Community Action Website Project - Introductory Explanation
How does the project work?
Using the internet to draw students at various universities together into an intellectual community, the Community Action Website encourages students to consider ethical issues that lie at the interface of anthropology and the contemporary world. Participating in the Community Action Website project helps students improve both their critical thinking and writing skills.By actively addressing important ethical concerns, it provides students with a sense of engagement relating to the broader world as well as an understanding of how students from other universities, with different life-experiences, view the issue being addressed. Because students get involved in the project, it frequently leads to exciting class discussions. By connecting with students' own experiences, the Community Action Website makes anthropology come alive.
(1) During the semester a two and a half week time-period (termed an Action Period) is set aside for participating in the Community Action Website. The project is done outside class on a student's own time. During the two and a half week period of the project, students spend a total of approximately two to three hours on it. (its not that much time, plus you are missing class at least once during the time period due to a holiday).
(2) Students register for the project on-line at www.publicanthropology.net. In registering, a student pays a ten dollar registration fee which allows the student to participate in the project, use the project's software, and receive a free on-line copy of ANTHROPOLOGY IN AN ACTIVE VOICE. This book constitutes the project's main reading and is used as a lens for exploring ethical issues within the discipline. The reading is generally done the week prior to the website project and takes roughly two hours. No books need be ordered from the bookstore. Students can read the book on-line or print it out.
(3) Students write professional-style Op-Ed pieces that can be published in various local, state, and/or national newspapers or blogs. The goal is to give students the experience of writing for a larger audience, beyond the classroom, beyond their school, in a way that attracts attention and serious consideration. It allows them to not only understand how democracy works through discussions in the public sphere but effectively participate in the process.
(4) The website provides students, TAs and teachers with the needed background information to facilitate this Op-Ed writing process. A preliminary version of this information is here.
(5) After completing their own letters, students anonymously evaluate four Op-Ed pieces by other students without knowing who wrote them or which schools they are from. During this peer review process, students are drawn into reflecting not only on the perspectives presented in other students' Op-Eds but on how they, themselves, performed in respect to the grading criteria. At the end of the evaluation process, students receive feedback on how other students viewed their letters.
(6) The Op_Ed pieces with the highest grades are declared model or winning pieces. Students can, if they wish, add their names in support to one or more of these Op-Eds. In a sense, the Op-Eds become petitions, strengthening the arguments they make.
(7) Students are encouraged to publish their Op-Ed pieces in local, national, or international newspapers or blogs (with, perhaps, a selection of supporting students and/or schools).
(8) To add strength to the students' efforts to facilitate change, the Community Action Website is sponsoring -- in co-ordination with students' Op-Ed pieces -- a $30,000/year media campaign to reinforce the students' pieces. This media campaign is being funded by the Community Action Website project. The hope is, by entwining students' pieces with a media campaign, much public attention will be focused on the problem being addressed and move anthropology beyond simply providing information that others -- may or may not use in their own way for their own ends -- to actually being a political force that, through the students' efforts, can bring real change, do real good.
Any questions will be answered as we approach October, the date our class will pariticipate in this year's project.
- Edward Gonzalez-Tennant
