Student Exercises Overview
Any of these can be chosen to provide active learning within or outside the classroom and ways of obtaining credit in the course beyond exams and participation in the classroom. They can often be done in groups or not, in written and/or oral form. Each can include a small portion on the problems encountered in doing the project, or how it might be modified for next time, as a way of evaluation of the idea. Each can include the individual experience and opinions of the student, so as to integrate the personal with the scholarly experience. For many of them, the student could keep a personal journal throughout the course of the project, either for self-edification or for turning in as part of the assignment (also see journal exercise).
The Student Exercises are the following:
2. Add to the topic for the day
3. Archaeology websites evaluation
5. Archaeology lecture critique
6. Storytelling in prehistory/fictional presentation
Cautions
Only one or two of the exercises can really be done within a semester, since they do take time. For this course as taught in 2003, I chose the museum visit and the student fictional presentations on storytelling in prehistory. Next time I may chose other exercises based on what is available, since museum exhibits and lectures change. Students seem to like all the exercises, though field trips are always preferred (but much harder to schedule and accomplish; plus if they are not during class time they cannot have attendance required). Each class seems to do each exercise somewhat differently.