Cultural Anthropology/How to Use This Course

This course was developed by Tori Saneda of Cascadia Community College in Bothell, WA.

How this course is intended to be used:

This course is set up to be used as either fully online, face-to-face (f2f), or hybrid.

Prerequisites:

This course was developed for students who have had little college writing. While there are several writing assignments, the assignments are scaffolded to allow students to practice their writing skills. The earlier assignments require small amounts of writing (e.g., short answers to specific questions). By the end of the quarter, students are writing essays.

Goals for the course:

This link explains the college, course, and unit outcomes (AKA objectives) in this course. It also includes week-by-week descriptions what activities will be completed and how those activities (assessments, projects, readings, etc.) support the outcomes. Note that there are two forms of the outcomes available: one for f2f and hybrid classes and one for completely online classes.

Resources for this course:

OER resources: The majority of materials used in this course are OER and can be found via this page (under Course Modules).

Paid resources: Only one textbook is used for the course, Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology (ISBN-). It's approximately $28.00 for the online version of the text and can be found at CourseSmart.com. I use the book primarily for discussion. A list of cultural anthropology textbooks for about or under $30 can be found here.

References (for images and other works cited):

All images depicted in the course module readings on the wiki are OER. Source and permissions for each image can be found by clicking on the image.

When applicable, a Works Cited is listed at the end of each page in the course module readings.

Explanation of approach:

Just a quick note on my approach to the class. One of the things I’ve been working on for the past few years is making the course content manageable. That led me to thinking about who the students were that enrolled in the class and what would they need to know to move on to the next level of cultural anthropology. What I came to realize is that the majority of students will never take another anthropology class and those that did would get the material in more depth in subsequent classes. So, I decided that what they needed to take away from the class was a basic understanding of cultural relativism and how to be culturally relative, how to find information pertinent to cultural anthropology, and know how to apply cultural anthropology outside of the classroom. This all has led to a streamlining of content and some assignments geared towards students being able to do those things. Instead of expecting them to memorize various cultural traits, I use social institutions as a way for students to practice being culturally relative.