My Course Syllabus Project

This course was designed with a number of elements from what we have learned in EAD 866. The course will cover the archaeology of African Americans between the 17th and 19th centuries, focusing geographically on North America and the Caribbean. The course is a seminar of 20-25 students, designed for upper level undergraduate students. Because of this, the course is heavy in reading, discussion, writing, and research, with the understanding that these students understand the basics and are prepared for more rigorous investigations into how archaeologists use the material record to test, examine, and explain the cultural past. I have done my best to navigate the the teacher/student relationship by trying to create assignments that provide students with a good deal of choice about the class content, yet making sure it is structured in ways that will still attain the course objectives.

I will be using technology heavily throughout this course, in order to achieve a number of different objectives. I will not assume that these students are technologically literate; one of the objectives of this course is to develop that literacy. The course website will be the primary resource for the students. I developed the website using Wordpress, and it is hosted on my own webspace. Students will have access to all the course readings (incomplete list, and will be password protected for copyright issues) at this site, in addition to descriptions about the course objectives and policies, assignments, and the course schedule.  There are links to campus resources such as the Writing Center and Library, class specific links such as to ANGEL or Skype, and topical links to sites that will help them access resources for their research project located along the sidebar to the left. Additionally, there a number of links to resources that will help them learn about how to use the website: links to resources about how to use Wordpress, how to use Twitter, how to use Skype, and how to actually write effective blog posts (I have spent a lot of time looking around the internet for these materials, and have not found things that I like. I imagine I will have to create them myself, and haven’t been able to do that yet). The first class session will be devoted to explaining these things. By making the website an integral part of the course, students will be able to develop skills in basic online etiquette and literacy.

Assignments for the course are derived with the goal of teaching students to develop research skills and to connect the course content to areas outside of the class. I was particularly inspired by Weimer to figure out ways to give students more choice in the course content, while still focusing on the class objectives. All of these assignments provide a framework that encourages obtaining these objectives, yet allows students an opportunity to provide the content.

The Blog

Each student is required to complete ten blog posts throughout the class. Four of these topics will be mandated, including a personal introduction, a reflection on an out of class event related to the course, an introduction to their research topic, and a post about the articles they selected for their article assignment. The other posts can be reflections on the class readings, connections between the class and the “outside world”, or pieces about their research projects. Students are also expected to reply to posts made by other students, in order to create a learning community online as well as in the classroom.

This assignment reflects the learning objectives in a number of ways. First, it provides a chance for students to work on digital literacy. Second, students will have the chance to reflect on in class discussions, and relate it to topics outside the class. Third, posts about their research projects will help them formulate ideas about their questions, discuss problems they are having, and make suggestions to work other students are doing. This will make the research project less insular, encouraging students to work together in a scholarly community. Additionally, I am able to give the students choice about the assignment content by not dictating what all the posts should be about, giving them some more agency in the class.

Readings and Discussion

The typical day in the class will consist of discussion about three articles relating to one of the Section topics. The class before, each student will choose two of these articles to prepare for discussion, making sure that each article has an even number of readers. At the beginning of class, we will break into three groups, one for each article, and those groups will develop discussion questions. We will then reconvene and examine the articles as a class. This was somewhat inspired by the Jigsaw assignment done earlier in the year and discussed by McKeachie, but I wanted to make sure we had a full group discussion about it, so that I could better monitor the discussion. Also, by letting students choose which articles they read and to develop discussion questions, I am hoping to again provide them with some more decision making ability for the course.

Article Assignment

Three of the course sections, 2, 3, and 4, make up the bulk of the course topics (see Schedule). I added an additional week to the end of each of these sections for the article assignment. At the beginning of the semester, students will sign up in six small groups. During the final week of sections 2, 3, and 4, two of these groups will be responsible for selecting the articles that will be read by the class, one group per day of the week. Class will proceed as it normally does. It is my hope that the students in this group will have enough exposure to the section topics to be able to figure out what type of articles they should be selecting. These articles will be approved by me ahead of time so I can make sure they fit within the topic and have scholastic validity, and then they need to write a blog post introducing the articles to the class.

There are a number of reasons I developed this assignment. First, it again provides students a chance to take ownership of the class content: they are selecting the readings for three of the weeks in the course. Second, this activity will allow them to reflect on the section that has been covered, and use this knowledge to gather additional resources. Third, and most importantly, this assignment replicates scholarly research. They will have to go to the library, search online, and use bibliographies of the already assigned readings to track down articles for class. All of these activities will provide an opportunity for students to develop and practice research skills needed for their research project.

Research Project

The final project will be a research paper on a topic related to the class. Students will be expected to review this project choice with me ahead of time, and then present a blog post on their topic to the class. I am hopeful that more posts about their research will make it onto the blog, as well. In all, this is a pretty standard expectation. Since one of the course objectives is to teach students about how archaeologists are able to produce meaningful knowledge about culture through the material record, I want this project to be an opportunity for them to do it themselves.

In all, I am pretty happy with this course layout. One element that I particularly like is that it could be easily replicated for a course on a different topic: the activities and assignments are not topic specific. The only thing that would have to be modified is the course schedule and readings.

Conclusion

I also found the course objectives to be particularly effective in planning out the course assignments. Instead of focusing on making sure students learned the content of  the articles, I liked being able to focus on providing students skills that will make them better researchers. I did my best to be explicit about this in the syllabus, by putting the “Why?” section underneath the assignments and policies where the connection between objectives and the assignment weren’t as clear. What I also like about this class is that it can be interchanged with different topics: the assignments are not necessitated by the course content. Instead, they are driven by the course objectives, which are things I would want to achieve in any seminar on an archaeological topic I would teach. Having this flexibility is quite valuable.

Download a paper copy of the Syllabus: African American Archaeology Syllabus

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