Bottom-Up Course Design and Evaluation in Undergraduate Applied Social Anthropology

Bottom-Up Course Design and Evaluation in Undergraduate Applied Social Anthropology

Robin Wilson

The aim is to use participant observation, university feedback documents, semi-structured and structured interviews, workshop discussion data and questionnaire data to reflect upon undergraduate course design for applied anthropology insofar as it might be improved to develop student awareness of the skills required to become a professional anthropologist.

Description

Although social anthropology is a fieldwork-based discipline, the undergraduate learning experience is predominantly text-based. The funding application was made in order to undertake project work set out by the requirements of the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (PGCert) aimed at newly appointed academic staff at the University of Durham, to create teaching portfolios, write essays and do research into teaching.

Case study

Although social anthropology is a fieldwork-based discipline, the undergraduate learning experience is predominantly text-based. The aim is to use participant observation, university feedback documents, semi-structured and structured interviews, workshop discussion data and questionnaire data to reflect upon undergraduate course design for applied anthropology insofar as it might be improved to develop student awareness of the skills required to become a professional anthropologist. The funding application was made in order to undertake project work set out by the requirements of the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (PGCert) aimed at newly appointed academic staff at the University of Durham, to create teaching portfolios, write essays and do research into teaching.

The central requirement of the PGCert is to draw a model of teaching learning and assessment from one's own teaching experience, which in order to do I took on tutoring and lecturing in the anthropology department where I am a post-doctoral researcher. The aim of the PGCert is to examine and (where possible) improve a course for which one is responsible. In 2001 when this research began, changing student expectations of university learning in anthropology were unclear. Data did not exist about students' backgrounds, prior experiences or future aspirations and debates were taking place in the UK academic literature about the uncertainty of student recruitment, academic identity politics and professional status for the graduates of the universities. It has been the central aim of this research to investigate a practical application of the idea that better understanding of student aspirations can facilitate a better alignment of undergraduate courses to student requirements while still conveying core disciplinary concepts. In particular, I am interested in the potentially transformative process of going beyond text-based learning via practical problem-based course components and the variability in the adoption or not of an anthropological identity at the completion of a three year course of study.

There seems to be no consensuses as to the role of higher education but the following statements give us some idea of the conflicting pressures on university teachers to redesign courses to meet new and changing expectations. On one hand, definitions deal with designing learning environments which promote higher order cognitive abilities:

"The development of students' intellectual and imaginative powers; their understanding and judgement; their problem solving skills; their ability to communicate; their ability to see relationships within what they have learned and to perceive their field of study in a broader perspective. It must aim to stimulate an enquiring analytical and creative approach, encouraging independent judgement and critical self-awareness." UK Council for Academia 2002

On the other hand, less idealistic observers focus on the political and practical way in which others, including many students and politicians might view HE:

"There is a very credible economics literature which suggests that higher education may be no more than a screening device which allows employers to identify the more able potential employees from the rest. Thus, graduates' wages are higher because they are inherently more productive, for example because they work harder or have more innate ability, but not because they are better educated. If this is the case then the current system of HE may simply be providing employers with a privately cheap, but socially expensive (i.e. wasteful), screening system." Maskell and Robinson, 2001

Both extracts summarise the respective stances of idealist liberal education and pragmatic cost-benefit economic analysis of the sector. Arguments supporting an adherence of an admixture of these two viewpoints within the undergraduate body suggest that courses need to be tailored carefully between the Scylla of disengaged academe and the Charybdis of managerialist general skills training.

At the time of the application, the Institute for Learning and Teaching (ILT) and Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) (now replaced by 2004 Higher Education Academy (HEA) replaces) offered membership and accredited PGCert courses which place the new teacher in higher education in an idealistic world. Here one can design one's own course and assessment profile reflexively according to variations in student engagement of both the content (subject matter) and the context (aspects of their course environment) of learning. By being aware of variation exhibited by our own students it is intended that we reflect on the development of our own teaching practice. Such reflective practice constitutes a vital part of what is referred to as ‘student-centred teaching' insofar as it helps the new teacher to develop not simply a mental model of ‘teaching', but of ‘learning and teaching'. In practice, having undertaken this course of research it became apparent that most of the findings were impossible to put into practice given the reasonable but limited discretion, trust and self-determination shown to part-time teaching staff. Although it is difficult to discuss student learning without addressing the problems faced by TAs in their teaching, this project focuses on using the data drawn from successive cohorts of students to suggest modifications to an applied anthropology course that would better facilitate the adoption of an anthropological identity.

This C-SAP funded project seeks to redesign the current Change and Development module in social anthropology at Durham (a) to strengthen and communicate the agenda of applied fieldwork, (b) to enhance student awareness of and actual employability, and (c) to advance current teaching strategy through practical involvement of undergraduate learning in community and international "development" issues. The course has been redesigned so that anthropologists who are currently employed in the field of development can act as the source of primary ethnographic data for undergraduates taking the module to connect secondary literature and grey material with first hand accounts of the development project that they have chosen to study as a part of their course. The research proposed to link students with practitioners, incorporate student material into course design and to inform students of current debates within the discipline involving professionalisation and application of anthropology outside of academe.