Teaching linguistic anthropology courses online

[Leila Monaghan]

I have never taught linguistic anthropology on line but I am currently
teaching a disability studies class on line and I am really enjoying it.
 The greatest strength is the students.  Many of them have a great deal of
personal experience with disabilities, including have several students who
have disabilities and a number of others who are mothers of children with
disabilities or work in a setting of people with disabilities.  These are
people who would have never been able to meet in the same physical classroom
who are having very meaningful conversations with each other about really
important issues.

I think an online linguistic anthropology class might also draw a very
interesting range of students but I can see how the in person interaction
that lets students see how language works in action would be missed.  One
solution to this might be to have (if it was possible), a very media
intensive class like the one that Val describes.  Having the videos that are
getting transcribed in transcripts available to students I think would go a
long way to recreating in person interactions on the topic of language.

all best,

Leila

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:02 PM, Val Pagliai <v.pagliai at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I do not teach online courses (but I would love to), however, I use
> internet a lot in my classes, so I am going to share a bit.
> This semester for the first time I created a facebook page for my classes.
> The students join as friends (I am still perfecting the method). The
> advantages are many. I can easily share anything I find online which is of
> interest. I especially use you-tube videos. Once they are on facebook, I can
> navigate there during classes and show the videoclips for discussion. Much
> less cumbersome than showing full videos through DVDs. The only drawback is
> that the internet may be slow. I avoid that problem by downloading the
> videoclips directly to my browser before class. Students can also upload
> videos and news and, contrarily to e-mails, any questions they have that I
> answer is public.
> One important note: if you want to use this, tell your student to create a
> separate facebook account for the class, NOT use their regular one, or you
> will end up knowing more than you wish about them.
>
> Facebook has one limit: you cannot upload documents to it. For that, you
> still have to use Blackboard, unless you create your own webpage for it.
>
> Getting face to face: Skipe allows conference calls for free. If students
> have videocameras in their computers, you can also see them in conference
> calls (I have not tried this though).
>
> On copyrights: Unless you have to use the space given by the University, it
> is easy to get free space online, even your own domain for little money (I
> pay $3 a moth for unlimited space with my own domain). Then you can put all
> your material there.
>
> Ciao,
>
>
> Valentina Pagliai
> Department of Anthropology
> Powdermaker 314G
> Queens College
> 65-30 Kissena Blvd
> Flushing, NY 11367
>
> Phone# (908) 668-4840  (h)
>              (718) 997-2856 (o)
>
>
> There Is No Place Like Everywhere
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli at GMAIL.COM>
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Sent: Thu, November 5, 2009 10:06:42 AM
> Subject: Re: [LINGANTH] Teaching linguistic anthropology courses online
>
> 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
> >
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming