Teaching linguistic anthropology courses online

[eghoffma@umich.edu]

I've not taught linguistic anthropology online, but have taught an
Introduction to South Asia area studies course online many times. I
can't speak much to the copyright issue, but can speak about the ways
in which I found it fairly successful.
Here's what I did: rather than attempt to podcast lectures, I assigned
more readings. Then, the students were required to respond weekly to
discussion question prompts that I worked hard to design in a way that
would highlight the arguments I would have stressed in lecture, but
still give students space to work through their own ideas about the
materials. Students had to read and respond to a certain number of
their peer's posts, to retain the discussion element of a "live"
class. I was teaching in an institution in which it was sometimes
challenging to engage students in discussion in live classes (I had
taught this course in a classroom there before). I found that the
online nature of the class led the students to create much more
thoughtful responses to the reading and to direct their discussion to
each other (where in the classroom they'd direct their comments to me
and I'd have to work to get them to engage with their peers). Also,
discussions would sometimes much get more passionate than I found in
the classroom and, one one occasion, pretty out of control!
I also created open book quizzes that forced the students to work
through the texts in a fine-grained way, again designed to highlight
the arguments I would have been making in a lecture.
Finally, I built in projects in which students had to go out in the
world and engage with the local South Asian diaspora, and then put
these experiences in dialogue with the readings (and in this case too
they had to read and comment on each others' work).
All in all I thought it worked quite well. It was largely a commuter
college, and I got a much greater degree of engagement with myself,
the material, and their peers when it occurred on students' own time
frames (even though they weren't all doing it at the same time as in a
live classroom).
Best,
Erika


On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli at gmail.com> wrote:
> Colleagues,
>
> So far, the online-only course I've been teaching (for two semesters,
> so far) has been a sociology course. All of my other courses for the
> past 10 years (including a few linguistic anthropology courses) have
> been based on some form of blended learning (online plus
> face-to-face).
> Here's a summary of courses I've been teaching:
> http://sites.google.com/a/informalethnographer.com/ethnography/courses/courses-summary
>
> The online sociology course I've been teaching was prepared in advance
> in that it was based on a textbook and had material included directly
> on the Moodle sites for the course. (At least, that's how McGraw-Hill
> sold it to the institution. The reality was much different.)
> I didn't really develop "content" for this course, apart from
> assignments, forum posts, and normal interaction with students. In
> such a case, the protection of my own copyright has hardly been a
> major issue.
> But McGraw-Hill's copyright was an important issue. The publisher
> basically sells licenses for use of some of the learning material for
> introductory sociology (by raising the price of the textbook to be
> used in those sections), This has been a major issue during both
> semesters.
>
> Overall, I notice that (at least in the United States and Canada,
> where I've been teaching), while copyright protection exists for
> scholars as well as for publishers, the tendency is to protect
> publisher copyright more actively than scholar copyright. While it
> certainly is the case that the content we put online (or distribute)
> is copyrighted under Canadian or US laws, the emphasis from the
> institution is more frequently on restrictions related to copyrighted
> material from external publishers. In other words, the legal counsel
> or equivalent role has more to do with preventing people at the
> university from infringing others' copyright than with helping
> "content creators" within the university with the task of protecting
> their own work. My impression is that this has to do with fear of
> litigation, on the part of the university. It also seems to be
> involved in what we now call the "chilling effect" of copyright laws.
>
> Personally, my approach has been to use Creative Commons licenses on
> much of my own work, which mostly includes podcasts and lecture notes.
> So far, I haven't written extensive learning documentation for my own
> courses and I probably wouldn't do so if I were to prepare my own
> online course for the first time (i.e., I would probably build the
> material collaboratively over the years).
>
> While I haven't taught a fully-online course using my own material, I
> did create material for a graduate course about the "Social Web."
> Again, not linguistic anthropology (sorry!). All the material for this
> course will be available openly as soon as it's ready. In fact, even
> assignments will be done in public.
> The license for the course is the least restrictive Creative Commons
> one (the so-called "CC 0" license). Because the license used is
> non-restrictive, this course material can be repurposed in a large
> variety of ways. The approach we're using isn't incompatible with the
> "intellectual property" model, but it's decidedly not the typical
> "publisher's copyright" approach.
> This course hasn't been released officially, yet. But a large part of
> the content is already online and has been leaked through Twitter, a
> few days ago. (It's in French but several resources are in English.)
> http://benhur.teluq.uquebec.ca/SPIP/inf6107/
> I'd say that the effort needed of me in preparing material for this
> course wasn't that significant, partly because it's a work of very
> efficient collaboration with colleagues from diverse fields. We also
> decided to use a fairly informal tone, which is relatively rare in
> French. In addition, we integrated a lot of outside resources, partly
> to avoid reinventing the wheel and partly to provide a diversity of
> perspectives.
> All in all, helping build this course has been among the most positive
> professional experiences I've had recently.
>
> There's now a wealth of openly accessible learning material in a
> variety of fields. I haven't really used open access material in
> linguistic anthropology, yet, but I'm currently using a Wikibook as
> one textbook for a blended course in introductory sociology.
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/
>
>
> I know I'm not answering Jim's questions very directly. But I still
> thought I'd chime in.
>
> Cheers!
>
> --
> Alex Enkerli, Part-Time Faculty
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Concordia University
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 20:44, Ken Ehrensal <k.ehrensal at mac.com> wrote:
>> At Kutztown and within the PA State System of Higher Education, our faculty
>> collective bargaining agreement clearly lays out that intellectual property
>> rights remain with the faculty who develops a specific version of a course.
>>
>>
>> Ken Ehrensal
>> k.ehrensal at mac.com
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 4, 2009, at 8:04 PM, Jim Wilce wrote:
>>
>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>> I am assuming that many of us teach hybrid courses with lots of online
>>> resources, combined with face-to-face contact in lectures or seminars. I'm
>>> wondering, however, about experiences you might have had with teaching
>>> linguistic anthropology courses in an ALL online "environment."
>>>
>>> I must say I've been taken aback in hearing "conversion stories" from some
>>> respected local colleagues (not linguistic anthropologists) who deeply
>>> distrusted the whole idea but have come to see it as potentially very
>>> effective, and despite a streak of paranoia they feel their intellectual
>>> property rights are adequately protected in offering courses online. (On the
>>> downside, they also tell of investing huge amounts of time in developing
>>> online courses.)
>>>
>>> Until now I've only used Blackboard/Vista to supplement face-to-face
>>> meetings with students, undergrad as well as grad. Hence my curiosity.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jim Wilce, Professor of Anthropology
>>> Northern Arizona University
>>> Editor, Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture
>>
>