Ken Dryden will be teaching INCC 398 for term two.

Starting Jan. 8, hockey-great-turned-politician Ken Dryden will offer a new course at the University of Saskatchewan.

Making the Future, Dryden’s INCC 398 course, will ask students to think critically about topics such as health care, politics, family and religion in Canada. The course is given simultaneously via live audio and video links to “smart” classrooms at McGill, Calgary, Ryerson and Memorial universities.

“It’s about students in different universities in different parts of the country, connected to each other, experiencing and learning together,” said Dryden in a press release.

Dryden will split his time between the five campuses. The course will use guest lecturers and student participation to help students understand how to shape Canada’s future, said Sabrina Kehoe, associate director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity (ICCC).

“If you are in the U of S classroom you may have Ken Dryden with you, or he could be at any of the other institutions that are sharing the course,” said Kehoe. “For every topic that Ken has chosen he has a guest speaker; a leader in whatever area he’s talking about that week and that person might not even be in the room.”

Last year, Dryden’s guests included retired politician Preston Manning, philosopher Ian Gold and law professor Daniel Weinstock.

The 13-week program will place particular emphasis on technology and group work to facilitate discussion.

“The major assignments are done in groups that are across the universities,” said Kehoe. “Ken makes [group work] mandatory. It’s a big deal to him, because he thinks if you genuinely want to participate in the future of this country, and understand and shape it, you have to know how to work with your neighbors.”

Dryden began teaching the course in 2012 at McGill. Due to the success of the class, Dryden began the ambitious project of teaching the class at McGill and U of C in 2014. This is the first time that the course will be taught at five universities simultaneously.

“When you are in the class you will see Ken, the speaker and you’ll see your fellow classmates at the other institutions,” Kehoe said. “Everything happens simultaneously. If a U of S student asks a question, all the other students all the other universities hear that question and they answer.”

INCC 398 came to the U of S mostly by coincidence, said Kehoe.

“Peter Stoicheff has an elevator speech about the College of Arts and Science and the opportunities it presents and, interestingly enough, he was in Calgary and he met Ken Dryden in an elevator. So he used the speech and Ken was immediately interested.”

The course is open to students in any discipline.

“Every student in the college [of arts and science] should take this class,” Kehoe said. Dryden is “looking at very big concepts related to governance and politics that every citizen of this country should be concerned with.”

Dryden, an officer of the Order of Canada, won six Stanley Cups as a hockey player and was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983. He was a Toronto-area MP from 2004 to 2011, serving as the minister of social development under Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin from 2004 to 2006.

After losing his seat in the 2011 Canadian federal election, Dryden developed the course.

“The idea of actually impacting change is incredibly important,” said Kehoe. “We always talk about what we want the future to look like, but we are the ones who can change it.”

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Photo: Flickr / Luke Orlando