help with a project but don’t want to take a course, send me an email (cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com) and we can set up a coaching schedule and budget for your project.)
I am not surprised by the lack of signups. It seems to take people a few months to decide to take a practicum course. The issue is not (usually) the cost; it’s the time required to attend the course meetings and carry out a real PNI project.
How much of a time commitment are the courses?
- The Introductory course includes just a few hours of extra-curricular assignments, but each of its four weekly meetings is three hours long.
- The Essentials course includes 10-30 hours of assignments plus 12 two-hour weekly meetings.
- The Deep-Dive course includes 15-60 hours of assignments plus 20 two-hour weekly meetings.
The variation in assignment times for the Essentials and Deep-Dive courses is because projects may vary in scope and because students may collaborate on joint projects. But nobody should expect to sign up for these courses and do nothing outside of class time. That would be wasting your hard-earned money, and besides, you wouldn’t really be learning how to do Participatory Narrative Inquiry.
By the way, I don’t like it at all that I have to ask people to pay the full course prices up front, even if the course they want to take won’t start for months. I like a lot of things about TrainerCentral (the platform I am using), but it does not allow me to collect a small save-your-seat course deposit. Before each course begins, I can only collect the full course fee. I did play around with a “custom ticket” option (with the course website sending people to Stripe to pay the course deposit), but I was not satisfied with its reliability. Unless and until I can get some kind of help managing the details of these things, it will have to stay this way.
If you want to take a PNI Practicum course
I can give you a few bits of advice about signing up for a course:
- If you want to take a course but are not ready to pay the course fee yet, sign up for an account on the website. I’m not doing anything with these website accounts (you won’t get spam), but I am using them to gauge interest in the courses. On the signup form, tell me which course you want to take and when. That will give me an idea of what to expect. Don’t worry; I won’t hold you to what you say. It’s not a promise. It’s just an indicator of interest.
- On the Course Calendar (scroll down on the main PNI Practicum website page), I have listed how many people have signed up for each course and how many seats remain. I will update these numbers every time someone signs up for a course (or drops out). If you’re the first one to sign up for a course, don’t let that stop you! Other people might be watching the numbers, and they might sign up once they see that someone else has taken the first step.
- If you have any questions about signing up for a course, or if you just want to tell me that you are interested in taking a course without signing up on the website, you can always email me at cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com.
- If you do pay for a course, and if the course cannot run because too few people have signed up, I will send you a full refund on the day the course was scheduled to begin.
I still don’t know if these new courses will work out, but as I said in my previous posts, I intend to stick with them for long enough to give them a chance.