So how did the test go? After grading the tests, I looked for patterns in the results. Everyone got the first question (“What is anthropology?”) correct, so that was good. Beyond that, results varied. My last two multiple choice questions were missed by a majority of the students. I knew the last one was meant to be beyond what I was expecting, but the question before was trickier than I had thought. Showing the test to some friends, I realized that the question was too ambiguous. My solution was to give the points back for those two questions for every student. Those who got it right would then have received an extra bonus for their work.
I handed the tests back in class and had a little discussion about how it did or did not meet their expectations. One comment that made a lot of sense to me was that I should provide a study guide so the class has a better idea of what I’m expecting. My test review exercise asked the students what they thought was important, but I actually never heard their responses in the process. For the next exam, I may do a review of the study guide and some polling about confusing concepts that I could explain further. While I had it in my head that there was just the one midterm and the final, there is actually another exam in April. I can see how test review version 2 works out then.
After the test business, it was time for the video that I wanted to show. It is a half hour on kinship and descent from an old anthropology documentary series. It is very old fashioned and very low fidelity, but it mentions a lot of concepts that I talked about in class. The video was a good buffer between the test and the lecture as well (Abrams, 1994).
As with the last lecture on marriage, the lecture on gender was a big hit with the class. We spent almost ten minutes on just the title slide, of a female Kurdish peshmerga soldier on the frontline fighting ISIS. The first half of the lecture, on gender roles and stratification, drew a lot of personal observations. The second half, on supernumerary genders, was also engaging. There was so much discussion that I ran out of time for the activity that I had planned: the article discussion/lesson on article reading. I told them that we would do that first thing next class. Due to a misunderstanding with the campus print shop, I had enough paper copies for everyone (I had ordered just 1 copy for myself). Since the discussion activity was being delayed already, I decided to convey my article reading technique via a written essay. I quickly typed it up in the two days after class and emailed it to my students. I will polish it a little further and put it on my blog, like I did with the paper writing tips.
The streak of engaging topics continues next week with religion. (It’s not hard since anthropology is holistic, but the paper discussion is a great tie between gender and religion). I have a lot of slides, which needed a lot of pictures, but I hope to get through them all after a half hour or so of discussion.
The week after next is spring break, so there is no class on campus. I will be working two online classes during this time, though. After spring break ends, another online class will start, so I will be doing four classes simultaneously! (If you’re keeping score, there is this classroom cultural anthropology class, the final grading week of an online class, the second week of another online class, and the start of a new online physical anthropology class of my own design).
References
Abrams, I.R. [Producer]. (1994). Kinship and descent part 1 [Film]. Faces of Culture. Fountain Valley, CA: Coast Telecourses.