Cultural Anthropology Week 11: Make It On the Run

The second exam brings an opportunity to work on my exam-making skills. The first exam had some things I wanted to change. I might have gotten too into making the test go from easy to hard, with easy being really easy (“What is anthropology?”) and the hardest was very hard (“How many morphemes are in this sentence?). The second exam will still have ramping difficultly, but with a less extreme curve. Also, why the questions got too difficult, there were too few of them. Everyone was done– well, everyone had done all they could– well before the half-hour mark of the hour-long exam. I felt comfortable in bumping the number of multiple choice questions from 15 to 25. Looking back, 15 is really a very small amount of questions.

Actually writing the exam took place on the road. On a family trip to visit my brother’s house, I brought along the iPad and keyboard and typed the test in the passenger seat. I just wrote what was on my mind, which I think goes along with what I think are the most important points. By the time we went to my brother’s house and back, two 40 minute trips, I had a finished draft of the exam.

Back at my own desk, I went through the draft to tally the number of questions that addressed each lecture. I had more questions about kinship and religion than I had for gender and race, so I evened them out by replacing some of the questions. I also reordered them all in roughly easy-to-hard order. Then it was off to the campus print center!

In class, I addressed a few questions the students had about what we had learned so far. The questions were very apt and they all actually related to one of the test questions. Right before the exam, I brought out a book called Mindset by Carol Dweck. The college gave out copies of this book for a professional development book club and the meeting happened to be after this class. The gist of Dweck’s book is that having a growth mindset of accepting challenges as opportunities to learn produced longer term success. In her experiments, she gave a half hour talk on mindset to various classes with impressive results. I figure an impromptu minute-long talk to my class before the exam would not hurt.

Test completion took more time than in the previous exam, but only one person was pushing against the deadline (he had come in to class late). I had fewer questions about the exam as well. I also noticed that people were in better spirits this time. I don’t have the tests graded yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if grades were improved.

The rest of the class ended up being a lecture on technology, as the syllabus stated. Last week, I was looking for a better topic, but I warmed up to the old plan. The lecture was formatted differently than the others, which is a good change of pace. I delved into how anthropologists approached technology via models such as cultural ecology and cultural materialism. Then, I went over a few of the major technological developments in human history and prehistory, starting with stone tools and ending up at information technology. The slide on alcohol was an especially big hit with the students, learning about different ingredients and fermentation processes, including using spit as a catalyst for chicha, or Andean maize beer.

The next lecture, on globalization, will be the last class-length topic, well after discussing the exam. In a way, this is the beginning of the end for the anthropology class, as we head towards the conclusion of anthropology’s place in the world. Phase one is learning about how globalization has high potential for abuse and exploitation, though there are good aspects as well. See you after class!

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