Description |Aims |Process | Evaluation | Contact

Description

From 1991 to 1997 'Anthropology of Ritual Performance and Art' and 'Towards an Anthropology of Australian Society' were second and third year subjects in the Department of Anthropology in which a research-based approach to learning in anthropology was developed at the University of Adelaide. Both utilised students' own choice of projects as the core of the curriculum. In this course students focussed on assignment research work on a single ethnographic ('ethnography' in this course refers to the social and cultural study of texts that emerge from social and cultural research, the key method of which is intensive, participative observation) area or theme, chosen from an extensive list provided. The research program engaged students in working with ethnography and developing their conceptual, analytic and critical skills. The research program was the core of the course. All other work was designed to facilitate this task. The thrust of the course was to engage participants in a process of active learning whilst developing research and analytic skills. A "hands-on" approach was central to these subjects. Reflecting this, lectures took up only one hour of class time each week. Two hours of class work was devoted to a workshop in which students provided much of the input and work to develop practical research skills that contributed to their semester-long specialised research project. In this way skill development, which is often left implicit in the teaching process, was made explicit in these subjects.

Aims

• To lay a foundation for understandings of the development of anthropological insights into the human condition through a focus on ethnographically grounded analyses
• To build participants' conceptual, analytic and critical skills
• To develop a detailed and active research engagement with a body of ethnographic material
• To facilitate critical and anthropologically informed reflection on contemporary issues
  
  

Process

• Lectures were intended to be the orienting backdrop to facilitate the staging of the students' own research.
• Workshops were not intended to shadow or be a direct counter-point to lectures, as tutorials often are. Rather the workshops were designed to be a context in which students could develop and practice the skills required for research: reading; effective note taking; discerning, collecting and choosing relevant sources; conceptual clarity; critical analysis; narrative skills.
• The research program in this course was set up so that each student would specialise in the ethnography of a particular area over the course of the semester. Each piece of work was intended to be a building block in that program.
• Portfolios contained set readings and provide space for research notes, compiling a research bibliography, essay outlines and a critical review of a major book in the area the student specialised in. There are three portfolios, each building on earlier skills and handed in consecutively, allowing the lecturer to check that students were getting the gist of the course.
• Assessment had three basic components - portfolio/workshop assignments (70%); a major research assignment whose preparation is undertaken in the workshop (25%), and the student's own assessment of their achievement against particular goals set in the first week (5%).
  
  

Evaluation

A questionnaire specifically designed for the course by Deane Fergie is used to obtain feedback. Improvements to the teaching and curriculum followed from this. Feedback was extremely positive, typical comments were: "Was very helpful in training me in the skills of critical analysis" and "Especially helped me to be more analytical".

It was stressed in the evaluation that the course aimed at an active learning strategy. The strategy itself as well as its implementation were legitimate objects of student criticism. The course was very well received by students and most adjustments were at the fringes of the structure or were adjustments to the relative value of components of assessed work.

Contact
Dr Deane Fergie can be contacted on:

Tel: +61 8 303 5895
Fax: +61 8 303 5733
E-mail: deane.fergie@adelaide.edu.au

last update 2/8/01