Developing Global Sensibilities through a Technology-Enabled Active Learning Anthropology Curriculum

Abstract

The current global human environment is a diverse mixture of cultures and technologies, and university educators face daunting tasks to help their students develop competencies with both human and machine attributes of the modern world. This chapter presents the historical foundations, the pedagogical theoretical underpinnings, and illustrative examples from the implementation of a curriculum of technology-enabled active learning within the undergraduate anthropology program at a moderately sized, commuter campus in the Midwestern United States. Technology-enabled active learning has demonstrably improved the experience of undergraduate students who enroll in anthropology classes as majors, minors, or general education students by affording them new abilities, including the recognition of global information resources, the contextualization of their education in spatiotemporal terms, the development of an understanding of sociocultural and politico-economic connective webs, and the skilled capacity to productively create and critically analyze information with a peer cohort through networked information technologies.