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This
is a website for people
who teach
archaeology.
Please read the following text to learn what the MATRIX project
is, who created it, who can benefit from using it, how it
can be used, what motivated its creation, who sponsors it,
and how users can participate in its construction.
This website was designed
as a source of information, ideas, and course materials for
college and university professors in the United States who
teach undergraduate archaeology. The materials
provided for each course are complete: Lectures, Bibliography,
Assignments, Discussion Topics, Exams, and Visual Aids or
References are included [example].
In addition, the designers of each course have explained their
reasoning for teaching the course the way they teach it in
an introductory narrative and have described their experience
in using the course materials they provide, including candid
discussions of successes and challenges in their own work
with undergraduate students [example].
These materials were not designed to offer distance learning
or to be accessed directly by students, but in cases where
course materials and instruction are not locally available,
this is clearly possible.
This website
is designed to accommodate and challenge many levels of student
participation and competence. [example:
intro class assignment] [example:
advanced class assignment] Although the courses are intended
to address the needs of undergraduates, not all undergraduates
are equally prepared. Courses supported on the MATRIX website
are designed to be ratcheted up or down to meet student needs
in particular learning environments. This can be done by breaking
single topics down into more detailed presentations (facilitated
by the resource materials cited by the designer of the course)
which are more complex or more simplified than the original
material. Since the courses are divisible [see
modules], changes in the level of competence required
can be achieved by combining modules from different classes
or from competing perspectives. In many cases, materials provided
by MATRIX will simply serve to supplement and reorient portions
of courses already being taught, and we expect that most users
will gradually incorporate MATRIX materials into their teaching
through a process of experimentation over a period of years.
In fact, since the course materials may be used directly or
as the basis for differing approaches, it is perfectly possible
that MATRIX materials will find their way into graduate courses.
The materials can be developed in challenging ways, and the
principles these courses promote can be used to prepare graduate
students to teach in the twenty-first century. On the other
hand, the course materials can provide the background needed
by high school teachers to integrate archaeology into their
extant curricula.
This website
was created by 30 archaeologists committed to Making Archaeology
Teaching Relevant in the XXIst Century. Instructors
from eight institutions have designed and authored the courses.
Eleven specialists in
various areas of archaeology have reviewed and consulted on
the content of the courses. Three pedagogical
specialists have guided the structure and presentation
of the course materials. Participants were invited because
of their commitment to teaching, their varied areas of expertise,
and their representation of multiple perspectives on the past.
Users will find processual, postprocessual, evolutionary,
structural, mathematical, behavioral, and many other approaches
discussed and applied to the archaeology of both prehistoric
and historic groups, based on data collected from contract
as well as academically funded research.
This
website provides complete course materials for 8 undergraduate
archaeology courses (soon to be 16). Over
a period of three years, beginning in 2001, project participants
will design and produce 16 courses. These courses are intended
to exemplify courses ordinarily taught in undergraduate
programs across the United States. Although the set produced
might constitute a complete archaeology curriculum, it is
by no means exhaustive. Users are encouraged to consider
using some modules or approaches from these classes within
courses with different titles.
This website
offers materials for different types of courses. Some
of the MATRIX courses are designed as seminars, others as
lectures. To some extent, the course content determines the
appropriate teaching venue: e.g., introductory courses in
culture areas or on basic overviews lend themselves to large
lecture halls, whereas ethics and heavily theoretical topics
are more suitable for seminars. Several lecture-based classes
offer suggestions for moving outside this traditional format
to extend student participation and improve learning.
The courses
on this website are based on the Seven Principles for Curriculum
Reform devised by the Society for American Archaeology’s
Task Force on Curriculum. Despite their diversity
in delivery style, subject matter, and analytical approach,
all these courses are designed to instill and promote a set
of Seven Principles deemed by
the Society for American Archaeology to be essential to archaeology
education in the twenty-first century. Not all courses provide
equal coverage of each principle, but all principles are incorporated
in each course to some degree, and increased emphasis desired
by the user can be developed by combining modules from different
courses or extrapolating from the examples provided.
This website
is designed to answer the needs of a new generation of students
who face a new set of challenges in the twenty-first century.
Survey of teachers of archaeology in the 1990s
revealed that changes in the discipline had put new pressures
on instructors. The majority of students continuing in archaeology
will go into cultural resource management (CRM), and the vast
majority of new research is now carried out by CRM projects.
Most archaeologists teaching in colleges and universities
today trained to pursue academic research and are underprepared
to teach students who will do CRM. Few of the data that they
use in teaching come from CRM projects or historical archaeology.
At the same time, pressures on academics to obtain grants,
do research, and publish make it difficult for most to find
time and opportunity to retool. In response to the SAA-sponsored
survey, archaeologists asked for help; MATRIX is an attempt
to provide that help.
This website
incorporates some traditional courses and some courses that
use pedagogical innovations to improve student learning.
Current research on teaching undergraduates has shown conclusively
that students learn poorly from lectures. Academics are split
on whether they should alter their methods to better reach
a different audience from the one they comprised in undergraduate
school or whether contemporary undergraduates should be required
to develop the skills necessary to benefit from lecture courses.
Both these responses are reflected in MATRIX courses: some
courses are presented as lecture courses, with minimal informal
feedback between students and teachers, while others use Web-based
resources and new teaching strategies to reach students in
a different way. Several topics are covered with more than
one strategy.
This website
offers competing approaches to teaching controversial topics.
In addition to varied pedagogical approaches, participants
disagreed about proper course content. MATRIX consultants
and designers were intentionally selected to participate to
make sure that differing and even conflicting approaches to
such topics as cultural evolutionism, gender, NAGPRA, and
cultural property are presented on the website. (The website
will not be complete for two more years; competing positions
will not all be available until that time.) The MATRIX agenda
is to infuse the SAA's Seven Principles
into college and university teaching, not to legislate course
content or teaching style.
This website
supports a set of modular classes that can be assembled in
many ways. Each course is divided into a series
of modules that develop a progression of learning through
a course of instruction. Nevertheless, the designers have
attempted to create modules that can stand alone, to facilitate
incorporation of these course segments into alternative courses
or to allow certain material to be deleted, perhaps to ratchet
course requirements up or down or to substitute alternative
modules. Modules are sometimes provided with competing approaches
to particular topics, and the teacher can choose to use either
or both. Modules allow grouping of teaching topics across
classes to facilitate the building of new subjects with modules
derived from several courses.
This website
can be searched topically. The search engine
for the MATRIX site can search for any word across all the
available classes. In addition, special examples of modules
focusing on each of the Seven Principles are provided through
the special section listing the principles. These are not
the only modules for these principles; all principles appear
in greater or lesser degree in all courses, albeit implicitly
in some cases.
This website
is an ongoing project; users are invited to contribute and
to critique. A discussion
forum that invites users and interested
parties to post their responses and offer additional information
follows each course. Due to the nature of Web access, these
postings will be passed by the editor before publication.
All course designers and consultants
are accessible through their e-mail addresses, so that clarification,
suggestions and critiques can be sent directly to them without
public visibility. Anonymous comments can be registered by
addressing them to the editor, who will pass them along sans
identification.
This website
was designed to address the current needs of archaeologists
teaching and training in the United States, but the editors
and designers are eager for feedback from other nations. Because
MATRIX materials will be available to anyone with Web access,
they may provide a useful resource to archaeologists of any
nationality. Although currently available only in English,
Spanish translations are in the planning stages. Consequently
the MATRIX project members wish to make clear that the course
materials as they stand are designed to solve problems currently
faced by educators in the United States and are not intended
to impose national research agendas or ethical values in a
global arena. Nevertheless, by publishing U.S. course materials
in a widely accessible format, we hope to lay the foundation
of a global conversation about teaching archaeology that will
enhance collaboration and understanding and lead to an increase
in knowledge and awareness of international issues.
This MATRIX
project is funded by the National
Science Foundation. K. Anne Pyburn and
George Smith, representing the interests of the Society for
American Archaeology, authored the grant
proposal. Participants have been hired by the project
to create course materials and to consult and review MATRIX
course materials.
This
website is sponsored by the Society
for American Archaeology. The principles
promoted, as well as the topical coverage, are the result
of a series of SAA-sponsored conferences designed to assess
the needs and interests of undergraduate teaching in the
twenty-first century. The half-million-dollar grant was
awarded to the Society for American Archaeology, providing
nearly $100,000.00 in overhead to the society for furthering
other educational programs.
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