Introduction to Biological Anthropology, Online Syllabus

version September 16 (this syllabus is tentative, and will change over the semester, please refresh your browser for updates)

ANTHROPOLOGY 102, online

INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
SAN DIEGO CITY COLLEGE
Fall 2022 - (Class Nbr 13120)
Arnie Schoenberg - Adjunct Professor

Quick Start

What should I do?

Use the table of contents on this syllabus to get the details for each week's assignments, and general tips.

When do I need to do it?

Where do I put it?

Submit your work in the appropriate assignment on Canvas, unless otherwise noted.

What's my grade?

Once you complete all the assignments, you get an "A" in the class. You will receive feedback on individual assignments in Canvas, and Grades has a list of completed assignments, but you need to fill out your own Course Checklists, and keep them up to date, so you can stay on track to get an "A".

More Frequently Asked Questions

Main Resources

How to communicate with me

If you can get regular feedback from me, you're almost guaranteed to succeed in this class. There are three good ways to communicate with me: office hours, email, and pronto.

1. Online Office Hours

Log on to Zoom on Wednesday nights from 7-8pm to ask questions. No appointment necessary, just log on and make some noise to let me know you're there. Please let me know if you would like to speak to me privately and I can easily set up a private chat room, otherwise, it will be a group discussion with whomever logs on. Zoom is available by internet or telephone. Join online at: https://sdccd-edu.zoom.us/my/arnieschoenberg
Meeting ID: 251 569 2719
One tap mobile
+13462487799,,2515692719# US (Houston)
+16694449171,,2515692719# US

2. E-mail

prof@arnieschoenberg.com I will check this daily, and if I don't get back to you within three days, please send another email. You can also send emails through Canvas. This is especially great way to share your written work with me, and get answers to specific questions.

3. Pronto

I will monitor the Pronto chat every few days. Pronto is available through Canvas and as an app for your phone. It's a good place for general questions that other students might be able to answer.

4. Course Chat

Schedule

The Calendar gives you due dates, and the syllabus tells you what to do. The Calendar is available in Canvas and can be exported to most calendar apps, click on the "Calendar Feed" option. This is where you find out when things are due, but it just has assignment titles, so you still need to read the detailed description here in the syllabus to find out what to do: check the Weekly Reading Schedule for your Questions & Answers, and the Project Weekly Schedule to find out what to do for your Project Update.

The schedule is TENTATIVE and subject to change. Changes will always be announced early enough to complete assignments.

Administrative Deadlines

More Course Information

Advisory

First Day of Class	08/22/2022
Student Add/Drop	09/02/2022	Deadline to add the class, or drop the classes with no "W" recorded, apply for refund
Instructor Drop/Census	09/06/2022	All Instructor drops must be submitted by Noon
Student & Instructor Withdraw	10/28/2022	Last day to withdraw from classes and receive a "W". No drops accepted after this date. Thereafter, a student must receive a letter grade. Deadline for student to select P/NP option
week off	10/21-10/25	no school this week
Last Day of Class	12/17/2022
Instructor Grades Due	01/06/2023	Deadline for instructors to submit final grades; available to students within a week.

You should have already passed ENGL 101 with a grade of "C" or better, or equivalent, or Assessment Skill Levels R6/W6. If you don't read and write well in English, this will be a difficult class. You must be able to understand the assigned texts, and write at a college level. If you don't feel comfortable with academic English, please consider taking more English classes before taking this class, and if you decide to stay in the class, adjust your schedule this semester so you can devote extra time to reading, writing, attending my office hours, using the tutors at the English Center, the Free Online Tutoring, the one-on-one sessions with librarians to help with research, and a wide variety of other programs and people ready to help you. If you take advantage of all the help that's out there, you will succeed. Doing well in this class is not really about your previous skill, it really comes down to just having enough time to get the work done.

The required math is very basic, limited to an understanding of arithmetic and simple fractions. The class may seem hard because it counts for a UC class.

This class includes online components. If you are reading this, you probably have enough computer skills for this class, but if you have any doubts, take the assessment survey.

Basically, if you have time to come to Office Hours and do some extra work, I'll make sure you pass.

Course Description

This course is a survey of human evolution, variation, and adaptation. Topics include the study of primates, human heredity, variability of modern populations, and fossil records of early hominins and hominoids. This course is intended for anthropology majors and all students interested in life and/or behavioral sciences.

This course qualifies for Associate Degree Credit and transfer to CSU and/or private colleges and universities (UC Transfer Course List: ANTH 2 = ANTH 102).

The course maintains distance education standards through regular and effective contact between students with multiple weekly assignments and feedback from the professor. Original and cumulative student work ensures authenticity. Universal design and flexible accommodations promote accessibility.

How does this fit into my Ed Plan?

Anthropology 102 is especially useful for the following degrees and certificates:

Student Learning Outcomes

What this class could count for:
Class Attributes Credit	Degree Applicable
Transfer Credit	UC,CSU
CSU GE	B2. Life Science
DIST GE	B1. Life Sciences
IGETC	5B. Biological Science

Students who complete the Introduction to Biological Anthropology course will be able to:
1) Define and distinguish between cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, biological (physical) anthropology, and explain the applied aspects of each.
2) Think critically through data analysis, written reports, and classroom discussion.
3) Understand and implement the scientific method, and recognize in what circumstances the scientific method is an appropriate approach.
4) Recognize the place of humans in the biological world and in an evolutionary perspective.

Student Learning Objectives

More specific objectives are to:
1) Apply the anthropological imagination, especially holism, to contemporary issues.
2) Locate biological anthropology within the fields of science, and the subdisciplines of anthropology.
3) Orient yourself as a human being in a broad overview of time, space, and evolution.
4) Apply evolutionary forces, especially natural selection, to human heredity.
5) Synthesize genetics and cellular biology, with human origins and variation.
6) Identify the varieties of human biological and cultural adaptations, and their interactions; re-frame the debate between nature & nurture.
7) Apply a basic knowledge of human skeletal anatomy to subdisciplines of biological anthropology.
8) Correlate the taxonomy of primates with their morphology and ethology.
9) Debate human phylogenetic classification alternatives based on a review of hominid evolutionary evidence; abandon the search for the missing link.
10) Apply theories of human variation to developing cultural competence.
11) Discuss continuing evolutionary impacts on contemporary human populations in areas such as disease, population genetics, nutrition, and environmental biodiversity.

Student Learning Methods

All the knowledge in this course is readily available on the internet, so why not just google it instead of taking this class? Sites like Wikipedia tends to compartmentalize information, and you can often end up learning a bunch of random factoids and miss seeing the big picture. Holism is a crucial aspect of anthropology and I've tried to structure the class so you get chances to put it all together. Besides an introduction to anthropology, I try to teach scientific research methods: how to find the best information efficiently, how to ask the right questions, how to process the information into products that make a difference to you, and the world. These skills are intrinsically valuable and the methods are part of doing anthropology.

I think the best way to learn about science is to just do it. Reading and discussion will cover an introduction to the broad topics of anthropology, and a semester long Project gets you some practice doing science. You will synthesize multiple texts into your own work. You will read and write. You will learn by sharing questions and information with your fellow students.

Requirements

There's no big final exam at the end of class, instead you will be working a little bit every week. This class is divided into week-long topics that are numbered from 1-16. Each week in this class has two requirements: Q&A and the Project. Q&A is in turn divided into Questions and Answers. So the schedule for each week is divided into three sections, Questions while Reading due Tuesday, Project Update due Thursday, and Answers due Saturday. You are expected to satisfactorily complete the assignments before the deadlines. If your assignment is unsatisfactory, you may redo it until it is satisfactory, but it will be considered late. You can turn in late assignments, but you also have to do Extra Credit to make up for them being late. Late or unsatisfactory assignments means you do the regular work anyway AND do Extra Credit to make-up for it being late. Some late work will require an entirely different make-up assignment in addition to the Extra Credit required to make up for late work. Not completing the assignments lowers your final grade.

This is an asynchronous class, meaning that there are no required times when you have to log on, but it is not self-paced. You will be working together as a class and all following the same schedule. When you fall behind you will have to do more work than you would if you had stayed up with the class. This means that you should plan ahead for times when you're not going to be able to spend time on this course. For example, if you work weekends, get used to finishing your Answers by Friday. If a due date falls on a holiday that you want to take, just turn the assignment in early. We will take one week off per semester.

The first few weeks will be confusing, but once you accommodate this class into the the rest of your weekly schedule and get into a rhythm, you will find the 16 weeks goes by quickly and painlessly. Please read the syllabus carefully now and ask the right questions so you can get a rhythm going as soon as possible.

Typical Weekly Checklist:

There is a lot flexibility in what work you can do, but in order to all participate together as a class, we all need to respect these deadlines. You may work ahead, but you may not fall behind.

Textbook

The textbook is available for free at the URL above. You need an internet connection to access the links. You'll read it on some electronic device: like a tablet, laptop, desktop, even your smart phone (but it's bad for your neck and eyes to spend too much time hunched over squinting at a tiny screen). The money you would have spent on a new textbook can easily pay for something with a nice screen. City College might still have some free Chromebooks and WIFI hotspots (2020-21 San Diego City College Laptop Loaner Program San Diego City College Technology Request and Agreement Form).
Try out your browser's "Reader Mode" so you can adjust the size and font.
If you have sketchy internet at home, one trick is to turn on page caching on your browser, sometimes called "Make Available Offline" or "add page to reading list", or "show saved copy", or just just leave everything up on different windows and click on all the links when you are connected, or try apps that store online documents like Pocket, or cloud services like Google and Dropbox.

I highly recommend you find an online note-taking system, like hypothes.is, which you can use to make notes on the textbook, and other documents you find online, for all your classes.

This textbook doesn't print well, but if you know that you're going to have problems with an online textbook, there are many good options I would be happy to help you with so please contact me.

The textbook will be updated throughout the semester, so you should refresh it periodically.

I give Extra Credit for finding mistakes and bad links, so contact me with problems.

Reading

The holistic approach of anthropology and the introductory nature of this class means you have to learn a little bit about many topics, and we're going to read the entire textbook.

Reading a textbook is not like reading a novel. Read carefully and check yourself to make sure you understand everything. Study the Introduction and "Focus Questions" at the beginning of each section. Make sure to click on all the required links (the ones in GREEN ALL CAPITALS) and read them also; even though it may take you to another site, please consider everything in GREEN ALL CAPITALS as part of the Textbook. You don't have to click all the optional links or watch all the videos. You can pretty much ignore the second half of all the captions where I give licensing and permissions info, but the first part of the caption may be interesting.

If you don't completely understand a term or a concept, look it up, check another biological anthropology textbook, or an internet search engine. Be careful if you use the internet or a college dictionary to define terms, because the same word may have many meanings, and how it is used in popular conversation may be very different from how we use it in biological anthropology, so try to consult your textbook first. For concepts you don't completely understand very well, transform your confusion into the Question assignment below.

Weekly Reading Schedule

weeks: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Week 1 Reading

Week 2 Reading

Science
Section 1 (this means everything from 1 through 1.4.1 ; stop just before you get to 2)

The Scope of Physical Anthropology: Powers of Ten (make sure to watch the short video also)
Section 2-2.1

Week 3 Reading

Week 4 Reading

Week 5 Reading

Week 6 Reading

Week 7 Reading

Week 8 Reading

Week 9 Reading

Week 10 Reading

Week 11 Reading

The genus Homo and the most successful hominid in the universe
Sections 6.5 - 6.7

Week 12 Reading

Week 13 Reading

Week 14 Reading

Week 15 Reading

Week 16 Reading

Questions & Answers

I think class discussions are the best way to learn anthropology, because they allow you to start from the place where you are and move to the viewpoint of someone else. This can be tricky in an online class, but I encourage you to jump in and make yourself part of the class. A good rule for Q&A's is: Be yourself, unless you're shy or a jerk, and then be someone else.

Asking Questions

From Sunday to Tuesday you are required to post at least one question per chapter. The questions must be related to the learning module that week. The questions can be about something you didn't understand in the reading, or something related to the reading. If there is any doubt as to whether your questions are relevant to the chapter, you must explicitly relate them to a topic covered in the chapter. For example, if you ask for section 5.3: "Did you see the last Planet of the Apes movie?" you won't get credit. But if you ask, "O'Neil says the human capacity for culture is due to natural selection, and that biocultural evolution is uniquely human, but what if humans genetically modified apes to have more capacity for culture?", you would get credit because you made the question relevant to an idea found in the section.
Ask questions that you really have; don't make up test questions, e.g. if you ask "What are the four subfields of anthropology mentioned in Section 1?" you won't get credit, because you obviously already know the answer. If you don't have any real questions after the reading, than you should be teaching this class. Anthropology is not supposed to be cut & dry, it takes a holistic approach to understanding the most socially complex lifeform on the planet. We don't have all the answers but anthropologists are really good at asking the right questions. Part of learning anthropology is learning how to ask the right questions. So where do you get enough context to ask the right question? Do the assigned reading for that week before you ask your questions. You don't have to understand everything, but you have to ask informed questions.
Before posting your question, read all the other questions to make sure your question has been asked already. If your question is the same as one that has already been asked, find another question. If your question has the same topic as a question that has already been asked, then you should post it in the same thread with the other question.
Do your part to help to keep the Discussion section organized. With over 100 posts for each chapter it is crucial that you organize your questions so that the rest of the class can quickly go back to find answers for their questions. The best way to do this is by first reading all the other posts before you ask your question, and finding where your question fits in best compared to the other questions. Put your question in the same thread as similar ones. Don't waste space with the words "question", "chapter", or "answer" and you don't need your name, the chapter number, or the week number; because all the information is already implied by the folder and the post header. Make sure to scan through the existing threads to where your question fits best. Before posting your question, you must read the questions that other students have asked to see if your question has already been asked. Don't ask the same question. Don't ask the same question. It's annoying to have to read the same thing twice. It's annoying to have to read the same thing twice.

Besides questions about ideas in the textbook sections, you may also ask questions about other students' Critical Reviews of articles, Anthropological Critiques of Videos, or other Extra Credit.

Answering Questions

From Friday to Saturday you are required to attempt to answer at least one of the questions posted by other students for each chapter assigned that week. If you are working ahead and there aren't any questions yet, or you can't find a question that you feel like answering, you may answer one of the "Imagination Questions" at the end of each chapter in your textbook. First check to see that no one has answered it yet, then copy the question and answer it in the same post.

If someone else has answered a question, you can still answer it too, but just don't say exactly the same thing that's already been said. Just don't say exactly the same thing that's already been said. It's annoying to have to read the same thing twice. It's annoying to have to read the same thing twice. Trying adding information, clarify, make things less confusing, add examples to illustrate the point, cite different sources, elaborate, and go into more depth on issues. Your answers in the discussion section are not just to show me that you understand the material from the course, but to come up with creative ways to explain that material to your fellow students who had real questions and stuff they didn't understand very well.

Make sure to focus on the actual question that your fellow student asked after reading the same thing you did this week. Don't just make up random stuff that you think is related. Don't feed text into a paraphrase app and expect it to answer the question; the A.I.'s aren't good enough yet. Respond to the question that was asked.

Don't answer your own questions; if you had the answer already you shouldn't have asked the question.

Your answers should be thorough, you should define any terms you used, and you must correctly cite sources (usually Schoenberg plus the section number of my textbook, O'Neil plus the name of the page, or the reference or link to an outside source). For the posts on the discussion board you may use informal English, but please make sure that vocabulary words from the class are used correctly. I will evaluate the completeness of your assignment based mostly on the thoroughness of the ideas expressed in your answers. "Thorough" usually implies a long answer, but I'm looking more for nuance than length. How much reflection does your answer represent? One aspect of the anthropological imagination is that we are skeptical of unicausal arguments; there's not just one simple answer to a question. If you are having trouble thinking of a thorough answer, the easiest solution is to reflect on what other smart people have already said about the topic, by citing outside sources and then talking about those.

To satisfactorily complete the week's Q&A assignment, you can either write one good question and one thorough answer to a single question, or you can write several shorter questions and several shorter answers to multiple questions. This isn't a hard fast rule but good questions and answers usually cite at least one source.

You will get a sense of what I'm looking for after a few weeks of my feedback and reading other students posts.

Reading your Answers

On Sunday, I will start grading your questions and answers and give you feedback, correct any mistakes, and try to answer unanswered questions. As you're working on the next chapter, go back to read the answers from the previous one. As a busy student, you might ask yourself why should I bother reading all the old questions and answers when I'm not immediately being graded on it? If you have been reading and thinking about the questions and answers, you'll be steeped in anthropological ideas, and you find it easy to write up your Critical Reviews of an article, your Research Project, and do extra credit.

Please make sure to read my feedback about both the content and the format of your questions and answers. This feedback may be within the Discussion section posted as a response for everyone to learn from, or in the grading rubric for your eyes only. Ignore any point values from old grading rubrics, but please look at what you got wrong. This feedback will often help you improve your chances of a satisfactory assignment for future weeks.

Project

One of the frustrations of an introductory class is that it skims over a large amount of material and doesn't leave enough time to delve into the subject. The goal of the project is to go into more detail about a single aspect of biological anthropology. It's a big project, but it's divided up into little bits each week. To get a sense of where we're heading, check out the San Diego City College Student Anthropology Journal. If you follow all the steps, your article may be in the next issue.

By the end of the course, you will submit a work of original research. The work will progress in stages that are designed to insure your success. You will be faced with some Project Updates that are extremely difficult and confusing, but resist the temptation to skip or delay them, and instead remember to ask for help before giving up on a stage.

weeks: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Week 1 Project Update

The reading for this week's Project Update overlaps with the reading for this week's Q&A.

Week 2 Project Update

For this week I want to introduce you to academic writing and asking for help when things get confusing.

Week 3 Project Update

Read over the Textbook's Table of Contents once more, and maybe skim a few sections for more details and possible articles and choose at least three possible projects. For each idea, make-up a title that describes the project, list the kind of project (Literature Review, Primate Observation, Action Anthropology, Public Health), the topic (textbook section), and the title and author of an article related to the topic that you might do a Critical Review on. You really need to read the entire syllabus and skim the table of contents of the textbook before doing this assignment because you need to know all the stages of the Project and the Schedule. Turn this in on the appropriate canvas forum.

You're not committed to these ideas or Critical Reviews, but the earlier you find something that will work, the easier the class will go.

Week 4 Project Update

I highly recommend you at least try to form a group for the Project. If nothing works out, fine, but give it a try at least.

Week 5 Project Update

Evaluate your options from last week, including feedback from me and contact with other students, then pick one, and write a project proposal. You're not locked into doing this Project for the next 10 weeks, but the later you change your mind, the more rushed you're going to feel towards the end of the semester, so try to make these hard decisions early.

The more detailed a plan you can give me, the better the feedback I can give you, and the smoother the Project will go. Submit this to the Canvas forum.

Week 6 Project Update

You already practiced finding topical articles for the Week 3 Project Update, so one of those might work. You're not stuck with what you signed up for during Week 3, and ideally you should choose Critical Review articles that relate to the topic of your Project.

This is the only required worksheet, but after this assignment, if you're having problems with your Critical Reviews, feel free to fill out more and email them to me or show it to me during Office Hours so I can give you feedback.

Week 7 Project Update

Complete your first Critical Review. Check my feedback on last week's Critical Review Worksheet, and then write your first Critical Review. Think of last week's Critical Review Worksheet as the outline for your Critical Review; expand the outline into an essay with paragraphs, and topic sentences. To save yourself some work, you should ideally do this Critical Review on the same article that you used for the Worksheet, but if you don't think you're going to use the article for your Project, then feel free to find a new article for this week's Critical Review.

Week 8 Project Update

First, copy your Week 5 Project Update (Project Proposal) and revise it if you've made any changes in the last few weeks.

Below your current Project Proposal include an annotated bibliography, and the specific requirements depending on which kind of project you chose. An annotated bibliography is a writing strategy to help you synthesize multiple sources and organize your notes. Since you know how to do a Critical Review already, an Annotated Bibliography will be easy. You can use the same format, just alphabetize all the sources you're going to use for your Project and take notes on them. Your Annotated Bibliography should include the Textbook and a Critical Review at a minimum. While you take notes on the other sources you read, make sure to copy the page numbers or section numbers across to your notes so you can include them when citing.

When you write your draft for the Week 11 Project Update you'll be able to just reorganize these notes into the body of your paper, and when you move the notes out of the Annotated Bibliography it becomes your Bibliography (Works Cited) section.

*this week's update can be submitted as a group, just submit one version with everyone's name on it.

Week 9 Project Update

Check my feedback from the Week 8 Project Update to see if I suggested any gaps in your annotated bibliography, and chose another article to fill them. Check my feedback on your last Critical Reviews, and then complete your second Critical Review. Any more Critical Reviews you do after this will be considered Extra Credit.

Week 10 Project Update

We have about a third of the class left and this is a good time to take stock and see how the Project is going. You may have been exposed to a new topic as you read more in the textbook, your project may be a disaster, your group may have imploded, you may have finally got a group started, your interests may have changed. So this is a good time for Self-Reflection: How are things going? Evaluate how this project is going to help with your academic and professional goals? Is the experience going to help you get a job? Are you curious about what you're researching? Depending on your answers you may want to change your project. This is a good time to commit to your current Project because trying to make major changes much later than this date will be stressful. Office hours are a great place to discuss this with me. Submit this Project Update to the Canvas assignment (not seen by other students).

Week 11 Project Update

Submit a draft of your Project. Make sure to spend enough time giving the context. At this stage you should start to worry about format and style. This is big update so try to start it early. The cleaner and the more complete your draft is, the less work you have to do from here on out; do a good job for this update and you're basically done with the Project. Submit this to the Canvas forum.

*this week's update can be submitted as a group, just submit one version with everyone's name on it.

Week 12 Project Update

One popular myth about scientists is that they are these unkempt individual geniuses who lock themselves in a room for a week and come out with a major discovery, but science is more about collaboration and community. Similarly, writing shouldn't be something you do by yourself; we need to practice giving feedback and often struggle to find others to give us good feedback. An important aspect of the writing process is the relationship between writer and editor. Prominent anthropological journals and books are peer reviewed; this means that several anthropologists read and criticize a work before it is published.

For the Peer Review component, choose 3 drafts by other students submitted last week on Canvas and give constructive criticism. Make comments that will help your fellow students improve their Project. Usually, the more specific the comments the better. Ideally, upload an edited file to the same thread. Submit your peer review to the same Canvas forum as last week.

Week 13 Project Update

Based on feedback from other students and myself, revise your Project focusing on: content, the specific requirements of the kind of project and format. After submitting your work on Canvas, wait an hour and then go back to the TurnItIn Similarity Report to check for plagiarism problems.

*this week's update can be submitted as a group, just submit one version with everyone's name on it.

Week 14 Project Update

Before it gets published we use a google doc to homogenize the formats. You will need to make a google account for this. This document gets big and slow so please be patient and try put things in the right spot.

Extra Credit

For extra credit, you can give constructive criticism on other articles within the Google Doc

If other people make suggestions to your article, please reply with “Y” or “N” whether you accept the suggestions or not, and I’ll clean them up periodically.

*this week's update can be submitted as a group, just submit one version with everyone's name on it.

Week 15 Project Update

Besides the journal article, I want you to also present your research in a public forum such as the Block Party or Student Research Symposium or other college research fairs. I will announce the dates as soon as they are available.

Even though this is due towards the end of the semester you should plan this early so you don't miss submission deadlines. You will often have to submit or present a draft of your work, and that is very typical for scientists. Presentations may take various formats, such as slide presentations, posters, and videos.

If you can't present to a live audience, your alternate assignment will be to submit your final article to at least one academic journal (Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography, osjournal.org, etc), contests, or personal publishing platforms (academia.edu, portfolium.com, etc). You may need to make accounts for these platforms.

*this week's update can be submitted as a group, include the entire group in either the preparation or the presentation, and make sure to credit all the members of your group.

Week 16 Project Update

Now that you're done, reflect on the completed Project and the process you went through to get there. How did it go? What worked what didn't? How would you do it differently? What did you learn about learning how to learn? Submit this to the Canvas assignment (not seen by other students).

Choosing a Project

For Week 3 you choose three possible projects. For Week 5 you narrow it down to one idea, and write a project proposal.

Try to choose a topics that will help you further your academic or professional career.

You have a lot of flexibility about the topic for your Project as long as you can find a connection to this course, but you will find that the closer you can align your topic to one of the topics in the textbook, the easier it will be. There are four kinds of Projects: Literature Review, Primate Observation, Action Anthropology, or Public Health. You get to do one. For some topics you might find that some combination of Projects might apply, and feel free to work with me to personalize your project.

1) Literature Review Project

For this project I want you to chose a single anthropological topic and synthesize several sources that all deal with the same topic. It will be like doing several critical reviews, and then mashing them together; like a book report that includes a few other articles about the same subject. Your sources should include at least one book, two articles, and the Textbook. You can use the same article you used for a critical review; I encourage you to double-dip. This is a chance to explore a topic in more depth. Consider choosing a topic that is relevant to your academic or professional career, and then find a book that uses biological anthropology. Below are a few examples:

These are examples of how the broad scope of biological anthropology will make it easy for you to find at least a few topics that you are interested in. There are many more possible books that will work to anchor your project, but make sure to check with me before you get too far along. Your Week 5 Project Update should include a bibliography with the book and at least two articles you are going to read. Your annotated bibliography for the Week 8 Project Update should include summaries of the book, articles, and ideas for comparison to the textbook.
If you don't want to be an armchair anthropologist, and you want to do your own fieldwork, read on...

2) Primate Observation Project

This option was better before COVID-19 when you could go to the zoo, but we can still try to make it work. Because our biology is so similar, contact with primates is especially dangerous to all species; we can easily get diseases from other primates, and other primates can easily get diseases from us. Here is a quick list of streaming primate cams.

The best way to understand primates is to observe them in their natural setting. But, we are the only primates around for thousands of miles, so we're stuck using other sources, like zoos and videos.

The Project Proposal is more involved for the Primate Observation Project because working with live primates requires permission from a group that insures the research is ethical. For this class your proposal should consists of about a one-page description of your proposed project. It should focus on what you plan to observe, and what you expect to learn. The proposal must address any ethical issues that might arise during fieldwork, e.g. include a statement that you will not cause harm to your subjects. I want you to find at least one other source related to your hypothesis. Consider using a source to generate your hypothesis, e.g. I saw chimps do this in a video, or I read that chimps do this in wild, so my hypothesis is I predict they will also do it in the zoo. The proposal should also state your hypothesis and methods, and how your observations will relate to the concepts mentioned in the class and in your textbook. You do all this BEFORE you go to the zoo. Here are some good examples of primate observation projects to consider.

For this Project I want you to limit your fieldwork to a maximum of three hours, so this means having a good plan before you go and limiting the scope of your project. Find a situation where you can observe a pattern of primate behavior. Don't try to be profound, think of it as an exercise, and keep it simple! Before you begin fieldwork you MUST obtain my approval on the proposal. This proposal should be submitted no later than the Week 5 Project Update, but you can always show it to me earlier.

The fieldwork consists of one to three hours of primate observation. Notice the emphasis on observation. You can't tap on the glass and see if it bothers the primates. I would prefer that you only use written notes, and not use cameras or other electronic recording devices. There are several projects where this is not feasible, but you should address this in your proposal. You may make sketches or diagrams if useful. Plan time to flesh-out your notes immediately after the observation while it is still fresh in your mind. Your Week 8 Project Update should include your field note, and an annotated bibliography of other sources you want to include and the sections of the textbook you will be comparing your project to.
The write-up should present your data in a logical form using academic English. The Week 11 Project Update should ideally be a single file with the following components: (1) best draft in the front, (2) scanned original field notes, (3) proposal approved by me at the back. For the Week 15 Project Update you will eliminate the notes and proposal from your Article.

3) Action Anthropology Project

If you browse the range of careers where anthropologists can apply their skills, you can see that not everyone is a university professor. Many anthropologists consider Applied Anthropology to be a fifth subfield. One kind of Applied Anthropology is Action Anthropology and it includes using anthropological knowledge to better guide political action. For this project you will plan a short political campaign related to one of the ethical issues related to biological anthropology, such as primate conservation, designer babies, GMO foods, global warming, overpopulation, racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, poverty, malnutrition, incarceration, violence, etc. Your Project Updates will be planning and reports on the campaign, and should include the same comparison to topics in the Textbook and other sources as the Literature Review project. For example, if you start a primate conservation campaign to get the cafeteria to only use sustainable palm oil, your campaign media (letters, petitions, fliers, videos, etc.) must cite academic sources. There are many good resources on community organizing (e.g. campaigns, or newspaper op eds), but make sure that you focus on the anthropological ideas first.

Your Week 8 Project Update should include an outline of the campaign, and an annotated bibliography of other sources you want to include and the sections of the textbook you will be comparing your project to. Your Week 11 Project should be an article about the campaign, with all materials that you create included as appendices. Your Week 15 Project may reduce the appendices.

4) Public Health Project

Participatory Action Research is another common kind of Applied Anthropology, where you participate in a cultural setting, take action to help people, and do research on it at the same time. If you happen to work in a health or human services related field, you can use your experience at work and write about the group's organizational culture. For this project you will gather data about a topic while working. If your job doesn't have anything to do biological anthropology you can also volunteer and this would be like a service learning project. You will perform 5-10 hours of volunteer work with a community organization that is related to biological anthropology and keep a journal of your activities and insights into the topic related to your work. The service learning option requires you to be very self-motivated. To help decide on a project, you might ask yourself what item your professional resume is missing, or what career you would like to explore. Almost anything related to medicine will work, other topics include animal behavior, and one student even volunteered at a tattoo parlor and researched the topic of hygiene. Your Week 5 Project Update must include permission from the group you wish to volunteer with, as well as your research goals, similar to the ethical requirements of the Primate Observation Project. Your Week 8 Project Update should include the raw data from your journal, comparisons to the textbook, and an annotated bibliography that includes the textbook and at least one source on a topic related to where you are volunteering. Your Week 11 Project Update should be a draft of your report and more complete journal. For your Week 15 Project remove your journal and polish your article.

Critical Reviews

Critical reviews are a basic research tool for almost all sciences. I want you to practice extracting hypotheses, methods, and data from research articles and evaluating their reliability. The practice is so you can better apply these concepts to your own original research and article. Your textbook contains references to scientific articles related to the topics being discussed in that section, and you can find more recent articles from the library and online. You will choose two Critical Reviews for the entire semester. The write-up should include the following sections: citation, introduction, hypothesis, background, method, data, and conclusion.

For this assignment you are required to find an article or resource that relates to a topic in the Textbook, find a specific list of items in the article, and compare and contrast the article with the textbook. Use this assignment as a chance to move away from the confines of the textbook and explore topics that interest you, the holistic nature of anthropology makes it easy to find articles that YOU want to read, but can still be connected to one or more of the sections in the textbook.

Selecting a Resource

You can find good articles for Critical Reviews in the Textbook, at the library, and through the internet. Ideally, you're looking for peer-reviewed journal articles, like an anthropology journal article or a single chapter from an anthropology book. Other sources that will be more difficult to review include: reviews of articles, popular science magazine articles, newspaper articles, internet blogs, Hollywood movies, television programs, interpretive dance performance, etc; finding the hypothesis and enough data to review can be tricky. It's all doable, but probably harder than a peer-reviewed journal articles where the categories I'm looking for will often pop-up in the first paragraph. If you have any doubt about the relevance of your article, please ask me. Office hours are a great place for me to help you with finding articles.

Textbook

I've included over 150 possible sources for Critical Reviews linked directly from the Textbook itself, which I've labeled with a teal asterisk *. The teal asterisks * that mark suggested links are within the text, within graphic captions, and as separate paragraphs. To find a list of suggested articles try CTR + F and then * and you can scroll through them. Other good resources would be an article from a peer-reviewed journal by an author or about a topic mentioned in the section.

Library

The City College library has many good resources. Start with OneSearch, and then Articles & Databases, and for this class I recommend EBSCO (the top on on the list), Ethnic Newswatch, and JSTOR (halfway down the list). For EBSCO if you go to the left bar where it says "Source Types", click on "Academic Journals" for a better selection. Here is a guide to finding scholarly articles. Here is a guide specific to Cultural Anthropology. The City College Learning Resource Center has a Chat with a Librarian Now service linked to their home page and also offers 30 minute zoom research sessions. If you have access to other college libraries, they have may bigger online catalogs that will give you the full text of an article for free. Friends at four-year universities are nice to have. Don't pay for articles, there are plenty of good ones for free. If you feel overwhelmed at your screen and the eye strain has you seeing red, don't neglect the old-school technique of just walking into a library and browsing the periodical stacks.

Google Scholar

If you use a search engine I highly recommend Google Scholar. Just putting a vocabulary word from the chapter into a search engine may give you all kinds of crap that you need to sort through. If you choose a source that is not from a peer reviewed journal, you will need to spend more time critically evaluating the reliability of the journal, author, and all of the author's ideas, and if you don't completely address the article's shortcomings, you run the risk of propagating bad science. Choose scientific journals over blogs. If a blog talks about a newspaper article, go find the newspaper article. If the newspaper article talks about an article in a scientific journal, go find the journal article. Often the primary source is stuck behind a pay-wall, but not always, so make an effort to find it.

Below each listing in Google Scholar there is a set of icons and text that links to very powerful features. Please click on all of them and experiment until you figure out what each one does.

Where to post your Critical Reviews?

I want to be able to give you individual feedback on your writing, and for you to share your work with the rest of the class, so you'll need to post your Critical Reviews in two places on Canvas. First, submit the file in that week's Project Update assignment, and I will give you individual feedback.

I also want your fellow students to be able to read your Critical Reviews and maybe use the article for their Project, or ask questions about it and start a good discussion. So, I want you to also copy the text of your Critical Reviews into a Q&A forum for the rest of the class to read. But which Week? Look through the syllabus' Calendar/Schedule and find when we are discussing the topic most related to your article. You might need to go to the textbook and check the table of contents, and then the syllabus Calendar/Schedule to see what week we are reading that section, and post it in that week's forum.

One of the requirements of the Critical Review is to give the Background of the article you are reviewing, to explain the context of how this specific information is relevant to the class we're taking. In the Background section you are required to cite the textbook. Whatever section (or sections) you cite from the textbook, that is the week's folder where you should post your Critical Review. If you cite sections covered in different weeks then it's your choice, but the earlier the better is a good strategy with Critical Reviews.

Content of Your Critical Reviews

The most important content of your critical review should be a comparison between the ideas presented in the textbook and similar ideas presented by the article you chose. You must situate the article in the context of biological anthropology; compare and contrast your article with the Textbook section. I like to think of this as "backing-up" in both senses of the metaphor; your article is probably going to be very specific, but before you get too far down your narrow path, back up and give us the broad view of where we are. What is the topic? How do the authors' presentations of the ideas differ? Do they emphasize different points? Do they disagree? See the Anthropological Imagination for more information.

Your critical review must contain at least one citation of your textbook. The citation can be a paraphrase, a short quote, or a block quote. A paraphrase is where you take the information and rewrite it in your own words to better fit the point your trying to make; you must include the source (the section most cases) where the information came from, usually right after the idea you borrowed from the author, but possibly at the end of your paragraph. A short quote is less than five lines, and the author's exact words are put in quotation marks and the chapter is given right after the close quote. A block quote is more than five lines of the authors exact words and the text is indented, single spaced, the font size reduced, no quotations marks are used, and the section given in brackets after the quote. You must include the section for paraphrases, short quotes, and block quotes. When citing other sources, also include the page number when available. Review the "Scientific Writing Exercise" for more info.

When including ideas from other authors you must frame the citation with your own words, introducing why the citation is relevant to the point you're trying to make, and after the citation, explaining to the reader what they were supposed to get out of the citation. The longer the citation (e.g. block quotes) the more framing you need to do. Review Academic English for the style and format.

Critical Review Worksheets

To help you organize the content of your Critical Reviews, I have blank Critical Review Worksheets that you can turn in and I will give you feedback.

How many Critical Reviews do I have to do?

Besides the two required Critical Reviews you may do up to eight additional ones for extra credit, for a maximum of 10. If you find several interesting articles from a single section consider putting them together and doing your Literature Review Project on that subject.

Critical Review Checklist

Feedback

It's important, but sometimes difficult, to find my feedback on the work you submit. I will return your Critical Reviews with comments in several possible places on Canvas:

Canvas doesn't make it easy to find my comments, so please open all rubrics, and check the threads of all of your posts to look for feedback. If you have problems seeing my comments, please let me know. Occasionally, my feedback is skimpy because I feel it is represented by the grading rubric form, and that usually means you're either a rock star, or you need to read the instructions again more carefully, and you can tell the difference by whether the assignment was satisfactory or not.

Make sure to find my feedback so you avoid making the same mistakes week after week. If you don't understand the feedback, please ask me during the first few weeks, so you don't keep making the same mistakes.

This is not kind of class where you make one mistake on an assignment and you can never get higher than a "B". This is the kind of class where it takes you a few weeks to figure things out, and if you fix the problems from the week before, you end up with an "A".

Group Work

Many Project Updates (Weeks 5,8,11,13,14,15), and many extra credit assignments may be done in groups. There is no penalty for working in groups, and assignments will be graded as if written by a single author, and all the authors in a group will be given the same evaluation. Likewise; each member of the group is also responsible for the entire submission. If there is a problem with plagiarism, all members of the group suffer equally.

For your Week 4 Project Update, you are required to read through other students' project proposals and find at least three that you are interested in. You are encouraged to contact them, but you are not required to follow through and actually form a group. Group work is optional.

This class is not graded on a curve, so there is no advantage to hoarding information or obstructing your classmates, but you have no obligation to join a group if you don't want to, or to accept group members just because they are desperate.

To define a group, one of the group members just needs to put the names of all the co-authors on the top of the first page of the assignment. You may not be in more than one group per assignment; if you helped another group, then make sure that the group states that you helped the group but are not a co-author.

All members of the group should contribute to editing all parts of an assignment, and the assignment must have a uniform format. You may not use different font styles or citation formats for different sections. If you use personal pronouns (I, me, my, mine), you must specify which author you are referring to, usually by putting their name in parentheses after the pronoun.

Many word processing programs have a feature that allows comments from different authors to show up on your writing. I recommend Google Docs because everyone in your group will need an account anyway for the Week 15 Project Update. Another option is the Review or Track Changes function of MS Word.

You are responsible for anything that gets turned-in to me with your name on it. Don't put your name on something you didn't do, don't put someone else's name on something they didn't do.

Self-Reflection

Take a deep breath and check yourself to see how things are going. For both self-reflections I'd like a narrative journal or blog style post, nothing formal. Please also submit your Course Checklists at this time.

The Week 10 Self-Reflection is about finding strategies to make the project as relevant to you as possible. Evaluate how this project is going to help with your academic and professional goals? Is the experience going to help you get a job? Are you curious about what you're researching?

The Week 16 Self-Reflection is about learning how to learn. How did it go? What worked, what didn't? How would you do it differently? What did you learn about doing projects?

Academic English

Your Project and Critical Reviews should be exercises in using academic English to write essays. The main thing to remember about an essay is structure. Ideas are broken into paragraphs, and paragraphs are broken into sentences. The title summarizes the essay. The introduction and conclusion summarize the essay in more detail. A topic sentence summarizes each paragraph. The structure helps the reader quickly find the information they need while skimming your essay. Apply the skills you learned in your English classes. If you're rusty, here's a quick overview of the writing process.

Proofread it, spell-check it, and grammar-check it. Use a writing style appropriate for readers of popular science magazines (National Geographic, Discovery, Nature, Archaeology, etc.) or biological anthropology journals and consult their style guides if possible. Please cite your sources correctly to avoid plagiarism.

Project Format

If the idea of a 15 page essay scares you, remember that the introduction, conclusion, and bibliography will add about a page, and when you cover the context and bring in concrete examples you'll find it's easy to make it long enough. A typical writing style in anthropology, especially cultural anthropology, is to mix the statistics with personal narratives of ourselves and our informants. We want to put a human face on the numbers, and to support generalizations with specific examples. The qualitative research methods of anthropology push us towards this style. If you get writer's block, check out this article on Writing Anthropology for ideas.
Relate your data as much as possible to the topics covered in the textbook. Cite the author year, and page number. For example, in a discussion of primate behavior, you might write:

[...]We should use caution when attributing a biological basis for violence (Nader 2017, 34-5), but my observations were consistent with O'Neil's (2012) discussion of affiliative behavior in primates and showed what Victor Turner described as communitas (Harris 2007, 280). But, their agonistic behavior fit more with Harris' description of political power, not as complex, but similar to the way "disobedience and nonconformity result not only in retribution administered through the state's police military apparatus but also in punishments in the present or future life" (284). [then go on to explain these connections in detail]

Nader, Laura. 2017. "The Development of Anthropological Ideas." In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology. Edited by Nina Brown, Laura Tubelle de González, and Thomas McIlwraith. 2017. American Anthropological Association. http://perspectives.americananthro.org Accessed January 1, 2019.

O'Neil, Dennis. 2012 "Primate Behavior." Biological Anthropology Tutorials. https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/behavior/default.htm Accessed August 22, 2016.

Schoenberg, Arnie. 2022. "[put the title of the section here]" Introduction to Physical Anthropology. https://arnieschoenberg.com/anth/bio/intro/index.html Last modified [the date is on the top of the page]. Accessed [include the date when you clicked on the link].

All of your options for Projects require a college level quantity and quality of written work, but you'll do it in stages, and have multiple chances to fix mistakes, so you don't get overwhelmed.

Critical Review format

Your critical review should look like an extra-long annotated bibliography entry. This means the citation (Chicago style is author, title, year, publisher, URL, access date) goes on the top instead of a title. The title of your Critical Review is the article that you are reviewing. Your review goes below the article citation. This is upside down from a regular essay, where the list of sources go at the end, but it makes sense for a Critical Review because you are just focusing on one source, so put it on top. I have included links about how to format an annotated bibliography and examples of past Critical Reviews in the Academic Resources folder, accessible from the course home page on Canvas.

Notice that the format for both an annotated bibliography and your Critical Reviews is upside-down: the article citation comes first, the annotation goes below.

Please use formal academic English for your Project and Critical Reviews. This doesn't mean you have to use the biggest word possible, but try to use the most precise word. You must explain yourself clearly, thoroughly, and support your position with examples from the class. Assume that your reader has not taken this class, and define and explain any new vocabulary. Avoid lists and bullets. Use complete sentences. Organize your ideas with indented paragraphs and topic sentences. If you are not a strong writer, you should compensate by writing longer essays. Since this is not a writing class, I'm focusing on the quality and quantity of your ideas. If you are not a strong writer, it will take more words to convey those ideas, so don't write skimpy essays. Try to expand rather than condense. I've found it takes most students 2-5 pages to fulfill the requirements.

Your writing style for Questions and Answers and extra credit may be informal, but not for your Critical Reviews, or Project. Make sure to use the spell check and grammar check functions of your word processor for academic English. If you cite a website remember that they change, so you must include the date when you accessed the page along with any search terms you used to get to the information that might not show up in the URL. The reason you give a full citation is to make it easy for someone to read exactly the same thing you did.

Anthropological Imagination

All work in this class should answer the question: what is anthropological about this text or experience? Back up and give the context to someone who hasn't taken this class. Explain what anthropology is, and how your project is an example of anthropology. You should locate the books or experiences in the relevant subfields of the larger discipline of biological anthropology; explain how your text or experience fits into the section headings in your textbook. You should demonstrate your ability to understand the anthropological issues discussed by the authors or observed. Try to always relate your observations to the topics covered in the textbook; try to find the spots in your textbook where it says something similar to what you're saying; it is a requirement that you must include citations (paraphrases or quotes) of your textbook.

Extra Credit

I offer a smörgåsbord of activities to apply the anthropological concepts you learn from your textbook, and compensate for problems you have with getting satisfactory course work in on time.

The most important element in all Extra Credit is to compare and contrast your event or experience with what it says in your textbook and give an anthropological perspective.

You can use other forms of communication besides academic English for most Extra Credit; such a journal, blog, hand written, illustrations, videos, etc.

Turn your Extra Credit in as soon as possible so I can approve it and give you feedback. If you turn it all in the last week of class, it may be unsatisfactory and there will be no way for me to let you know before giving you a final grade. Make sure to keep track of your Extra Credit on your Course Checklists. If you have late assignments that you need to make up for, just send me a copy of your Course Checklists, with a brief description of the Extra Credit in the notes box on the sheet next to the assignment you need to make up for. Then, I'll change your Incomplete assignment to Complete. I will also ask for your Course Checklists at the end of the semester when I determine your grade, and you need to make sure that each late assignments has a corresponding approved Extra Credit. Longer Extra Credit, like extra Critical Reviews, may count for more than one late assignment.

Below are some typical extra credit activities for you to choose from. Remember: the Extra Credit is just to compensate for when you didn't get a satisfactory Project Updates or Q&As in on time. Don't even think about trying to do everything here! The Annual Anthropology Calendar might suggest current events, and try to pick activities that you enjoy, that will help you work on a deficiency, or that further your academic career:

Continue the Discussion

Imagination Questions

At the end of most sections of the Textbook are thought provoking questions that don't have right or wrong answers. You're not limited by media, but your responses must engage with the concepts of biological anthropology. Label them clearly as answers to Imagination Questions, and post these along with your regular questions and answers in the Q&A forum for that week.

Library Tour

The Library may offer 30 minute tours on the second and third week of the semester, check the library website and see the schedule in the Anthropology Announcement folder

Additional Critical Reviews

You need to do two to get an A, but you can do up to ten. Extra Critical Reviews will make up for one to three late Project Updates or Q&As.

Quizzes

There are a few quizzes available on Canvas. They are linked as an item in the weekly learning module.

Museum or Lecture Write-up

Write an essay about a lecture or museum visit and compare it to the concepts presented in your textbook. Several events are mentioned in the the Anthropology Announcement folder, you can propose your own events, and I will announce more during the semester. Write-ups will make up for one to three late Project Updates or Q&As.

Anthropological Critiques of Video

Video Critiques are like Critical Reviews but less formal. Just watch the video, and compare and contrast it to what the Textbook says, and then post it in the Q&A for the Week covering that topic.

I encourage you do at least one Anthropological Critique of a Video for the primate ethology section.

To find videos, the Textbook includes many links, and the City College library has a Media collection with several good films. You can also just take a concept from the Textbook and put it in a search engine. For example, if you search for "Sickle Cell Anemia", you'll find over 100,000 videos, most of which will work for this assignment. It's not that important what video you choose, but just that you connect it to the ideas in the textbook.

Some videos are academically rigorous enough that they can be reviewed exactly the same way as a Critical Review, identifying the citation (director), hypothesis, background, method, data, etc, but you may also decide to critique the video from other anthropological perspectives, for example you can include more of your personal or aesthetic reflections. I expect the Critical Reviews to be formal, but you have more flexibility with the Anthropological Critiques of a Video. The most important requirement is that you relate your video back to ideas mentioned in your textbook.

Post your video to the appropriate Q&A. When posting the video, try to make it show up so other students can see the initial preview graphic and just click once to start playing the video. You want to embed the video by copying the html. For YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Ted and most other online video services, when you click on Share, go to the Embed function (get the embed code) and copy the html code. Instructions on how to embed videos on Canvas.

Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that deals both with how visual media helps us understand humans, and how we can use anthropological concepts to help understand visual media.

Anthropological Critiques of a Video will make up for one to three late Project Updates or Q&As.

Additional Project

You can do a second project for extra credit. Extra Projects will make up for one to ten late Project Updates or Q&As.

Find an Editor

Finding an Editor can happen anytime after you finish your Week 11 Project Update. Give the latest draft of your project to a native English speaker who is a university graduate and ask them to proofread it. Have the proofreader sign/initial the top of your draft, and include their university, degree, and date of graduation. Attach the marked-up copy to the Canvas assignment. Scan or photograph it if necessary. Consider incorporating their suggestions into your next draft. Where to find an outside academic not associated with this class? The English Center is a great resource but might not work for this Extra Credit, depending on which tutor you get. Maybe your boss? Another professor during their office hours? A family member? Try going downtown during lunch with a printout and a red pen and solicit random office workers?

Examen Extraordinaria

This is a Spanish term for a make-up final exam. They will take place during office hours of the last week of class. Contact me for details.

Honor's Contract

If you read all the above Extra Credit assignments and got really excited about doing all that extra work then consider doing an Honor's Contract. Honor's contracts are a great way for the kind of self-motivated student who ends up doing twice as much work as the rest of the class to get the brownie points they deserve. You enroll in a separate class, and you get a little "H" on your transcript, and bragging rights when transferring to four-year colleges. You attend this class and participate normally, but you add another layer of work on top.

Before you start the paperwork make sure to complete my requirements which include a draft of your plan as soon as possible (the Honor's Program needs the signed proposal by the middle of the third week), and a commitment to attend Office Hours regularly, or schedule a separate time if you can't make the regular one. Your contract must include a timeline with due dates for your proposed work. The most common honor's contract is serving as an editor for an issue of the City College Student Anthropology Journal which gives you more experience with anthropology and a nice line-item for your resume or college application. Honor's contracts are great, but you must be self-motivated because you are responsible for designing your own class and then carrying it out.

After making a plan with me, you'll need to fill out their very short Google Form (see the top of this syllabus for the CRN and other class info). More information from the Honors Program.

Plagiarism

Students are expected to be honest and ethical at all times in their pursuit of academic goals. I take plagiarism seriously. I teach you how to avoid plagiarism with the Week 2 Project Update: Scientific Writing Exercise". I ask you to check your Critical Reviews and article drafts for plagiarism using the TurnItIn Similarity Reports on Canvas.

Plagiarism problems are very different from not understanding anthropology, because they become a legal issue involving Policy 3100 of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Administrative Due Process. As soon as I detect plagiarism I will arrange an informal office conference to present you with my evidence, and allow you to respond. This conference may take the form of an exchange of emails. I may then proceed with academic and administrative sanctions. Academic sanctions are limited by State Chancellor's Legal Opinion 7-12 to receiving a zero for the entire assignment where plagiarism occurred. Administrative sanctions will be determined by the Disciplinary Officer appointed by the Dean of Student Affairs, and range from Admonition to Expulsion. You may appeal both the academic and administrative sanctions by petitioning the Dean of Student Affairs.

So falling into plagiarism can be as dangerous as leaving off a few little quotation marks, but avoiding plagiarism is really easy! You just need to tell the reader where you got your information from. You must cite your sources for all assignments. If you copy text word-for-word then you need to put it in "quotes" or format it as a block quote. If you use material from the textbook, even if it is not in quotes, you still need to include the page number where you found the information. If you use other sources, please include a full bibliography at the end of the assignment. If you consult websites, include the URL, and any search terms that I would need to get to see the same information you saw, and include the date that you looked at the webpage.

One aspect of science is that it must be reproducible. While defending your position, you need to make it easy for someone to come to the same conclusions that you did. You're not expected to reinvent the wheel, or come up with every thing from scratch; in an introductory class like this most of your writing should be regurgitation. You don't need to use a paraphrase app, you just need to practice the fundamental academic skill of incorporating an outside source into their own work, which Isaac Newton immortalized: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". You will practice avoiding plagiarism with the"Scientific Writing Exercise" and feel confident in your writing.

Academic Accommodations

If you have any disabilities that I need to be aware of, or need academic accommodations please let me know as soon as possible. If you find yourself having problems accessing the requirements, keeping up with the reading, or understanding the material, talk to me as soon as you see a problem. Don't wait until the end of class when there's no time to find accommodations. I'm willing to help with anything that gets in the way of you succeeding in this class, and I can at a minimum refer you other resources to help you with your specific problems. Office hours are great for this. It might help to think of me as a case manager as well as a professor. As far as I'm concerned, we're in this together and if you fail, so have I.

Student Success

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Problems

If you have an unresolved conflict during the class, you must first contact the course instructor in an attempt to resolve the problem. If the results are unsatisfactory, you should next contact the Department Chairperson. If the results are still unsatisfactory, you should contact the School Dean.

Student Responsibilities

Please refer to the "Student Rights and Responsibilities" section of the Student Handbook or College Catalog (see Policy 3100 and Procedure 3100.2). Students are responsible for officially withdrawing from classes they are no longer attending. Do not assume that the instructor will do this for you.

Drop Policy

Students who stop participating (posting to weekly discussions and submitting Project Updates) for 2 weeks may be dropped. The Last Date of Attendance is the last date of participating (submitting something).

Grades

This class uses contract grading, so there are no tests, no percentages, no points, and no final exam for this class. I determine your final grade based on your satisfactory completion of the weekly class requirements: the Project Updates and the Q&As. Contract grading means if you do all the work you get an A; if you don't do any work you get an F.

The and means that you have to do both the Project Updates and the Q&As to get the grade, e.g. if you did all your Q&As but you only did 8 Project Updates, you'll get a D.

Remember that late assignments are considered unsatisfactory until you complete them satisfactorily and do Extra Credit to make up for them being late.

Your Week 16 Q&A assignment will be submitting your completed Course Checklists to the assignment on Canvas.

I reserve the right to give you a higher grade based on my holistic evaluation of your performance: Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Poor, or Fail.

Course Checklists

Use these charts or worksheets to track how you're doing in the class and figure out how much work you need to do to get the grade you want. Transfer the information from Grades in Canvas to these Course Checklists. If you go to Grades in Canvas and the item has a checkmark, then you can transfer the checkmark or say "yes" in your Course Checklist. Otherwise, if the assignment in Canvas is blank or has an "X" than on your Course Checklist you need to leave it blank or say "no", and then explain in the notes column what the problem is. Sometimes it's just that I haven't graded the assignment, often it means that you had a problem with the assignment and need to fix it, and then do Extra Credit to make up for being late. Sometimes it means that I haven't graded your Extra Credit yet. The Course Checklists help us both keep track of your work and grade. If you have questions about your grade at any time, please fill out this chart and I'll check it against my records to make sure we're on the same page. At a minimum, I want to see them along with the self-reflection Project Updates, and on Week 16 to assign your final grade. There are 3 different Course Checklists: one for the Project Updates, one for the Questions & Answers, and one to list all of your Extra Credit. The Extra Credits should correspond to the notes section of your other Course Checklists; I know this kind of double-entry bookkeeping seems redundant but please copy the information into both places.

Here is a link to the above Course Checklists as a Google Doc that might be easier to update, print, and share with me; just start by making your own copy.

For example, let's say you submitted your Question for Week 3 Q&A after the deadline, no worries, so you would submit the question late anyway, and then do some Extra Credit, say Continuing the Discussion posting more answers to week 2 Q&A., to make up for being late. You would record on the Extra Credit Course Checklist "Continuing the Discussion Week 2" in the Extra Credit description column, and "Week 3 Q&A" for the for which late assignment? column; and copy the same information to the Q&A Course Checklist in the Week 2 row: in the completed? column you would leave it blank or say "no", in the notes column you would put something like "submitted late, did Continuing the Discussion Week 2 to make up for being late." After I look over your Extra Credit and your course worksheets and update your grade on Canvas, then you can go back and say "yes" in the completed? column. If you don't have a green check for the assignment in Grades in Canvas, your assignment is incomplete, and we still have some work to do.

Anthropology Annual Calendar

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get help?

drop into to the Office Hours at anytime without scheduling an appointment, or send me an email or through Canvas: try Pronto or send me a message. If you can't make the Office Hours, email me to set a more convenient time.

Is this the right class for me?

How does it fit into my Ed Plan?

Make sure to talk to a counselor, but both introductory anthropology classes count for many requirements.

What should I do?

Use the table of contents on this syllabus to get the details about your assignments. If after reading the syllabus you don't understand something, ask me for help.

When are my assignments due?

Do you accept late work?

Where do I turn in my assignments?

Submit your work in Canvas, unless otherwise noted. There are some assignments where you'll do the work on another site, and then report that you did it on Canvas, e.g. the last few Project Updates will be done on a shared Google Doc.

What's my grade?

You will receive feedback on your work in Canvas, but you need to keep your own Course Checklists up to date to stay track for getting an "A".

How do I know if I got credit for an assignment?

Check on Grades in Canvas. There are 3 options for each assignment: 1) a green check mark (or occasionally a number), 2) an X, or 3) a faint line. You want to get all green check marks, that means you're done with that assignment and you got credit. If it has an X that means there is a problem you need to fix, and the assignment is considered incomplete until you fix it. If it has a faint line, there a few possibilities: a) you didn't submit anything, b) I haven't graded it yet and will get to it soon, or c) it slipped through the cracks; please contact me if you turned the assignment in on time and the grading period has passed (one week from the Project Update or Answers due date).

Where do I find feedback on my work?

What if my assignment is incomplete?

a) Was it incomplete because of problems?

b) Was it good, but just late?

Do Extra Credit to make up for being late. If your assignment is marked as "Incomplete" because it was late, then in Canvas, add a comment to the assignment telling me which Extra Credit you are using to make up for that assignment, and if you haven't done the Extra Credit, you can often submit it there, as an attachment to the same late assignment. Then, update your Course Checklists with that information, so we can both track the work. If you have problems finding a good Extra Credit to do, just let me know.

Where do I post Critical Reviews?

I don't feel comfortable coming to Office Hours what should I do?

What should I do if I feel insecure about my writing ability?

Do I have to work in a group?

My group is having problems what should I do?

Prepare to cut your losses and do the work yourself. Make sure to give your fellow group members a clear message: either they do the work they agreed to by the deadline you all set, or you will leave the group.

I can't keep up with the work, should I drop this class?

Probably not, but talk to me during Office Hours and we'll figure how doable things are. If you're just confused about what to do, I can easily get you back on track for an "A". If you're too busy this semester, I can help you be as efficient as possible, and set you up to do the bare minimum to pass.

More Fine Print that should be in all syllabi:

The San Diego Community College District does not discriminate in its programs and activities on the basis of national origin, religion, age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, race or ethnicity, color, medical condition, genetic information, ancestry, sexual orientation, marital status, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, or military and veteran status, or because they are perceived to have one or more of the foregoing characteristics, or based on association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. Complaints of discrimination or harassment based on protected class, other than sex/gender, may be filed with the Site Compliance Officer (SCO) on your campus. For more information on how to file a complaint and/or to contact your SCO, please refer to the following link: http://hr.sdccd.edu/eeo/eeocomplaint.cfm

Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination based on sex in any educational institution that receives federal funding. The San Diego Community College District does not tolerate discrimination based on sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation, including: sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, sexual violence, relationship or intimate partner violence, and stalking. Students are asked to immediately report incidents to the Title IX Coordinator at (619) 388-6805 or by using the online reporting form available on the Title IX webpage: http://www.sdccd.edu/title ix Students may also report incidents to an instructor, faculty member, staff member, or member of the College Police Department, all of whom are required by law to notify the Title IX Coordinator of the contents of the report. If a student wishes to keep the information confidential, the student may speak with a campus mental health counselor or with health services provider. Information for contacting these resources is available at http://www.sdccd.edu/titleix/titleix_resourceguide_web.pdf

San Diego Community College District

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR SYLLABI

Please include the following information in your syllabi:

Attendance/Absences

It is the student's responsibility to drop all classes in which he/she is no longer participating (for online classes).
It is the student's responsibility to drop all classes in which he/she is no longer attending (for on campus classes).
It is the instructor's discretion to withdraw a student after the add/drop deadline (include date) due to excessive absences.

Students who remain enrolled in a class beyond the published withdrawal deadline, as stated in the class schedule, will receive an evaluative letter grade in this class (A, B, C, D, F).

Attendance: If the final grade in a class is affected by attendance (active participation in the class), it must be stated in the class syllabus as follows:

The final grade in this class will be affected by active participation, including attendance, as follows: (Instructor to define specifically how attendance, including participation, will affect final grade in the class)

Remember that attendance cannot be one of the standards for class grades, however participation can include the corresponding class points for participation.

Advisory for Faculty

When establishing expectations for participation/attendance it is strongly recommended that the “reasonableness” test be applied. In other words, if the classroom expectations for participation were challenged by a student, how would a jury of peers respond? It is also important that expectations are applied consistently and fairly for all students.

Examples of questionable practices:
Marking a student absent for being less than 5 minutes late (any number of unforeseen circumstances could have happened)
If the class total for participation points is 5 points, then marking off 2 points for being late for one class period is not reasonable. The standard should be spread out over the total number of class meetings in a reasonable manner.
Marking a student absent for leaving class to take a call on their cell phone (we don't know the nature of the call)
Marking a student absent for not bringing a textbook to class

If you have any questions regarding expectations for class participation please consult your dean.

Cheating/Plagiarism

Students are expected to be honest and ethical at all times in the pursuit of academic goals. Students who are found to be in violation of Administrative Procedure 3100.3 Honest Academic Conduct, will receive a grade of zero on the assignment, quiz, or exam in question and may be referred for disciplinary action in accordance with Administrative Procedure 3100.2, Student Disciplinary Procedures.

Student Code of Conduct

Students are expected to adhere to the Student Code of Conduct at all times. Students who violate the Student Code of Conduct may be removed from class by the faculty for the class meeting in which the behavior occurred, and the next class meeting.

For online classes: Student access to class is removed for one week (5 instructional days).
Acceptance of make-up work during the removal.

[Specify whether you will or will not accept make up work, since it is at the discretion of the instructor].
Incidents involving removal of a student from class will be reported to the college disciplinary officer for

follow up.
The Student Code of Conduct can be found in Board of Trustees Policy, BP 3100, Student Rights, Responsibilities, Campus Safety and Administrative Due Process posted on the District website at: http://www.sdccd.edu/public/district/policies/index.shtml

Students with disabilities who may need academic accommodations are encouraged to discuss their authorized accommodations from Disability Support Programs and Services (DSPS) with their professors early in the semester so that accommodations may be implemented as soon as possible.

The faculty member will work with the DSPS Office to ensure that proper accommodations are made for each student. By law, it is up to the DSPS Office, through the interactive process with the student, to determine which accommodations are appropriate, not the instructor. This includes accommodations in a clinical setting.

Accommodating Students with Disabilities:

For an online or hybrid course, consider this statement in your syllabus “I have made every effort to make this course accessible to all students, including students with disabilities. If you encounter a problem accessing anything in this course, please contact me immediately by email and also contact the college's Disability Support Programs and Services (DSPS) Office.”

For a face-to-face course, include these statements in your syllabus:

Students that need evacuation assistance during campus emergencies should also meet with the instructor as soon as possible to assure the health and safety of all students.

Instructors may contact DSPS if they have any questions related to authorized accommodations in their classroom.

In accordance with Title IX, absences due to pregnancy or related conditions, including recovery from childbirth, shall be excused for as long as the student's doctor deems the absences to be medically necessary. Students must notify the instructor in a timely manner and shall be afforded the opportunity to establish make up work or other alternative arrangements. If a student elects to withdraw from the course on or after census, a “W” shall be assigned and the district will work with the student to ensure that the W is not considered in progress probation and dismissal calculations.

For more information, you may contact the DSPS Office on your campus or the website at http://dsps.sdccd.edu/ or refer to Administrative Procedure, AP 3105.1 Academic Accommodations and Disability Discrimination for Students with Disabilities.

Prepared by Student Services: August 2016

	Project Idea #1	Project Idea #2	Project Idea #3
Your title for the possible Project
What kind of Project: Literature Review, Primate Observation, Action Anthropology, Public Health, other
Section of the Textbook most related to the topic
Week number and dates when it will be covered in class
citation (title, author, and year) of a journal article related to the topic

topic	book	Textbook sections	articles
paleoanthropology	Johanson, Donald and James Shreeve 1989 Lucy's Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor.	6	find 2 or more
psychology	Barrett, Deirdre 2010 Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran their Evolutionary Purpose.	5.3, 7	find 2 or more
race	Nelson, Alondra 2016 The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome.	2.4.4, 7.4	find 2 or more
language	Mithen, Steven 2005 The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body.	5, 7	find 2 or more
law	Wise, Stephen M. 2000 Rattling the Cage: Towards Legal Rights for Animals.	5.4, 8	find 2 or more
animal behavior	Wrangham, Richard W. et al. Eds. 1994 Chimpanzee Cultures.	5.3	find 2 or more
art	Chatterjee, MD, Anjan 2013 The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art.	7.5.3	find 2 or more
medicine and public policy	Pisani, Elizabeth 2008 The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS.	7.2, 7.5.1	find 2 or more
law enforcement	Steadman, Dawnie L. Wolfe Ed. 2009 Hard Evidence: Case Studies in Forensic Anthropology.	1.2.2	find 2 or more
heredity	Zimmer, Carl 2018 She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity	2, 7	find 2 or more
genetics	Doudna, Jennifer A. and Samuel H. Sternberg 2017 A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution.	2, 8	find 2 or more
genealogy	Sykes, Brian 2001 The Seven Daughters of Eve.	2, 6.13	find 2 or more

Q&A	completed?	notes
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16

Project Update	completed?	notes (what Extra Credit you did to make up for being late)
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16

Extra Credit description	for which late assignment?	notes