ANT-101
Welcome to ANT 101 Shared Course - For Instructor Who Plans to Use/Modify/Reuse Course

Welcome to the ANT-101 Shared Course Shell!

The original course design represents the collaborative effort of Genevieve Mielke, a forensic anthropologist, and Linda Neff, a paleoanthropologist and archaeologist. This collaboration took place over the Summer 2020, and the course was completed on August 8th. The course outcomes and content originated from the Coconino Community College course outline, which was last updated on February 2015. Do note that to avoid duplication -- Race and Racism is covered in ANT 102, and Bioarchaeology is covered in ANT 110. You are welcome to use the course in its entirety or change it as you see fit. The course was redesigned in Summer 2022 (completed July 30, 2022) by Linda Neff, who integrated the Society for Anthropology in Community College Open Educational Resource Textbook called Explorations: A Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology. On the textbook website, you can find a complete set up PDF chapters and Google slide presentations in addition to other laboratory ideas.

While the primary goal of the course is that "students will develop an understanding of the core ideas, concepts, assumptions, and theories of human biological change and adaptation through time and explore what it means to be human," we chose to also include an applied forensic anthropology case report as the final project for an in-depth investigation of one of the focus areas of physical anthropology. The summative exams include both multiple-choice and short essay questions. The essay questions are couched in a framework where students are proving that human evolution is true. Race is intentionally not included because 1) it is not one of the course learning outcomes, and 2) we cover race and racism in the introductory cultural anthropology course.

We highly recommend that you read the following article called "Why Evolution is True - What About Us?," to help you understand the overarching framework of this course.

Class Schedule

A sample class schedule is posted in the Instructor Use Only Module. It is an excel spreadsheet that can be modified for each term. Please update all the module introduction pages if you decide to change due dates. The module introduction pages post the weekly schedule for students. Note that there is a pattern to when different assignments are due. The only time the pattern is broken is during holiday weeks. This has been shown to help students with time management. Please keep the forensic project - group activities distributed across the entire semester, so they do not have to tackle it all at the very end.

Welcome Module

Please create a welcome video and post it on the Start Here page and add your biography, so your students can get to know you.

Syllabus

A sample syllabus is provided. You are required to use the CCC syllabus template, but please update the contact information and any other policies or changes that you decide to make to the original course. The CCC syllabus template can be found in the Faculty 4-11 Canvas Course.

Announcements

A sample welcome message and weekly overview announcement is provided with the course. You will want to schedule out your weekly overview announcements where you introduce the student to the module topics, learning objectives, and any tips that will help them to be successful throughout the week. You might also consider sending out a mid-week announcement where you share your story and experience with your students, so they have a chance to get to know you.

Quizzes

All of the quizzes are open-book. All of the OER test bank questions that are provided by the authors are already available on study sites where students can just copy and paste the answers; therefore, during the course redesign in Summer 2022, a whole new set up questions were designed to align with the CCC course outcomes. Students have three attempts to take the quiz with the highest score recorded. The purpose of the quiz is to help students recall the information from the readings. You might consider adding some additional questions to each question bank to change things up a bit for students.

Quiz Feedback

It is essential that you give each student personalized feedback on how they can improve their short essay questions. This way when they see the questions again in a slightly altered form on the midterm and final exam, they will be able to improve their ability to demonstrate their learning. Students are told throughout the course that you will be providing them with personalized feedback (not canned).

Office Hours

It is a good idea to let your students know that you are available to meet with them via Zoom by appointment. CCC provides you with a free Zoom Account for this purpose. Students are also provided a Zoom account where they can meet up with their peers to study and complete the group work assignments.

Exams

There are two parts to the exams - a multiple choice and short essay. They are given the short essay questions on the study guides each week and encouraged to answer these questions as they work through the module. You might consider having them submit a journal where they actually try to answer these questions, so you can give them feedback on how they could improve. Or you might do as we suggested in the quiz area to give them some practice with these types of questions. Several of the discussions are also designed to give them practice writing in a short paragraph form.

Discussions

The discussions are designed to help students connect to the material and to help make the content relevant to their lives. You might decide to update some of these discussions, just make sure they align with the learning objectives for the module. You will want to add an initial discussion post for each discussion at the beginning of the course, so they can see and hear you as not only an instructor but also as a participant in the course. The discussions are typically open from Thursday to Sunday. Students are expected to post their initial post on Thursday (the due date), and the discussion closes on Sunday. Typically, you will want to participate on Friday, and then write a landscape post that you send out as an announcement the following week that demonstrates how their discussion connected to the learning objectives of the course.

Forensic Anthropology in Action

The project should be introduced before the midterm exam. This is a case study where students get to apply their skills in an applied Forensic team setting. I set up intentional teams around the week before the midterm exam, so students have time to submit their group contract and discuss teamwork challenges and solutions. You might decide to let students self sign up into groups of two or three. Beyond two or three, students really struggle to find the time to meet during the work to work on their projects. The contract and discussion is due the Wednesday before the midterm exam.

You might want to send out an announcement (video or text) explaining to them that the project is not due until the end of the course, during reading week, but for the second half of the course, they will have an additional set of short activities to give them the practice they will need to complete the final case study. After each practice activity, be sure to send out individual assignment feedback or a class announcement to clarify any misconceptions. You might want to make this a group assignment to help reduce the number of case studies you have to grade, and to give students the opportunity to work together they might in the real-world.

Forensics is not a culturally appropriate topic particularly for Navajo students. In this case, you will need to assign the Altruism Individual Research Report as an alternative.

Teaching and Learning Center

If you have any questions, please contact the Teaching and Learning Center.