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Teaching Statement
Course Portfolio for "Landscape Archaeology"
ANTH A460; Spring Semester, 2003
Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis
Approach, Rationale, and Overview
My approach to teaching is to empower students with the skills and experiences that expand their horizons, prepare them for the meaningful careers they are pursuing and encourage them to be self-reflective, ethical professionals and productive contributors to civil society. Whether their career paths include archaeology or not, I hope that their experiences in my classes will impress upon them the role that an understanding, preserving, and interpreting the past plays in a vital human society.
In order to combine the goals of attaining practical knowledge with critical inquiry and in order to promote community engagement, my teaching integrates service learning and applied research opportunities. We use local sites as case studies, and although the scheduling of the class does not allow off-campus class meetings, students are encouraged to visit sites outside of class time to do their projects. Within the classroom setting, we use case studies as the basis for critical inquiry, exploring central questions of the course: What is a landscape? How do they work (meaning, how do they shape humans and how do humans shape them)? Why are they important (both in the past and today)? How can archaeologists recover and understand past landscapes and their meanings?
The evaluation of course objectives is achieved through:
MATRIX Principles
The interdisciplinary nature and the applied focus of the class made it an excellent vehicle for many of the MATRIX principles.
Stewardship issues are central to the investigation, preservation, and management of historic landscapes. In addition to learning about and developing an appreciation for the significance of historic landscapes, students also learned about the legal context for the designation and protection of landscapes through work on two National Register sites. They also researched and developed a proposal for archaeological research on an historic landscape that had to balance research goals and stewardship of the historic fabric. With participation from community members in their research on the local campus landscape history, they also participated in the stewardship of oral history and the significance of stewardship in community-based archaeology. The students confronted the implications of choices in what to preserve and what not to preserve, and what that means for the stories we will be able to tell in the future.
Professional ethics and values were incorporated into the course through units on community-based archaeology, sacred landscapes (in particular the ethics and values in balancing conflicting needs of different stakeholders). For example, the community-based archaeology class included three hypothetical scenarios, each of which raised ethical issues, that students discussed in teams and then presented their recommendations to the class for further discussion.
Diverse interests were represented in the course through readings and guest lecturers' presentations, and the students discussed and critically integrated issues of diversity and often conflicting interests in their class discussions and in their own written work.
Social relevance was integral to the class through the central questions of the class: What is a landscape? How do landscapes work? Why are they important? Through the exploration of these questions in response to a wide range of landscapes, the students were challenged to develop their own understanding of what landscapes are and why they are important. In their course evaluations at the end of the class, many of the students commented on a new awareness of their surroundings and a new appreciation for the value and significance of historic landscapes. Whether this leads to activism (such as joining a preservation organization, voting for a bond bill that will support historic landscapes in some way, or just being a more conscious citizen), is not clear at the end of a 15 week semester, but all the students had the opportunity to explore landscapes and their connections to the people who created them in the past and who inhabit them and care about them today.
Communication in this course is a central skill in written, oral, and visual form. Students present their work in some for in almost every class and produce numerous written assignments. They must communicate with each other in the course of team projects (and many indicate that this is one of the most challenging and valuable aspects of what they learn). They must also communicate in forms with particular application to archaeology. They write a research proposal (in response to a hypothetical RFP). They must also confront, some for the first time, the challenging integration of text and image that is the essence of exhibit making. They must develop a public tour of an archaeological site they have researched. Finally, in their roles as discussion leaders, they also became peer teachers who developed lesson plans, discussion questions, and interactive learning strategies.
Basic archaeological skills are embedded in this course primarily in research design development, research skills such as map reading, archival research, and public presentations (site tours, exhibit panels, oral presentations). They also learned about GIS applications to archaeology, surveying, soil chemistry and physical analysis, remote sensing. Although they did not have the opportunity for in-depth and hands-on exploration of these skills, they were directed to further resources including other courses on-campus that provide in-depth training.
Real world problem solving was integrated in the class through in-class applied exercises and through the two case study sites. Working with the Oldfields site gave them a chance to learn from the site's curator some of the pragmatic and financial parameters of the decisions they had made in the restoration of the house and the landscape. The campus landscape project also included elements of real world problem solving. Hearing presentations of campus history from members of the local community demonstrated the variety of perspectives and stakeholders who lay claim to the history. The presentation by Dr. Paul Mullins, the Principal Investigator of the Ransom Place archaeological project provided not only an overview of the research design and findings, but also an idea of the challenges of mounting a multi-year, interdisciplinary research project that incorporates multiple communities in a contested landscape. Finally, their own presentations to community members gave a "reality check" to their research proposals and interpretive exhibit panels as they received immediate responses and feedback from the curators and residents of the sites.
Context
Institutional context: Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) is an urban research university created in 1969 through the merger of Indiana University and Purdue University programs located in Indianapolis . IUPUI offers the broadest range of academic programs of any campus in Indiana and is the state's principal site for graduate professional education. It enrolls nearly 28,000 students in 18 schools. IUPUI ranks among the top five campuses nationally in terms of the number of health-related degrees it confers, and is the center for advanced technology in the state. The Anthropology department is in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts and focuses on applied anthropology. Eight Anthropology faculty (and numerous lecturers, adjuncts, and associate faculty) teach a four subfield approach (archaeology, cultural, biological, and linguistic) to approximately 80 undergraduate majors and the department has plans to develop an M.A. in applied anthropology.
Curricular context: Landscape Archaeology was taught at IUPUI for the first time during the 15 week spring semester of 2003 with classes meeting twice a week for an hour and fifteen minutes (1:00-2:15). It was listed as a "variable topics" Anthropology course (ANTH A460), a heading that allows special topics courses to be taught with a relatively short approval process). There were no pre-requisites for the course, although as a 400 level course, it was intended for juniors and seniors. It counted for Anthropology majors as a departmental elective, but it was open to any major. Within IUPUI's "common core curriculum" (requirements that apply to both Indiana University and Purdue University undergraduates) it was designated as an "Integrator course" (see course developmentbelow).
Community context: For the Landscape Archaeology course, the Indianapolis setting provided an opportunity to use two local sites as case studies for the course, and therefore chance to both apply and integrate the course material and to do service learning that benefited the community. One of the sites is Oldfields, an historic house and garden on the National Register, owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The site was in the midst of a restoration, and students proposed a research design in response to a hypothetical RFP for landscape archaeology (although the research goals were developed in consultation with the curators of the sites, the initiative was as a class exercise, not an actual RFP). The proposals were presented orally to the curator of the site and copies of the written proposals were submitted to the museum. The course also built on the on-going research project of fellow Anthropology faculty member, Paul Mullins, who is conducting a multi-year investigation of the campus and surrounding neighborhood (see his web site http://www.iupui.edu/~anthpm/ransom.html for details on the project). The project provided many opportunities for applied learning as the students learned about the overall project, went on a walking tour of the landscape, listened to oral history presentations by various community members, and did an independent research project on an aspect of the campus landscape history which they communicated in the form of an exhibit panel. Service learning was an important part of the course. Students shared their projects with the community through the submission of research proposals for a landscape archaeology investigation to the curators of an historic garden and through the presentation of "exhibit panels" on aspects of the IUPUI campus landscape history.
Technology context
The course was supported by University technology resources in many ways, but the same content could also be adapted to almost any level of technology.
The classroom was wired for internet connections and was equipped with an overhead, slide projector, television monitor and VCR. A PC/projector was brought in for each class which could project web sites or files such as PowerPoint presentations. The University also supports numerous computer labs for student access to a myriad of software, and it provides a "Center for Teaching and Learning" for support of the faculty's use of technology in the classroom.
In addition, all our courses at IUPUI are supported by an online teaching environment called "OnCourse". The features facilitate online discussions outside of the class time and also communication among team members working on common projects. I can also post documents such as assignments, the syllabus, handouts, and lecture notes on OnCourse, as well as keep an online grade book. These supporting modes of communication clearly enhance the in-class experience for students and are particularly helpful for the more peripheral participants in the class. I think the course could be easily taught in settings without such a web presence, but it is particularly helpful on our commuter campus for facilitating communication.
Our University Library also supports an electronic reserve system (Errol) where readings are scanned (with copyright permission), and then students can access them from any internet connection with a password. The Errol system was very helpful for this course which used a collection of readings, as opposed to a textbook, although the copyright permissions were denied for several readings and in those cases students had to consult a single hard copy on reserve. A course packet of readings would have served a similar function.
Finally, each student is given an e-mail account, in addition to the OnCourse mail function, and e-mail was a continual means of communication outside of class time. With e-mail attachments, it was also a means for commenting of drafts of students' work if they desired.
4. Course Development
Landscape Archaeology was developed specifically for the MATRIX project, although it has long been on my "wish list" of courses to teach. In the initial planning phase the course was conceived as an upper level seminar for Anthropology majors who might have a focus in any of the four subfields, but all of whom would have had some archaeology course work. The expectation was for approximately a dozen students. About two months before the course was offered, however, it was named an "integrator course"—a University requirement that offers upper level students an opportunity to integrate approaches from one or more disciplines within both the natural sciences and humanities or social sciences.
This new "integrator" designation changed the context of the course in two ways. It demanded a much more intentional inclusion of a "natural science" perspective on landscape archaeology than I had originally planned. It also meant that the course would fill, and the students would likely be seniors majoring in something other than Anthropology. Not only would this mean the course would now have thirty students, most of whom would have had no prior coursework in archaeology, but, more significantly, they would be taking the course to fulfill a graduation requirement, rather than to pursue a topic they were interested in.
This new audience meant that the course had to be structured so that it could work on a variety of levels. It had to engage the few students for whom this was an upper level course in their major, and it also had to provide entry points for those with no prior knowledge of archaeology. Also, rather than an intimate seminar setting, the course had to be scaled for thirty students, with team projects and group presentations to accommodate higher enrollment. Finally, the expectations for the complexity and sophistication of the analysis in the research projects had to be adjusted so that even non-majors could be successful.
The most positive aspect of the Integrator designation was that it impelled me to work much more closely with colleagues in related fields, particularly on aspects of GIS, remote sensing, and soil chemistry. I am indebted in particular to Jeff Wilson and Rick Bein of the Geography Department, and Paul Mullins in Anthropology for their generous offers of expertise and teaching materials.
The course is organized in four sections.
• The first section responds to the basic question: How can archaeologists recover and understand past landscapes and their meanings? It introduces "the tools of the trade," covering basic archaeological methodology (for students with no archaeology experience) and a more in-depth focus on the methods with particular applications in landscape archaeology. Some of these topics, such as mapping, were also addressed in the latter sections as well. This section was clearly a "crash course" in methods, but it served to provide a framework for readings in section 2 and the applied projects in the last two sections.
• The second section framed the questions of the class—what is a landscape? How do they work (meaning, how do they shape humans and how do humans shape them)? Why are they important (both in the past and today)?—through reading and discussing six different landscape archaeology investigations. The sites were intentionally selected to present a range of landscape time periods, scales, as well as a range of interpretive perspectives. There were several dozen other readings that would have served, and I encourage others teaching landscape archaeology to explore the rich literature of their field for their own case studies.
I lead the first discussion and then student teams (of approx. six students each) were charged with reviewing the reading, leading the discussion, and engaging students in issues they found compelling in the readings. The students were given a guide for their "reading review and discussion" and encouraged to develop creative and interactive methods for engaging their fellow students in the discussion. Some of the teams came up with standard discussion questions, but others developed wonderfully original presentations and learning exercises (see descriptions of student work). The final class of the session was a comparative synthesis and discussion of the perspectives (echoing the written analysis they had done independently).
By the end of the second section students were familiar with the vocabulary of landscape archaeology and a range of methods. They had read about a variety of research designs, and they had discussed a common set of questions. Most were developing a comfortable level of fluency in discussing their own views of landscapes and their significance, and many were relating discussions of past landscapes to their own experiences and contemporary landscapes.
3) The third section ramped up the expectations for critical thinking as it asked students to take what they had learned about archaeological methods and what they knew about landscapes and apply them to develop a research design for a particular landscape, Oldfields. The students were provided with guidelines and an example (based on Morven) for developing research designs, and they were given in-depth content on the particulars of the site, the broader context of American landscape design history, a site visit (out of class time), and more detailed instructions on using maps as research sources. They were also introduced to National Park Service guidelines for assessing the significance of historic landscapes (Oldfields is a National Register Site and they read its Register nomination). At the end of the section they submitted a written proposal for a research design of the Oldfields landscape, and they presented their proposals orally and with a visual display to Mark Zelonis, curator of the Oldfields and its grounds.
4) The final section asked students to make yet another leap in critical thinking and to develop an interpretive display about a particular aspect of the landscape history of the Near Westside, the area where the IUPUI campus now sits and an area that was formerly a heterogeneous lower-income neighborhood. The opportunity to build on an on-going community-based archaeology project led by colleague Dr. Paul Mullins both supported the students' individual research projects and created curricular links (through readings, film, discussions, and in-class exercises) to similar projects and other case studies where diverse interests were being interpreted and negotiated. The research and interpretive projects also created opportunities to learn from and share with members of the local community as both oral history informants and audiences for their final projects.
5. Lessons learned
Participation: Some of the challenges of the course were endemic to most classes at IUPUI. Attendance and overdue assignments were an ever-present issue and were particularly problematic given the cumulative learning structure of the course. For example, students who missed the presentation on how to use PowerPoint to design and execute struggled to complete their panels. Students working on teams complained about the difficulty of communicating, although all seemed to overcome the obstacles and worked together well to develop solid and, in some cases, quite creative presentations and engaging learning activities. Access to the Oldfields site was problematic for a few people (it is about three miles from campus, although on a major bus line), but again everyone seemed to resolve the transportation issue. (I had arranged complementary passes for the Oldfields house tour, so cost would not be a barrier.) For many students it was their first visit to the museum! Students also struggled with issues of authority— their own discomfort in speaking as an archaeologist, whether role playing for an in-class exercise or writing a prospective research design. They felt that without "expertise" they could not legitimately speak in that role. I was pleased, however, to see almost everyone gain in their understanding of the field and in their confidence in asserting their own thoughts and perspectives.
Logistics
Applied learning raises interesting logistical challenges.
Walking tour. The opportunity to tour the campus as a site visit was a great opportunity, particularly since Paul Mullins, the director of the archaeological project, generously offered to lead the tour. The challenge, in addition to designing a route that offered content, timing, visual interest, etc. in the 75 minute time period, was that there were several members of the class who had mobility difficulties and one person brought their young niece to class. We were able to accommodate their paces, however, and the tour was very helpful for visualizing the campus' landscape history and making the archival and map research more meaningful.
Exhibit panel production. There was no technology fee for the class, but I was been able to use departmental funds to provide the modest basic materials for the exhibit panels. The students were required to do their panels in PowerPoint, and I used a large plotter in the School of Liberal Arts' social science computer lab to print the 24" x 30" panel. The course does not cover computer generated graphics or design extensively, but most students have a basic knowledge of PowerPoint and we used one class to demonstrate the basic techniques of graphic design for creating the exhibit panels.
As I had expected, some students found the research projects challenging (despite the fact it is a 400 level course, independent research is still a stretch for many), but what was surprising was how many were intimidated by the concept of doing the exhibit panel. I made the submission of rough drafts of the panels optional, and only a third of the class turned drafts in for comments. Often there were minor design issues that I commented on, and the revisions improved the final products tremendously. We did an in-class critique of some of the designs (projecting the PowerPoint slide on a screen), and that was very helpful both for the authors of the panels and for those who had not yet done them. Although the scheduling was tight at the end of the semester for the completion of the projects, I would definitely require rough drafts and devote an entire class to in-class critiques of the projected panels. It also made me realize that if the production of the actual panels were a barrier, we could do a lower-cost presentation with projected images.
Community participation: In the oral history presentations in class, the University community members dominated and the neighborhood resident seemed less comfortable sharing her stories. Similarly, the "Exhibit Opening" was very well attended by members of the University community, but few of the neighborhood residents came. Barriers such as parking difficulties and the fact it was held in the middle of a weekday contributed to the low attendance, but in the future I would like to develop further the community connection for the course.
Technology:
PowerPoint: This was the first semester I used PowerPoint for my own lectures, and clearly I have much to learn about exploiting the technology more effectively. My extensive landscape archaeology and landscape history slide collection is not currently digitized, so illustrated lectures were generally done entirely with slides or a pause in the PowerPoint presentation while I showed the slides. There is currently no support for such extensive digitizing projects at our University, but it is clearly a need to more effectively use the PowerPoint medium.
General information on IUPUI is available at http://www.iupui.edu/~exstaff/intro.htm .