Reflections on where we've been and what it all means...

In September I set out to experiment with a novel way of doing a course, centering its activities on the computer as a communication tool --composition, data-handling, display, distribution-- and at the end of a dozen or so weeks I'm of (at least) two minds about how the experiment has worked. My excursus ("On the Study of the Anthropology of East Asia...") laid out an ambitious scheme for subjects and specific resources, and my collection of "Topical Weblets" indexes at least some of what happened in and out of the various classes.

I want you to spend the next hour or so thinking and writing about this experience, incorporating the following into a page which I'd like you to save in your /anth/ folder as andso.html. The overall question is:

In considering this I'd like you to answer the questions indicated below, but please feel free to raise other points as well. This is intended to be much less an 'evaluation' than a stock-taking, and I'd like it to inspire you to synthesize (or at least think over) what you've done with the opportunities:

1. Review the course description and

2. explore the excursus

and comment on their objectives and success and/or lack thereof, considering both what I did and what you did.

I don't think the course could be accused of being too orderly... and now I'm not convinced that it was advantageous to have it so open-ended and fluid and, well, ad hoc... (though that was part of my intention)

Explore links on the course home page to refresh your memory of what we've done, think about the experience as a whole, and tell me:

1. Does it make sense to teach/learn in this way? What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages?

2. Does the lab setting facilitate OR get in the way of aspects of teaching/learning?

The Province and Project segments of the course: I wanted to escape the constraints of "term paper" mentality and nudge you into developing Web skills and get you to explore a broad range of information resources.

Convince me that this worked for you, or tell me why it didn't.

The log file didn't work as I had intended. Look at the original model and

tell me how I should (or why I shouldn't) motivate next year's class toward the model.