Learning Outcomes

Learn Actively: Learning is a personal, interactive process that results in greater expertise and a more comprehensive understanding of the world. Through in-class activities and small group work, by the end of the quarter you will:

• recognize key elements of human culture and have a basic understanding of fundamental cultural anthropology concepts
• be familiar with and have practiced a few of cultural anthropology’s fieldwork and methods
• have researched and educated your classmates about an indigenous culture
• have delved into discipline-specific databases and explored a variety of library resources

Communicate with Clarity and Originality: The ability to exchange ideas and information is essential to personal growth, productive work, and societal vitality. Through writing assignmentsand discussion, by the end of the quarter you will:

• have begun to develop or improve your communication skills
• be able to clearly express your thoughts about human culture and adaptive processes
• know how to properly cite sources and provide complete citations for sources

Think Critically, Creatively, and Reflectively: Reason and imagination are fundamental to problem-solving and the critical examination of ideas. By the end of the course, you will:

• understand how to look at culture at various levels (individual, community, national) and from an anthropological perspective
• know how to break down a theory into its main components
• be able to assess the interaction between culture, biology and the environment
• have learned to assess anthropological information in general and scholarly sources
• be able to interrelate your personal experiences and societal forces within the context of cultural anthropology
• understand that while there are various ways of being human and we are each unique, we also share basic commonalities of experience and living

Interact in Diverse and Complex Environments: Successful negotiation through our increasingly complex, interdependent, and global society requires knowledge of awareness of self and others, as well as enhanced interaction skills. Through group work, basic fieldwork, and discussion, by the end of the quarter you will:

• have some tools to use to help you identify ethnocentrism
• have explored cultural anthropology methods through real-world ethnographic observation
• have worked on your cooperative and verbal skills through team work
  

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