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Social Media in #ANT101UWL: A Case Study in Digital Anthropology Heather Walder — Sociology and Archaeology UW-L Conference on Teaching & Learning — Jan. 21, 2014
Background Anthropologists are now studying how social media draw new communi es of people together despite previously limi ng factors of distance and me. Students in UW-L’s four-field Introduc on to Anthropology class (ANT 101 or #ANT101UWL) learn about digital culture, use social media to connect with peers, and discuss course topics online. During the cultural anthropology unit, students read an ar cle and watch a YouTube video by anthropologist Michael Wesch, who has researched how new media like online video blogs shape human interac ons (Wesch 2009). Course content emphasizes the important role of new technologies driving globaliza on and shaping how people of different cultures interact and influence one another using the internet. In #ANT101UWL students par cipate in digital anthropology by contribu ng personal insight to their online anthropology learning community and sharing their experiences with digital followers outside of the classroom.
Social Media Learning Goals Students in ANT 101 will: Engage peers using social media during and outside of class Gain awareness of broader cultural effects of new media Connect anthropological course topics to daily their lives Student’s blog posts, term descrip ons, and comments demonstrate achievement of social media learning goals:
Image blog post on “Village Head” “Our textbook describes a village head as “a local tribal leader with limited authority” (Ko ak, pg. 382). For this image blog post, I took a picture of my resident assistant. I think resident as-‐sistants are a lot like a village head in a tribe. Ka e is a leader of my cube at my residence hall, but she does have limited authori-‐ty. She cannot dictate what we do as cube members, but she can report any inappropriate behavior that might be happening. Al-‐so, some basic characteris cs of a village head are that the posi-‐on is achieved, they lead by example, they are generous, and
they serve as a mediator. Those four things describe exactly what an RA is/does. The term village head is important when talking about anthropology because it is a characteris c of authority in a tribe. Anthropologists compare authority figures from a tribal lifestyle with other socie es such as bands and chiefdoms to fur-‐ther explain how modern civiliza on came to be. “
Typical home-screen for the closed Wordpress blog used for par cipa on in ANT 101
Image blog post and comments on “Vlog” “Michael Wesch describes a vlog as talking to yourself through video in private. The purpose of the video is to share your interests, thoughts, and/or opinions on differ-‐ent things. Vlogs can range in content from extremely se-‐rious topics like evolu on to something as meaningless as your favorite food. It is a way for someone to communi-‐cate with an audience and make them feel connected to you. This term relates back to anthropology because is al-‐lows for people all around the world to learn about each other as well as stay connected. To further help explain this I uploaded a picture of myself appearing to be “vloging” as I talk to my computer.”
Methods
Outcomes
Problems and Drawbacks
Student Feedback
References and Acknowledgements
Two different social media pla orms allow students to interact. 1) Wordpress blog, where students earn par cipa on points by:
Pos ng their own images and discussions of key vocabulary terms Finding and summarizing relevant educa onal web content in
“media link” posts Commen ng on other students posts and discussion ques ons
Media Link: Students iden fy and post educa onal content related to current topics “This is a video of Dr Zahi Hawass finding items in the Nile River. This river was previously used as a trade route and ships would some mes sink, which is was he is excava ng. I had never thought of the fact that someone could do archaeology underwater, I had al-‐ways thought of it with digging up ar facts in the dirt. It would be interes ng to do an archaeology site in either the Great Lakes or in the Mississippi river to see what sort of items would be found there.“ h p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRT_kzEeRYI
2) Twi er hashtag #ANT101UWL allows students to: Respond to in-class prompts from lecture slides Summarize key points from discussions and lectures Extend class discussion and share knowledge outside the classroom
The class twi er feed appears on D2L, so that even students who do not choose to use twi er can view the discussion.
Students also tweet to ask ques ons during lecture.
Student-generated content supplements lectures
Informa on and excitement for course material extend beyond the classroom
“Although a picture of my moms lasagna isn’t really the best way to describe stra graphy, it has the same concept “
Real-life examples make connec ons that help
students remember and understand key concepts
Images of students’ auto-‐biographical “first posts”
Differen al access to Twi er-capable devices means not all students can par cipate in real- me in class
Some students ini ally struggle to learn how to blog, some mes a frustra ng experience
Time-consuming to grade blog posts and tally tweets.
Student teaching assistants (TAs) tallied tweets curated on storify.com, which you can visit using the QR code here.
TAs also provided media support to students and commented on blog posts, along with the instructor
More than 2,700 blog posts and 1,000 tweets produced in Fall 2014
Ko ak, Conrad Phillip. (2013) Anthropology Apprecia ng Human Diversity, 15th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wesch, Michael. (2009). “YouTube and You: Experiences of Self-Awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam,” Explora ons in Media Ecology, 8(2), 19-34. h p://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/6302/WeschEME2009.pdf Thank you to my undergraduate teaching assistants Mandy Anderson and Emily Lovison, ALL of my Spring and Fall 2013 ANT 101 students, and the UW-L Department of Sociology and Archaeology, which funds storage space for the thousands of images on the Wordpress blog! All images and tweets used with permission from the #ANT101UWL students.
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