Comments on: Culture and Compulsion: Student Posts 2009

By: Sin & Sex: Student Posts on Compulsion Spring 2010 « Neuroanthropology

Sin & Sex: Student Posts on Compulsion Spring 2010 « Neuroanthropology — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:10:30 +0000

[...] There are all nine. For those of you interested in how to integrate blogging into a class, please see my detailed explanation of how I approach this sort of assignment in last year’s post Culture and Compulsion: Student Posts 2009. [...]

By: Students Are Not Natives – So Why Do We Treat Them That Way? « Neuroanthropology

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:59:06 +0000

[...] that will stay with them long after a class. Hence my efforts at creating community-based work and online reports with them. For me, all of this is anthropological – a way of being, of seeing things, of [...]

By: dlende

dlende — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:33:24 +0000

remote central put up a nice summary and reflection on the student posts in Culture and Compulsion Student Posts Tim directs us to a nice synergy with a piece at Tom Dispatch on William Astore and Educating Ourselves to Oblivion. Thanks, Tim!

By: dlende

dlende — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:52:29 +0000

Eugene, thanks for the comment. The students have generally felt very positive about the assignment – they take it more seriously precisely because it will have some real-world impact and be read by more people than just a professor. They also appreciate doing something that is more in line with their own lives (online, getting new media skills, etc.) while I also push them to include aspects of the traditional paper (doing research, emphasis on writing). So yes, they are enthusiastic and also more serious, because the stakes are raised.

They do get a grade on their posts, so there’s still that over their heads. And I tell them if the work is not good enough for the site then they’ve failed. So that’s a big stick. But obviously they have put a lot of effort into the posts, well beyond doing just something mediocre.

So I definitely think this a great teaching tool, both on its own (in this case – the outcome of a semester’s work) and as a complement to research projects, for example, the community-based stuff I do in my fall ethnographic methods class. In that class the students did a post to get the word out about their research, as well as delivering a community product to the community partner and a final in-depth ethnographic report to me.

Probably the biggest complication with the students is the group work, which is not something particular to this post assignment. I didn’t do anything special this year in terms of getting a grade for individual work/contribution to the group, and in some groups I know that a few students slacked off. The one way I’ve developed to overcome problem that is for the students to grade each other on their own effort in the group and on the quality of their work.

So I can have each student force rank the other members (so 1-3) and then also give each person a 1-3 rating for quality (high, average, low). It’s worked pretty well in the past, but I don’t always do it – generally I have a pretty good sense of students’ effort and participation from the class itself, and if anyone really slacks off in a particular group, I generally hear about it.

I hope you try it out – Somatosphere offers a good site for this, and it’s also a way for you to get some more high-quality material up. And the students definitely get more engaged.

By: Eugene Raikhel

Eugene Raikhel — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:38:46 +0000

Daniel,

This is great — the posts are really terrific and I’m very interested to read about how you’ve used this as a teaching tool. How have students generally felt about the assignment? Do they generally seem to appreciate doing this instead of a traditional research paper? I’m assuming that they are quite enthusiastic about it, but I’d like to know a little more about whether you think using the blog as a teaching tool fosters greater student engagement.

-Eugene