[Cover page]
Course Redesign Proposal
Title: Transforming, Anth 301, Anthropological Theory, into an ONLINE
course with a rigorous research component.
Submitted by Kathleen Nadeau, Department of Anthropology
Date ___June 1, 2015__________
Course Redesign Proposal: Anth 301
Narrative incorporates #1-7 on the project activities in an essay form.
Budget details are on a separate page.
There is a perceived need in the Department of Anthropology for an Online
Course Offering of Anth 301, Anthropological Theory. Anth 301 is a
prerequisite course required for anthropology majors to take, prior to
enrolling in our required capstone course, Anth 500, Senior Seminar in
Anthropology. To ensure that our majors, across the board, are able to take
Anth 301, which normally is annually offered during the Winter Quarter, in
their junior year, we have determined that an online offering of this course
would be appropriate.
Anth 301, Anthropological Theory is a rigorous course offering that
provides majors and non-majors, interested in anthropology, with a solid
background in the theoretical debates and historical development of the field
of Anthropology. The special focus of Anth 301 is on social and cultural
anthropological theories that are derived from ethnographic research and
fieldwork. Anth 301, also, is a core anthropology course required for our
majors.
Anthropological Theory (Anth 301) as it is currently designed, requires
students in the course to read and write weekly summary papers that clearly
define and give an example of the major concepts derived from their two
required chapter readings. Students currently are being assigned two
required homework readings per week. In addition, they currently are
required to complete two exams, consisting of a Mid-Term take-home essay
question and Final exam take-home essay question. I propose to newly
redesign this course into an online course that will continue to include the
weekly summative paper requirement but will newly incorporate a
culminating final research paper requirement that demonstrates their level of
mastery of the material that was covered over the course of the quarter, in a
substantively comprehensive way. Students taking the online course will be
required to write a culminating term paper that pulls together different
theoretical arguments and, importantly, differentiates the different
theoretical traditions from which they derive. In other words, their
culminating research paper will include a high level of theoretical
understanding of the debates that have been waged in anthropology, past and
present. Their final paper requirement will Not be merely an eclectic paper
that reviews the development of anthropology theories, rather it will be
rigorous analytical research oriented paper the brings together theories and
situates them in a clearly defined theoretical school of thought. This
culminating research component will be incorporated to discern the level of
each student’s comprehension of what they are reading in terms of how well
they are able to see the bigger theoretical frameworks, which are different
and distinctive schools of thought, each with a long history in anthropology.
This Spring 2015, I am teaching Anth 301 in the classroom. There are 26
students enrolled, 7 of whom are non-anthropology majors. The course
seems to be very successful as currently designed. However, there is no term
paper requirement, instead I am giving them a MT and Final take-home
essay question to answer. This works well in an in-classroom situation.
Conceivably, I could continue to use these primary exam methods for the
online class. However, instead, I am newly proposing to incorporate a
Research Component, will give future students an opportunity to experience,
first hand, writing a paper that brings together a specific theoretical field of
knowledge in the wider discipline of anthropology. That is, a term paper that
demonstrates their mastery of a particular school of thought in anthropology,
through intensive reading and research, by synthesizing and bringing
together disparate articles into a unified field of thought. This will be a
challenging research and question driven assignment that will be broken up
over the quarter into two primary stages. At the Mid-Term date, students
will be asked to check in, by submitting their guiding research question and
paper proposals. I want to make sure that they can differentiate between
different ways of doing and thinking about anthropology. Guiding online
discussion questions, will be virtually and individually dissected, such as
what is the difference between colonial anthropology and newer forms of
anthropology such as indigenous anthropology, interpretive anthropology,
and post-structural anthropology? Online questions dealing with matters of
human agency in anthropology also will be investigated. Once students are
able to answer these types of questions, they will be in a better position to be
able to distinguish between different articles and, then, group them together
in terms of their corresponding, or disjunctive, relationships. The goal
(impact on learning) will be to equip my students with the necessary
research skills to discern the bigger picture of anthropology in the face of
contemporary challenges of the 21st century.
Offering Anth 301 as an Online Course will likely encourage more
anthropology majors to take the class in a timely manner. It may also be
more attractive to non-majors who are interested in anthropology. Juggling
the proposed subjective assessment measures will be challenging. I propose
to use funding, if awarded, to pay for a student assistant, Leah Arias, and
will apply for her also to be my peer counselor, next Winter 2016, when this
proposed online course will be officially offered. It will be offered every
Winter Quarter, thereafter. I would like to employ, Leah Arias, to help
redesign this course, Anth 301 into an interactive Online Course. She is
taking my current Spring 2015, Anth 301 class. Her interactive discussion,
writing style, and analytical skills are highly superior. Having a student to
work with as I redesign this class into an online offering, will help me to
think about the bigger picture in relation to what motivates and keeps
students engaged in the electronic discussions and processing of the material
assigned and digested, through interactive online activities. Also, I emailed
Michael Chen, director of new technologies and innovations, to assign
someone who is familiar with Mac computers to assist us in redesigning this
newly proposed interactive 100% online Anth 301 course offering.
I envision transforming Anth 301 into a creative and interactive 100% online
course that engages students in the on-going learning process, while
requiring them to work on and develop their hands-on writing and research
skills, through a step by step approach. This weekly interactive process
coupled with the weekly written assignments, will be time intensive. I
envision incorporating into the class a clear visual component of myself as
the instructor, outlining and going over the materials in a clear and wellorganized way. I hope to have a peer counselor also onboard to help interact
with the students, as they submit their weekly reading summative papers.
Students will get weekly feedback on their papers in terms of the quality of
writing and conceptual understanding of the key concepts in the homework
(two reading assignments, per week). They will be given opportunity to rewrite and re-submit their weekly papers to build up their writing and
understanding of the material in a gradual and systematic way. From a
personal and professional perspective, my goal is for students to enjoy the
process, while getting a lot out of my classes. I want to create an online
course that is incrementally INTERACTIVE and ENGAGING. I want to
give my students many opportunities to engage in online dialogs between
each other and together as a class. This is a new way of working with
students to process and make what they are learning, virtually, part of
themselves in tangible ways, through interactive hands-on learning and
feedback.
Supplementary Note, applied component of Anth 301 course redesign component:
students who successfully complete this research term paper requirement in a sufficiently
satisfying manner will be expected to incorporate an applied component in their final
term paper. The applied component is spelled out under exemplary rubric.
Research Term Paper Grading Rubric:
Adequate: The term paper is set up in accordance with standard writing guidelines,
grammatically and structurally, having an introduction, body, and conclusion. The
student understands how a particular theoretical school of thought, say Interpretive or
hermeneutical anthropology, arose to counter earlier theories by demonstrating the
importance of looking, in this instance, beneath the surface of what people do, to
understand their rationales and motivations from an inside-out perspective. The student
who demonstrates an adequate understanding of the development of a theoretical
tradition in anthropology, in this instance, interpretive anthropology, will understand why
the study of human behavior is not the same as the study of stimulus and response
behavior. In other words, they will understand the importance of the dialectic of
fieldwork and taking into consideration points of view other than their own and that other
points of view may be entirely different from that which with they, themselves, are
familiar with. In addition, a student who has attained an adequate understanding of the
historical development of anthropology will be able to group together articles written
over the long duration of history, into clearly defined schools of thought.
Exemplary: All of the above in addition to being able to synthesize the theoretical school
of thought, for instance, Interpretive Anthropology and hermeneutical school of thought,
in their own words, using creative examples, by way of modern day analogies, that
demonstrates their mastery of this school of thought in a culminating way.
Inadequate: Term paper provides no evidence of the student having adequately
comprehended the readings and lacks writing clarity.
Detailed Budget: student assistant’s wages, estimated at $14 per hour, 20
hours per week, over ten week period. $2,800. Project to begin Fall Quarter
2015. This will leave $1,200 to be used to purchase educational materials
and possibly, software and/or technological tools, for use in this proposed
online course (receipts will submitted at close of project).