Activating Anthropology: Engendering deep learning through activating teaching tools
The aim of this project is to engender deeper learning among cultural anthropology students through activating teaching tools. The objective of this project is to develop and implement activating teaching activities for 4 courses that are part of the curriculum of Cultural Anthropology programmes at Utrecht University, respectively the CA Bachelor and the Master Sustainable Citizenship (SCIM).
Background information
The project addresses a call from staff and students of the anthropology programs to have more variation in course design and to incorporate more activating learning strategies. Most of the courses in the CA Bachelor and SCIM programme follow a dynamic characterized by a series of lectures and tutorials. While several courses already include 5 activating work forms, such as small research projects, there is space for more exciting innovation in teaching and to firmly consolidate active learning in the teaching vision of the anthropology department. This strengthens also the research learning goals of the CA curriculum which foreground doing research and practicing with research methodologies and reporting of research results (i.e., completing the empirical circle).
They want to revamp some of the teaching tools to foster (even more) deep learning and inter- and transdisciplinary educational experiences (see also the UU educational strategic plan). Rather than “lecture-heavy” teaching, they aspire to be guided by the ‘Music’ model of intrinsic motivation, which draws attention to essential features of teaching: empowerment, usefulness, success experiences, interest, and caring (Jones 2009).
Within this project, they would like to use expertise on and experiences with work forms, such as team-based and challenge-based learning (see Johnson and Brown 2011; Michaelsen et al. 2011), community engaged learning (CEL), and expertise on formative teaching and assessment (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). In addition, they expect to need expertise on the assessment and supervision of collective and project-based assignments, and in the evaluation of the interventions they will develop.
Target results
The project will produce four sets of activating learning activities that align with a course specific learning goal (i.e. applying constructive alignment) for the following courses: 1. Political Ecologies, 2. Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality, 3. Anthropology of Violence and Security, and 4. Practicing Anthropology (SCIM course).
The course goals of the new Master-level course Practicing Anthropology include applying anthropological concepts and theory to pressing societal issues and experimenting with ethnographic research methods. To attain these goals the course design and assessments will revolve around a project on a societally pressing issue, such as migration, that could benefit from challenge-based learning tools.
The new course in our bachelor curriculum, Anthropology of Violence and Security (level 3), has similar course goals and will also involve a small research project. As this course is part of an interdisciplinary minor, this project will need to involve reflexivity on the use of different methods, knowledge production, and the overall process. For the development of these small research projects, it would be interesting to study tools and strategies for community engaged learning.
The Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality course similarly seeks to teach students how to apply key theoretical concepts in practice by letting students carry out small research projects. However, in past iterations of the course, students were not explicitly taught the necessary research skills. In redesigning the course, one key goal is to design a research assignment in a way to make methodological skills central. A second goal for redesigning the course is to develop small activating assignments that will help students engage more critically and creatively with the course literature, to make sure that students fulfil the learning objective of being able to interpret and analyse academic and social debates concerning gender and sexuality from an anthropological perspective.
References
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition. Longman.
Jones, B. D. (2009). Motivating students to engage in learning: the MUSIC model of academic motivation. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 21(2), 272-285.
Johnson, L., & Brown, S. (2011). Challenge based learning: The report from the implementation project (pp. 1-36). The New Media Consortium.
Michaelsen, L. K., Sweet, M., & Parmelee, D. X. (Eds.). (2011). Team-Based Learning: Small Group Learning’s Next Big Step: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Number 116 (Vol. 103). John Wiley & Sons.
Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in higher education, 31(2), 199-218.
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