URBAN STUDIES 300-301/302/303/304: FIELDWORK SEMINAR
(Excerpts from Spring 2011 syllabus)
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES AND EXPECTATIONS
The purpose of this seminar is to provide you with an academic anchor to your
urban studies internship. In the seminar, you will complete a set of assignments in
which you
1) reflect on your internship from various perspectives,
2) develop goals for and document your learning, and
3) analyze issues that come up for you in the internship in light of academic
theory and research. You will also read and discuss some key works in Urban
Studies that will form a theoretical backdrop for the course.
You also are expected to attend every seminar meeting, complete the readings for
discussion and presentation in class, complete and comment on written
assignments as assigned, and complete a final internship portfolio. The structure
and significance of the portfolio are explained below.
The assignments include:
1. Learning Plan: During the course of the seminar, you will develop a learning
plan that will serve as a way for you to chart and measure what you learn in
your internship. The learning plan that you design also sets up the terms by
which you will ask us to judge your performance in the internship because you
will select two of the goals from your learning plan to present in your portfolio,
which you will hand in at the conclusion of the course. You will develop the
learning plan early in the semester and revise it as needed during the semester.
2. Blog Entries (Organizational Analysis and Ethnography): In these
assignments, you will examine the internal structure and culture of your
internship setting, analyze the influence of outside forces on the internal
operation of your organization, and figure out how your organization is
positioned to impact urban life and society. You will read and comment on each
other’s writing and, in class, discuss and share your observations with your
colleagues.
3. Theory-Practice Essay: The theory/practice essay is the vehicle for you to
reflect on your internship in light of relevant research and scholarly literature.
You will figure out an issue of importance in urban studies that arises in your
internship, identify, read, and review literature that will shed light on this issue.
You will note on the schedule that we have divided this assignment into parts so
that you will have feedback to use when you finalize it to include with your final
portfolio.
URBS 300 Syllabus Spring 2011 - 1
4. Final Portfolio: You will turn in a portfolio at the end of the semester that
includes your reflections, both drafts of your learning plan, documentation of
what you learned for two of your learning goals, and your final version of the
theory-practice essay. A list of what you should include in the portfolio is below.
BASIS FOR EVALUATION
We will evaluate your performance as specified below:
 Active Seminar Participation
 Blog entries
 Final Portfolio (which includes the theory/practice essay)
20%
30%
50%
Seminar Format and Participation
This course is a seminar and a great deal of its value is a result of your mutual
interaction with each other discussing your internship experiences, problem-solving,
and engagement with each other around the readings. So it is critical for you to
attend every class, do all assigned readings before class, and come prepared to
contribute thoughtful questions and comments about your field site. Your reading
and commenting on fellow students’ journal entries is another part of your
obligation as a “citizen” in this class and will be considered as part of your
participation grade. Discussion in class will depend in part on your having read
your peers’ journal entries. We will specify responsibilities for reading each other’s
blog entries in class.
You may also opt to keep a regular journal of your activities and observations in the
internship; it can be helpful as a vehicle to reflect on and document your learning
over the course of the semester. You can also use it as a sort of scrapbook in which
you will collect your work and other relevant materials that may come in handy to
show your progress in your portfolio at the end of the semester. You might also use
it to identify important issues to focus on in your theory/practice assignment.
URBS 300 Syllabus Spring 2011 - 2
THE LEARNING PLAN: A BRIEF EXPLANATION
The learning plan is a document that you design. In a way, it is like a personal
syllabus for your internship. The plan states specific learning goals related to the
internship, and then details a methodology and indicator appropriate to fulfill the
goal. For example, a student working at the Mayor’s Office of Policy and Planning
might generate the following learning goal.
GOAL: Understand decision-making of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission?
What is the role of politics?
MEANS/METHODS:
1. Attend planning commission meetings and note interaction. Do the commission
members trust the planners or do they have their own agendas?
2. Get the perspectives of my supervisor and other planners on how the
commission views their work. Is the commission open to the input and
suggestions of staff? Does the commission concern itself with representing the
city as a whole?
3. Identify a case example to document in my journal. E.g., follow plan for the
development in S. Philadelphia and pay attention to the roles of the planners,
commissioners, city council, etc. (a project I am working on.)
4. Attend to office gossip about politicians: the mayor, executive director,
commissioners.
INDICATOR: Case study of one of the projects explaining what I learned
about the role of politics and the process of my learning -- who I talked to, what
I learned from various activities, how my understanding progressed over time.
Points to keep in mind about the learning plan:
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The portfolio that you hand in and present will only include two goal indicators,
however each learning plan should have three or more goals.
Learning plan goals must be able to be accomplished within the time and
resource context of the internship.
The goals will probably change during the course of the seminar, as you become
more and more familiar with the internship setting, including its limitations and
possibilities. Hence you will do a second learning plan in the later weeks of the
semester.
You may seek assistance with your learning plan from your seminar advisor,
your fellow students, and your internship supervisor or fellow workers.
You should share your learning plan with your supervisor and seek his/her
response and recommendations. (You may want to exclude the normative goals
if you think they are too personal.)
Note: You should look at the learning plan as a tool in structuring and
maximizing your internship time. You can use it as the basis for your
journal entries as well.
URBS 300 Syllabus Spring 2011 - 3
TYPES OF LEARNING PLAN GOALS
To provide some structure to your internship as well as to develop a standard
against which you can evaluate your expectations and accomplishments, we are
asking you to design a statement of internship goals.
Workplace goals vary in their complexity and type. You should organize your goals
by dividing them into three different types: 1) Conceptual or cognitive goals, 2)
Practical or skills goals, 3) Normative or attitude goals.
Cognitive or conceptual goals are those that involve some sort of abstract and
systemic knowledge. They ask broad questions of organization, development, and
process. A student working at the Planning Commission might come up with the
following cognitive goals:
Knowledge of how the Planning Commission relates to other branches of city
government.
An understanding of the history of city planning.
Knowledge of the internal organization of the Commission, how the
departments of the agency are organized and function as a whole.
Practical or skills goals are those that can be measured less abstractly by
evaluating the acquisition of a specific workplace skill. The same Planning
Commission student may decide that the following practical skills are important:
Learning how to read architectural documents and economic development
pro formas.
Learning how to use GIS programs for research and mapping.
Learning how to write a comprehensive economic development plan for a
specific region.
Normative or attitude goals are those that involve the questioning and
articulation of values related to the work process and its wider social context. Thus
our Planning Commission student may formulate some very specific personal,
political, and ethical inquiries. Some examples would be the following:
How do I like working in a public agency as opposed to the private sector;
what are the relative advantages/disadvantages?
What does it mean to develop plans for communities of which I have
relatively little direct knowledge?
Should politics play a role in the planning and development decisions that
cities make?
While the three kinds of goals overlap in reality, the distinction between cognitive,
practical, and normative goals is intended to provide an opportunity for you to think
through your own situation and generate a personal document that will be diverse.
URBS 300 Syllabus Spring 2011 - 4
GUIDELINES FOR FINAL FIELDWORK PORTFOLIO
Your final project for US300 is the Fieldwork Portfolio. You can think of the form of
the final project as a binder with tabbed sections. The content of each section is
described below:
1. Blog Entries 1-5
2. Theory/Practice Essay: Include question, literature review, methods, timeline
and bibliography.
3. Learning Plan Drafts: Include first and second drafts of the entire learning
plan.
4. Learning Goals: Your portfolio will include the indicators demonstrating two
completed learning goals. The indicators must be self-explanatory, and you
should write accompanying narratives. The point of writing up the indicators is
to clearly articulate your goal, what you learned, and explain the
process by which you learned. You should provide documentation/ narrative
for any illustrative material included. Essentially, you should explain what you
learned and how you learned it. The narratives should be no fewer than 5
double-spaced pages each.
5. Additional Materials (optional): You may want to include documentary
materials/excerpts from your journal. Please explain and label clearly what you
include, what is its significance to your internship, whether you created it, etc.
6. Student Evaluation: Please complete the student evaluation questionnaire
and include it with your portfolio. You will find the evaluation form on the
Blackboard site. You will not receive a grade on your portfolio without the
completed questionnaire.
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