Introduction to African American Studies: AFST_1714_90200_200909
The course surveys the revolutionary discipline that was founded by activist scholars who were critical of the ethnocentrism in higher education curriculum in the US and who successfully struggled for the funding of Black Studies in the late 1960s. More than 40 years later, the discipline is still thriving on many campuses, offering students much needed diversity content in the higher education they receive through certificates, minors, majors and graduate programs in different programs structured as centers, programs or departments across the country. This course introduces the students to the key founding theories, epistemologies, methodologies, problems and prospects of the dynamic discipline.
Onwubiko Agozino, Instructor and Sara Macdonald, Teaching Assistant
Attended a Scholar workshop as a new faculty member in 2009
Problem-posing approach to education with emphasis on open discussions and in line with The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire
Contributions to the class blog indicate that the students were learning the materials and also collaborating in researching relevant materials and posting for online discussion.
The textbook appeared dated in terms of the statistical records presented but that gave the class an excellent opportunity to research and update the statistics through postings to the blog and reports back to the in-class discussions.
The students learned a lot as is evident in their open comments in class as to how their opinions had changed following exposure to the open debates in the class. This is also evident in the way they responded to questions from one another on the online blog in Scholar
The students could easily drop their assignments in the Scholar drop boxes, the instructor could click on web links from the Scholar copy of the sullabus and access relevant articles or video clips for class discussion; and some students chose the option of producing short videos in lieu of the term paper and we showed some of the videos in class for discussion. Some others chose to perform service learning as one of their two essays for the class and some reported back to the class using the blog function in Scholar.For instance, one student reported that she tutored an immigrant on the citizenship test and the person scored 100% in the test.
The Teaching Assistant provided excellent support for the students by reading and commenting on their essays in detail but referred the difficult questions to me. For instance, a student only needed a pass in the class and did not want to work harder for it. We advised the student that aiming for just a pass might be risky because if you miss it narrowly, it would be a fail. Why not aim for an A and even if you get a B, it will still be recoreded as a pass but you would have enjoyed learning more? The student eneded up with a B.
Video essays in place of term papers, class blogs, service learning
| Attachment | Size |
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| afst 1714 syll 9-2.pdf | 319.46 KB |
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