This project created a supportive research community amongst postgraduates at all stages of their research, and engaged in critical reflection on both the ethnographic method and the pedagogic process. The seminar met weekly over three terms in the first year. A committed group of twenty research students, both pre- and post-fieldwork, actively planned, organised and facilitated the weekly two-hour seminar. The tasks were shared amongst the participants, so that everyone developed presentational and organisational skills. Through collaboration and peer-support, the seminar gave students the confidence to tackle cutting- edge theoretical issues, and conscientised them to the politics of the learning process itself. In the first year, the seminar organised two additional one-day workshops - a reflection of people’s enthusiasm and the project’s success. One of these workshops undertook a collective evaluation of the organisation of the seminars, and the learning processes involved. In particular, the group made a critical analysis of levels and styles of participation, the operation of hierarchies, and the meaning of student ‘empowerment’. The experiences of the seminar have been recorded and disseminated through a variety of means, including a web-site, professionally designed postcards and pamphlets, and several academic articles. These have provided guidance and inspiration for the next cohort of SOAS students, and a resource for others organising similar such seminars in the future. External evaluators gave the project a highly favourable assessment, and were particularly impressed by its potential for new forms of postgraduate training. In the second year, under a new team of student facilitators, the seminar continued its weekly meetings, involving the new first year research students. Amongst its other achievements are a national post-graduate workshop, a follow-up to the Marett report (See Network Findings 6). This made a submission to the ESRC Postgraduate training consultation. Plans for an on-line graduate anthropology journal are also underway.

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The project comprises a series of three workshops, bringing together postgraduate research students from the Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Cultural History at the University of Aberdeen, and from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. The first workshop was held in St Andrews in November 2001, the second in Aberdeen in February 2002, and the third at ‘The Burn’, Edzell in May 2002. The workshops have promoted the transfer of ideas and experience, especially between post- and pre-fieldwork students, and enabled them to contribute to each other’s work. They provide an additional strand of training in accordance with ESRC guidelines, which may be incorporated into M.Res. structures being developed in both institutions. They have helped to create the critical mass needed for critical debate, and to foster intellectual links between anthropologists in the two institutions.

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We followed a rural Kenyan mother of six children during her latest pregnancy and during the weeks after giving birth, filming everyday life and childcare in the family. The material was edited into a 68 minute video that was used for teaching medical anthropology alongside written sources about health and healing in the same village.

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Widening participation in higher education is clearly on social policy and academic agendas with targets of fifty percent of 18-30 year olds having access to higher education by 2010 (DfEs, 2001). The 'culture of leaving at 16', the increasingly questionable pathway of those supposedly failing to make appropriate, even educated, transitions through school to university, is heavily coded as a working-class problem (Archer et al., 2003; Thomas et al., 2002; Quinn, 2002; Modood, 2004; Thomas et al., 2002). This C-SAP funded project explores student involvement in widening participation initiatives at Newcastle University and the ways that students promote and market their university and higher education more generally. It seeks to investigate what widening participation messages are disseminated by students, how these are taken up and/or resisted, and the interactions between university students and 'local' school pupils. The idea of peer led discussion, whereby 'sameness' is encouraged and endorsed, is positively promoted within student tutoring programmes. However, this study found a sharpening of notions of 'us' and 'them' amongst many student tutoring participants and a vocalisation of educational success stories versus educational 'failures'. While participation in such programmes may be a way that students can contribute to their locality and foster career skills, this study interrogates the scope of 'all round benefits' in widening participation and suggests that social class is mobilised in constructions of the 'good student' as against the 'bad pupil'.

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This project identifies factors affecting recruitment and retention on Politics, Sociology and Criminology undergraduate programmes at UCLAN in order to facilitate and inform a review of current recruitment and retention strategies. In addition, it provides student feedback on current curriculum design and delivery in order to facilitate further reflection and discussion on the social science curriculum. The information derived from this project will add to the current body of research on these issues and will be used as a basis for assessment and revision of current practice. It is intended that the project will raise staff awareness, as well as possibly lead to the introduction of a more interdisciplinary approach in the teaching of social science at UCLAN.

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* PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT * Many anthropology graduates work outside conventional academic anthropology, but it is clear that students are not always aware of their options in applied careers. This project addressed this knowledge gap by developing, refining and delivering interactive workshops for postgraduate anthropology students in the UK. This report outlines the background to the project, the process of the development and delivery of the workshops and content of student evaluations. In the appendices, there is workshop material which may be used by those wishing to organise and facilitate similar workshops. Potential future users of the material are merely asked to seek permission from the reports authors’ before doing so.

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This project has explored a variety of ‘innovative’ teaching and learning methods and environments in relation to an undergraduate module taught at the University of Durham [Queen’s Campus, Stockton] which deals with applications of anthropology. The developments covered include the extensive use of computer-based teaching aids combined with a problem-based, distance-learning approach (PBDL). As background to these changes we surveyed all those who graduated between 1995-02 to find out more about their use of anthropology in their subsequent careers. It is hoped that the materials assembled in the development of the module will be made more widely available to the UK anthropology teaching community via the internet. The Project Rationale Since 1993 the Human Sciences programme which runs at the Queen’s Campus [Stockton] has offered a third stage optional module entitled Knowledge and Practice [K&P]. This undergraduate module is unique in that it combines applied anthropology with professional and practice issues. In its original form K&P was delivered as a single- semester, ten-credit module. The aim of the C-SAP project has been to convert this module into a year-long [twenty-credit] format that incorporates distance learning using Blackboard software (Durham University On-Line aka DUO). The reasons for these changes were a) to make the module accessible to students on the Durham University Campus as well as at Queen’s, thereby facilitating cross-campus integration between sites that are 20 miles apart and b) to change the module’s length in order to comply with University policy on removing single semester modules from undergraduate provision. In addition to these pragmatic considerations we were also mindful of the pedagogical rationale for these changes: · The possibility that problem-based distance learning (PBDL) combined with on-line teaching methods will encourage independent learning, reasoning and key skills in communication. · PBDL and associated group work now offer students the opportunity to experience a learning environment that is flexible, stimulating and innovative. It potentially encourages students to become reflexive learners. · PBDL is a particularly useful method where a range of different media need to be incorporated [eg videos, on-line articles as well as conventional texts]. · Teaching via Durham University On-Line (DUO) is a useful tool beyond provision of electronic lecture notes and is continually opening new pedagocial possibilities. For example, in theory it enables the creation of horizontal communication and the formation of discussion groups as an adjunct to lectures and tutorials. · Electronic communication facilitates group work and collective problem-solving by allowing students to work according to their own time constraints [eg overcoming the problem of integrating work and childcare responsibilities which would otherwise inhibit possibilities for group work]. · Feedback on DUO at Durham had indicated that it was extremely popular with students but only if it was introduced carefully and with clear explanations about methodology, use and techniques. However, experience of those using DUO has indicated that students show amazing speed and ability to grasp new concepts, especially where they are increasingly familiar with computer-based facilities. Within the last two years alone, since the introduction of DUO to the university the tool has moved from a novel gimmick to one that students all expect to see in place on most undergraduate programmes, as a matter of course. · The embrace of systems such as DUO has advantages for staff in terms of the virtualisation of the classroom. The main advantages are organisational flexibility, a facilitatory rather than directive role and potential time-saving. Procedure At the outset, an anthropologist conversant with ICT [Janet Starkey] was assigned the role of project worker. We elicited support with the PBDL elements of the project from the University’s Learning Technologies Team partly to draw on their technical expertise but also because we felt that the issues addressed by the project could have relevance to other disciplines within the University and beyond. In terms of the content of the module we had to consider three elements a) that this is a third year module taught to undergraduates who have specialised in anthropology b) that a core of applied anthropology is required in the module and c) that the students’ engagement had to be appropriate for a distance-learning approach. In view of these elements, we decided that a significant element of the course would be a case-study approach informed by PBDL methodology. The approach would also involve team work in responding to realistic dilemmas using initiative and judgement based on plausible evidence [gathered from the internet as well as more conventional sources]. This approach also provided us with the opportunity to draw on the expertise of other members of the Department who have worked as applied anthropologists. It was essential that the scenarios we were to create covered a wide spectrum of anthropological interests, including biological and medical anthropology, as well as developmental, ecological and socio-cultural topics. The PBDL case studies that our colleagues came up with were as follows: · The siting of a Gypsy camp in a residential area · The problem of prioritisation of funds to NGOs serving street children in the developing world · The conflicts arising from eco-tourism and traditional ways of life in the Danube Delta · Being an expert witness in an inquest into a case of cot death. We then had the problem of how to ensure consistency between the different examples. We did this by asking the relevant experts on these issues to develop their own PBDL scenarios and provide us with all the relevant case materials, references, illustrations, data etc. that students would need to arrive at a plausible solution to the set problem. Meetings were then organised at which the structuring of the material was discussed prior to placing it on DUO.

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The anthropologymatters web-site represents the efforts of a group of post-graduates to encourage and facilitate the creation of a national (and international) anthropological network. Since early 2003 it has also acted as the official ASA postgraduate network. The overall aim of the project is to encourage critical engagement with the process of being disciplined into anthropology. In order to stimulate discussion on the production of anthropological knowledge anthropologymatters focuses on training and teaching techniques, and the process of research and writing. Currently the web-site features an academic journal (with five editions on-line and recognised by SOSIG), a directory of anthropological researchers and a JISCMAIL e-mail list for the dissemination of information.

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The anthropologymatters web-site represents the efforts of a group of post-graduates to encourage and facilitate the creation of a national (and international) anthropological network. The overall aim of the project is to encourage critical engagement with the process of being disciplined into anthropology. In order to stimulate discussion on the production of anthropological knowledge anthropologymatters focuses on training and teaching techniques, and the process of research and writing. Currently the web-site features an academic journal (three back issues are already available on-line) and a directory of anthropological researchers. A moderated discussion forum and a resources section are under construction. A JISCMAIL e-mail list has also been set up. Official institutional links with the ASA are currently being negotiated.

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Since the 1960s and Hood’s emphasis on the importance of ‘bi-musicality’ (Hood 1960) – gaining musical skills in two different traditions - ethnomusicologists have debated the role of performance as part of the ethnomusicology curriculum. Today, ethnomusicologists generally agree that performance is a necessary aspect of the study of musics from around the world. Performance through participation in an ensemble (group performance work) is a feature of all ethnomusicology modules offered at Queen’s University Belfast. Such performance work is regarded as contributing to the general acquisition of musical skills, not to ‘bi-musical’ skill, and as a way into understanding social-cultural processes. Assessment methods emphasise the importance attached to the teaching and learning of performance at QUB. Experiential and project-based learning approaches involving performance are being further developed at QUB as a result of current research and teaching interests. This workshop held at Queen’s University Belfast in Spring 2002 facilitated further reflection on current practices in view of approaches taken by ethnomusicologists in other contexts, nationwide, in the United States and elsewhere in Europe. It also enabled QUB initiatives to be shared with colleagues from other institutions.

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Two Brookes anthropology graduates carried out a nationwide survey of lecturers in the anthropology of art and their students, exploring what they would like from a website dedicated to the anthropology of art. The results influenced and informed the creation of a dedicated website, which is now up and running, and will continue to be developed.

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In September 2000 an undergraduate exchange programme was launched between the Anthropology departments of the University of East London (UEL) and the University of New Mexico (UNM). This project evaluates some of the academic and personal benefits of the programme for the students of both universities. In addition, a brief description is provided of the support system set up to help students benefit from their sojourn in the host country.

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All members of the Sociology Programme attended an “Away Day” to address issues in relation to learning, teaching and assessment. The away day was in preparation for Academic Review and also the future development of the Sociology Programme.

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Despite having been taught previously at the University of Stirling in the 1980s, there has been no Anthropology subject group at the university for the past decade and no formal undergraduate teaching provision in the subject area. In 2001, the departments of Applied Social Science and Religious Studies began exploring the opportunity to re-establish the subject with the intention of building up an Anthropology BA degree. To develop the planning of this initiative, the project held an away-day, bringing together staff members in the two departments with an external consultant, to discuss a strategy for establishing an Anthropology undergraduate degree at Stirling.

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The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of students' expectations towards, and experience of, university life, in line with the Higher Education Academy focus on the student learning experience. We hope to disentangle and elucidate the ways in which students embed themselves into higher education, and how participation in unversity life relates to other areas of their lives, such as the wider city life, family life, friendships, or their personal economies.

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This project developed a web-teaching resource linking a group of documentary video films made by local students in the Indian steel town Bhilai to Prof. Jonathan Parry's papers relating to Bhilai. Feedback to the films from students was gathered at two seminars in London and Manchester to help develop the web-site.

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* Please download the pdf file to read the complete report * Although social anthropology is a fieldwork-based discipline, the undergraduate learning experience is predominantly text-based. The aim is to use participant observation, university feedback documents, semi-structured and structured interviews, workshop discussion data and questionnaire data to reflect upon undergraduate course design for applied anthropology insofar as it might be improved to develop student awareness of the skills required to become a professional anthropologist. The funding application was made in order to undertake project work set out by the requirements of the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (PGCert) aimed at newly appointed academic staff at the University of Durham, to create teaching portfolios, write essays and do research into teaching. The central requirement of the PGCert is to draw a model of teaching learning and assessment from one’s own teaching experience, which in order to do I took on tutoring and lecturing in the anthropology department where I am a post-doctoral researcher. The aim of the PGCert is to examine and (where possible) improve a course for which one is responsible. In 2001 when this research began, changing student expectations of university learning in anthropology were unclear. Data did not exist about students’ backgrounds, prior experiences or future aspirations and debates were taking place in the UK academic literature about the uncertainty of student recruitment, academic identity politics and professional status for the graduates of the universities. It has been the central aim of this research to investigate a practical application of the idea that better understanding of student aspirations can facilitate a better alignment of undergraduate courses to student requirements while still conveying core disciplinary concepts. In particular, I am interested in the potentially transformative process of going beyond text-based learning via practical problem-based course components and the variability in the adoption or not of an anthropological identity at the completion of a three year course of study. There seems to be no consensuses as to the role of higher education but the following statements give us some idea of the conflicting pressures on university teachers to redesign courses to meet new and changing expectations. On one hand, definitions deal with designing learning environments which promote higher order cognitive abilities: "The development of students’ intellectual and imaginative powers; their understanding and judgement; their problem solving skills; their ability to communicate; their ability to see relationships within what they have learned and to perceive their field of study in a broader perspective. It must aim to stimulate an enquiring analytical and creative approach, encouraging independent judgement and critical self-awareness." UK Council for Academia 2002 On the other hand, less idealistic observers focus on the political and practical way in which others, including many students and politicians might view HE: "There is a very credible economics literature which suggests that higher education may be no more than a screening device which allows employers to identify the more able potential employees from the rest. Thus, graduates’ wages are higher because they are inherently more productive, for example because they work harder or have more innate ability, but not because they are better educated. If this is the case then the current system of HE may simply be providing employers with a privately cheap, but socially expensive (i.e. wasteful), screening system." Maskell and Robinson, 2001 Both extracts summarise the respective stances of idealist liberal education and pragmatic cost-benefit economic analysis of the sector. Arguments supporting an adherence of an admixture of these two viewpoints within the undergraduate body suggest that courses need to be tailored carefully between the Scylla of disengaged academe and the Charybdis of managerialist general skills training. At the time of the application, the Institute for Learning and Teaching (ILT) and Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) (now replaced by 2004 Higher Education Academy (HEA) replaces) offered membership and accredited PGCert courses which place the new teacher in higher education in an idealistic world. Here one can design one’s own course and assessment profile reflexively according to variations in student engagement of both the content (subject matter) and the context (aspects of their course environment) of learning. By being aware of variation exhibited by our own students it is intended that we reflect on the development of our own teaching practice. Such reflective practice constitutes a vital part of what is referred to as ‘student-centred teaching’ insofar as it helps the new teacher to develop not simply a mental model of ‘teaching’, but of ‘learning and teaching’. In practice, having undertaken this course of research it became apparent that most of the findings were impossible to put into practice given the reasonable but limited discretion, trust and self-determination shown to part-time teaching staff. Although it is difficult to discuss student learning without addressing the problems faced by TAs in their teaching, this project focuses on using the data drawn from successive cohorts of students to suggest modifications to an applied anthropology course that would better facilitate the adoption of an anthropological identity. This C-SAP funded project seeks to redesign the current Change and Development module in social anthropology at Durham (a) to strengthen and communicate the agenda of applied fieldwork, (b) to enhance student awareness of and actual employability, and (c) to advance current teaching strategy through practical involvement of undergraduate learning in community and international "development" issues. The course has been redesigned so that anthropologists who are currently employed in the field of development can act as the source of primary ethnographic data for undergraduates taking the module to connect secondary literature and grey material with first hand accounts of the development project that they have chosen to study as a part of their course. The research proposed to link students with practitioners, incorporate student material into course design and to inform students of current debates within the discipline involving professionalisation and application of anthropology outside of academe.

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The project specifically examined the impact of the first year course ‘Introduction to Social Anthropology’ on students' subsequent choice of sociology or anthropology as their principle discipline within the department. It was carried out at a time of great uncertainty about the future of the joint Anthropology and Sociology department at Keele. The university had long prided itself on its interdisciplinary liberal education model, though this had become increasingly structured and formalised in recent years. The project explored the potential for the collaborative development of ‘core’ disciplinary courses whilst maintaining a multidisciplinary environment. At a time of institutional change when the future of both anthropology and sociology at Keele University were in question, the project attempted to understand and foster the connections rather than the differences between the two disciplines. The research team looked at student perceptions of the first year anthropology course, analysed student records, held focus groups with students and carried out interviews with staff. The research project concluded with recommendations for an appropriate curriculum for first-year anthropology students taking a multidisciplinary degree.

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An advanced level course for third year undergraduates and MA level students was co-taught by the London office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Dr. Brad K. Blitz. The course was aimed at students across the University and included students currently enrolled in the Anthropology and Sociology undergraduate degree programmes and the MA in International Service. Christian Mahr (UNCHR Training Unit) and Clare Graham (UNHCR Information Unit) lead the instruction. Additional speakers from UNHCR and other related agencies also participated in the delivery of this module. Students were also taken on visits to refugee agencies in London.

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The project explored strategies for building students’ writing and evaluation skills, as well as peer collaboration, aiming to find ways to help students become more confident, critical, autonomous and cooperative learners in a context of expansion of student numbers and increased pressures on tutors’ time. It examined the usefulness of exercises involving peer assessment of students’ written work prior to submission to tutor, and student self-evaluation of their own written work as the initial step of a structured feedback dialogue between student and tutor. We concluded that although initially fearful, most students found the experience of reading a peer’s work helpful and enjoyable (e.g, in seeing alternative approaches, in reality checking about their own strengths/weaknesses), and that the peer exercise was productively paired with a self-assessment exercise. But we found that students had numerous (and in our view, justifiable) anxieties associated with being asked to ‘judge’ a peer’s writing. The research revealed that ‘peer engagement’, emphasising the development of a sympathetic critical reader and ongoing dialogue and collaboration, is a more appropriate model than ‘peer assessment’.

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The nature of this project was determined by our desire to enrich the experiences of anthropology students in Lampeter, and more broadly Wales, in a variety of ways: to encourage student networking, to inform and educate our group about anthropological possibilities on the internet, and finally to improve the Lampeter anthropology library run by students since 1999. These goals informed the planning process that we undertook to design a series of actions and events that compose our C-SAP funded project. To facilitate student networking we founded a student body that could potentially unite all the students of anthropology in Wales. It is called the Network of Welsh Anthropology Students (NWAS) and it was first announced to students at the University of Wales’ annual anthropology and sociology conference in March 2002. The sixteen students that signed an initial mailing list were the first members of NWAS. The organization now boasts a website, made possible with C-SAP funding, and it also hosted an intensive day long event open to all interested students that took place in Lampeter on the 25th October 2002. Although the event was intended to bring students of anthropology, in Welsh institutions, together so that they can share and enjoy friendship and ideas, it also did more. With C-SAP funding NWAS was able to provide a range of engaging workshop sessions, themed around “anthropology and the internet” which equipped students with important skills, and inspired students for their own study.

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Connecting with Anthropology was intended to be the first step in establishing longer-term relations with certain Fife schools through developing a widening participation project based on a pupil-centred approach. The aim was to involve postgraduates in researching perceptions amongst school officers, and those involved in widening participation projects in St Andrews, and to ethnographically examine the new social relationships produced by discourses of 'social inclusion', 'wider access' and ‘widening participation’. In its broadest aspirations this pilot project achieved several of the aims, although in narrow terms its major finding was that even the pilot project envisaged was too ambitious for a first step.

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The original aim was to create an interactive web site (commonly known as a virtual learning environment, VLE) to support a new M.Sc. degree in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford. All course materials, together with timetables, lecture schedules, etc. would be placed on the web site, together with numerous resources. In addition, students would be able to upload their own contributions. A part-time researcher would create the site, monitor the students’ use of it, and interview them periodically on its effectiveness. It was intended that the site would provide a model for other graduate degree courses in the department and possibly beyond. In the event it was not possible to create a VLE (see sections below for details) and a ‘static’ web site was instead created. While consulted by the students on the degree they did not use it intensively and remained wary of the intentions behind it. The project and its outcomes are nonetheless very instructive.

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This project aimed to bring together and develop knowledge and expertise about undergraduate fieldwork projects, drawing on expertise and experience from across the UK. The project started with a survey, bibliographical research, running a colloquium and setting up a web site. It quickly took on a further life of its own, expanding to include a further workshop and development of a collaborative field school for students and staff from three universities. In addition there was a general contribution to curriculum change discussions and developments that will potentially affect experience at several further universities such as Hull and Kent which now have new programmes in planning.

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In staff-student meetings students have been critical of teaching and learning sociology and anthropology almost solely in abstraction. This is doubly ironic. Both disciplines concern themselves with social and cultural reality. And, ethnography, a key approach they share, is amongst the most grounded of methodological and writing practices. This project set out to provide to students in the University a venture in experience-based teaching learning. At another level, and largely through participation in workshops and through reflexive ethnographic research on the venture itself by students and staff alike, it offers and disseminates a reflexive assessment of experience-based learning as a learning strategy. We consider the full range of aims and activities of the project in this report. At its heart was a staff and undergraduate student field trip to the former-Yugoslavia, and we outline this in detail below.

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* Full report available to download * In its 2002-03 Strategic Review, the Royal Anthropological Institute proposed several measures through which to address a continuing problem for anthropology - the lack of public awareness of the discipline and the significance of its contribution to public affairs. Once possible area of activity concerns the the introduction of anthropology into the secondary school and FE curriculum; another, more proximate area involves identifying the potential of the museum sector to engage with anthropology education as well as widening public awareness of anthropology more generally. This project takes the latter recommendations further through developing and piloting an anthropology outreach project in Brighton and Hove which, if successful, can serve as a template linking schools/FE colleges, museums and anthropology departments more widely.

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This project compiled and published Discovering Anthropology: A Resource Guide for Teachers and Students. Intended to be practical, accessible and useful, the guide conveys the scope and content of contemporary anthropology. It aims to represent and promote the discipline to prospective students, their teachers and other non-specialist audiences, and influence the way in which anthropology is viewed beyond the university setting. The concern to broaden anthropology’s appeal beyond academia is one that can be traced back to the 1960s, when a series of conferences discussed the possibility of teaching anthropology in schools as an ‘A’ level subject. These meetings resulted in the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) producing the first Teachers’ Resource Guide in 1973. The ‘Discovering Anthropology’ project took up that idea and completely modernised and revised the Guide for a fifth edition, including a great deal more detail on careers and the specialist sub-disciplines of anthropology. The project was a joint initiative involving the National Network of Teaching and Learning Anthropology (NNTLA) and the RAI.

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A frequently heard complaint from undergraduate anthropology students is that anthropology – a fieldwork-based discipline– is taught in universities almost exclusively as a text-based study. Initially sparked by the idea of incorporating a substantial element of fieldwork into our existing BA , this proposal developed into the setting up a new BSc programme incorporating sustained periods of individual field research in cultures distinct from the students’ home cultures, preparing students for that work (new courses in methodology and an intensification of practical training prior to fieldwork), and providing practical instruction in students' final year in using anthropological training after university (unit in anthropological careers plus internships).

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A new method of encouraging interactive teaching and learning was introduced into a class called “Evolutionary Medicine” at University College London. A series of “guests” were invited into the class and informally interviewed about their area of specialisation. The sessions were also videotaped for the class. Students reported a strong preference for this mode of teaching and learning compared to traditional lectures. In particular, they preferred sessions where two guests with contrasting views were interviewed. Students appeared to pay more attention and engage more with the topic in this type of interactive session.

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This workshop aimed to provide an opportunity to take a methodology developed in the Manchester School and extend it to a contemporary situation. The case study method, which had been developed to address the analysis of conflict in social change, was considered for its applicability to the postcolonial world.

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Despite fast-growing interest in what research with children can contribute to ethnographic analyses, anthropologists generally understand little of how to go about it, nor why the methods used may differ from those used with adults. Because of growing interest among research students we decided to organise a series of seminars and a workshop to (i) explore and develop field research methods suitable for use with children and (ii) assess existing methods for finding out children’s psycho-social condition – those used by NGO practitioners for example. The major problem with such methods for rapid assessment is that they tend to be based on unexamined assumptions: about personhood, about what a child is, about what constitutes psycho-social health and well-being, and how they are to be achieved. Our project aimed, via an inter-disciplinary discussion, to address various methods for researching children’s lives. We wanted wide-ranging and inter-regional contributions that would enable us to (i) begin to form a discussion network for researchers in child-focused anthropology working in various UK universities; (ii) produce a Methods Handbook, for Masters and research students and (iii) ultimately, a collection of papers bearing on the methodological and theoretical significance of anthropological fieldwork with children.

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Using digital footage from two areas in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, the projects will produce a set of elearning tools to enable undergraduates and postgraduates in the social sciences to make sense of some of the complex issues involved in academic activism and international development. The primary outcome will take the form of a DVD and hardcopy booklet. The elearning tools will be particulary suitable for anthropology, geography, sociology and development studies.

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This conference, held in December 2003 in Oxford, provided a forum for graduate students and junior researchers to discuss and reflect on the changing nature of anthropological fieldwork. The conference, entitled Future Fields, brought together more than eighty postgraduate participants, of whom almost forty gave papers over three days. Twenty-five universities from six different countries were represented. For many the conference offered the first chance to present their work in such a public arena, and so was a key rite of passage, as well as an important training opportunity. The conference built on the experiences of previous C-SAP funded initiatives, such as the Anthropology of Change conference in 2000, and it is hoped that the event will now become a regular aspect of ASA provision for its postgraduate community.

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This project has led to the development of a number of facilities to improve the usability of the CSAC and ERA Web Sites for learning and teaching, including new ways of navigating the material through subject headings, modularisation of the documents, and user-authoring of pages based on the resources, as well as other content-based means of accessing content. Over the next few months a "grid" service deploying our resources (in addition to the present web-based service) will provide the first Anthropology E-Science facility world-wide. This is being funded by a joint EPSRC/ESRC E-Science middleware project which would not have been possible for us to participate in this initiative without the timely support of CSAP, which effectively provided us the pilot for the newly funded project.

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The nine-week teaching module was divided by the project co-ordinator into three sections. The first three of these four-hour sessions were devoted to intensive instruction in reading, and writing to, the World Wide Web. The remaining sections focused firstly on the potential of the WWW for finding new ways of 'writing' ethnography and secondly on exploring the new cultural spaces and activities opening up on the Web. The students gained a great deal of confidence in their computer literacy, but also simultaneously were able to reflect on the methodological and theoretical issues raised by the use of these new media. Contributing to an email discussion list was invaluable for widening and complementing class participation and discussions, whilst the task of designing web-pages gave students practical experience of writing in a web-based format. This project explored the potential of the Internet as both a methodological tool and a substantive anthropological topic for an undergraduate course. The project organiser designed and ran a module which both gave students practical IT skills and enabled reflection on the theoretical issues raised by studying internet cultures and writing to the web.

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This project experimented with ways of teaching and learning premised on the insight that knowledge is not transmitted ready-made but undergoes continual regeneration in the contexts of learners’ engagements with their surroundings. It was implemented through two undergraduate courses, Doing Anthropological Research and The Four A’s. In the first, we set up workshops, alternating with formal lectures, which helped students to embed abstract methodological issues in the context of their own practical experience. In the second, we used a mixture of lectures, project work, practicals and workshops to explore the connections between the four A’s – anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. In both cases, the experiment yielded very positive outcomes in terms of students’ learning experience and the results they achieved.

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The ‘Learning to Research’ project was conducted in three social science Departments at the University of Oxford under the direction of Dr Elizabeth Frazer, then Director of Research Training in the Department of Politics. Six research assistants conducted focus groups with students from Sociology, Anthropology and Politics to explore students’ conceptualisation of research training, professionalism and skill. It emerged from the focus groups that there was no uniform conception of what research training should consist of, and in general the conceptions that were articulated were vague. However, general discontent with current training suggested that the current programmes did not meet students’ methodological expectations, however these may be constructed. The imbalance between quantitative and qualitative research emerged as a strong theme. Perhaps surprisingly, the research found that students did not have clear knowledge of employment opportunities outside academia. In fact, the majority of students seemed happy and even to wish to limit the acquisition of skills to those directly required for their own research projects. The research found a lack of conceptualisation of what generic research skills and professional research should be. In addition, issues were raised regarding the competitiveness of Oxford compared to other universities. This project will help current directors of studies in the three participating disciplines to evaluate the contents of their methodological training, and to consider how to address the relationships between students’ and candidates’ actual methodological focus and expectations, the published descriptions of the degree programme content, and our delivery of research methods training.

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This research project provides ethnographic insight into the interface between teaching and learning, both at university and sixth from level, in order to understand what difficulties students face when moving from one to the other. The research started with the premise that there is a ‘lack of fit’ between the two learning experiences, causing difficulties both for students and their tutors. The aim is to identify the main areas where this lack of fit is manifested. The findings of the research strongly support our initial hypothesis that A-level study is not preparing students for independent learning at university. A-level students are usually guided every step of the way by their tutors and are not required to show any independent initiative. Teachers are not against encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning, but the pressure to ‘get students through’ exams is so great that this becomes the overwhelming priority. Meanwhile, at university, teaching has not adapted to the changing nature of the student community.

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Two innovative learning methodologies were added to the Cambridge Social Anthropology taught MPhil course, Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Colloquia. PBL is an established pedagogic technique that encourages students to take an active responsibility in their own learning. It involves structured self-directed group work to define and explore a particular research problem. The Colloquia were experimental and informal research seminars involving a cross-section of staff and postgraduates, debating issues that crossed different domains of anthropological knowledge. PBL helps students to recognise that there may not necessarily be a solution or answer to a problem – and the exploration of the problem itself is as important as the endpoint reached. Problem Based Learning is a learning technique originally pioneered in medical schools. PBL is structured in seven stages, each being a distinct step in the learning process. It departs radically from the didactic approach of seminars or lectures, and instead emphasises an active, self-directed and holistic approach to learning. Recognising that people learn in different ways, and have different academic background experience, it fosters self-responsibility and communication skills through group-work, encouraging people to integrate theory and practice, experience with reflection. The technique was adopted in the Cambridge Anthropology MPhil curriculum as a way of multi-disciplinary awareness and an ability to apply knowledge to a practical setting. It was also viewed as an opportunity to develop valuable professional skills of organisation, leadership, communication, team-working and conflict resolution.

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A one-day workshop was held at Lancaster University on October 25, 2002 to discuss the problematics of conducting research on topics such as IVF and the new genetics. Participants gave 15-minute presentations of their own ethnographic research and provided examples of major issues they encountered. The afternoon was spent discussing the methodological issues which arose in the morning’s presentations and Professor Sarah Franklin served as discussant, bringing together many of the themes. Participants were asked to contribute short annotated bibliographic entries to be placed on a Lancaster University-based website that will become a resource for those teaching reprogenetics and ethnographic methods.

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SDR was a collaborative multidisciplinary project to create reusable learning objects (RLOs) for use and evaluation in Sociology and Anthropology, including its constituent fields (Biological, Medical and Sociocultural Anthropology). RLOs are stand-alone "chunks" of interactive web-based multimedia, which support a single learning objective. Being flexible, they can be used and reused across disciplines. Two broad topics were identified as particularly salient across the above disciplines: sex (including sexually transmitted disease and reproduction) and drugs (including drug dependency). These two topics formed the basis for multidisciplinary development of a collection of eLearning resources that were subsequently widely used and evaluated.

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This project combined a number of investigative techniques to gather up-to-date information from students about what they expected to get from studying Sociology and Anthropology. In knowing more about these needs and expectations, and by encouraging teaching colleagues to recognise and acknowledge them, it was hoped that levels of satisfaction would be enhanced, a circumstance which is essential if improvements in recruitment and retention in these disciplines are to be achieved.

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The research consisted of a half-day seminar whose aim was to look at tutors’ perceptions of the difficulties students face in coping with their studies at university. The seminar provided data to support a larger project on Managing the Transition from A-level to University. I have been conducting research since September that has primarily involved talking to students both at Goldsmiths and at a London Sixth Form College about the difficulties they encounter with their studies. This seminar aimed to provide data on tutors’ perceptions of the teaching and learning experience. The perceptions of the tutors can then be compared with those of the students. Another related aim was to encourage staff to reflect on their teaching by thinking specifically about what they think the student experience of learning is.

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A workshop for new lecturers and postgraduate teachers and tutors provides an important forum for sharing and analysing people’s first teaching experiences, together with a chance for broader critical analysis of the current trends shaping higher education, and their effects on the creation of new disciplinary selves. Key concerns for postgraduates were the lack of support, training and even engagement by departments with their tutors, in an environment where ever more use was being made of casualised and temporary teaching staff. Similar concerns were expressed by temporary lecturers, though they also felt the pressure of being ‘pawns’ within departmental conflicts, and the difficulty of planning long-term research agendas with no long-term security, especially if working in new universities. Those with permanent contracts felt the pressure of juggling different administrative responsibilities, and the difficulty of interweaving one’s teaching and research, especially when few universities’ promotion criteria included teaching merit. On the other hand, , participants found much within their own disciplinary practice that could be used as a resource to understand and analyse both classroom dynamics and institutional politics. Contributors affirmed their commitment to a dialogical model of teaching that was, in the words of one participant, ‘ the paradigmatic form of anthropological knowledge’.

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The University of East London (UEL) has set up an undergraduate exchange programme with the University of New Mexico (UNM). In September 2002 our third group of students joined UNM while their second group arrived at UEL. A recurring pattern has been observed in the students' academic performance; in their first semester students have achieved marks lower than anticipated, whereas in their second semester their marks have reflected their previous performance in the case of UEL students, or a slight improvement in the case of UNM students. This project looks at the factors shaping this pattern, and suggests ways to improve student performance.

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The new School of Social and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh has brought together the academic units and former departments of Social Anthropology, Social Policy, Sociology, Politics and from the next academic year Social Work. This year has seen the introduction of two new interdisciplinary half courses for the second year of disciplinary degrees within the school: Social and Political Theory and Social Enquiry (details at www.sps.ed.ac.uk/uginterdiscip.html#spt). The courses have been delivered via traditional twice-weekly lectures and weekly tutorials as well as a web-based interface and learning package called WebCT. This has been used to make available standard course materials including set readings, course and lecture notes, and course guides and tutorial information. With WebCT the courses have also made use of learning tools such as self-tests, threaded discussions and direct web links to further resources. C-SAP funding supported part of the Web-CT development work, and encouraged the development officer (Pauline Watts) to keep a reflective diary of her work designing and implementing the WebCT resources. What follows is her account of this experience.

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The Lacuna project was initially motivated by a sense of frustration at the lack of shared knowledge about existing anthropological visual resources, and the concomitant under-utilisation of such resources in teaching. The Edinburgh-based team of Dr. Rachel Hinton (Project Co-ordinator), Neil Montgomery and Nicola Frost sought out the expertise of anthropologists throughout the country to explore the potential of ethnographic film as a teaching tool. The project produced a number of teaching resources, including a video and a model lecture, and began the process of designing a standardised format for entering information about visual materials into a national ethnographic film and video database. The database is designed to be a shared teaching resource, with a specific section for individuals to detail their experience of using a particular visual resource.

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Several anthropology departments in the UK are relatively small, and even in larger departments postgraduate students often feel isolated. This is especially true for doctoral students, for whom a year doing ‘fieldwork’ can make it difficult to meet students at other stages. There is also no regular forum in which to meet peers from different departments. The Marett project facilitated such contact, and elicited views on present training procedures. It was also a first step towards giving teaching staff a greater sense of student opinion. The conference, originally the inspiration of two members of the Oxford faculty - Dr Marcus Banks and Dr Roger Goodman – was organised by five postgraduates, Alison Brown, Karen Hough, Shawn Landres, David Odo and Heather Pesanti. The workshop aimed for ‘a pooling of experience of graduate teaching in anthropology from those most directly concerned - the students themselves’. In order to create a safe and informal environment for opinions to be expressed, no teaching staff attended the conference. The Marett Project was a three-day national workshop run for and by anthropology postgraduates in March 1998. The workshop brought together forty Masters and PhD students from fifteen different departments and sought to give voice to student perceptions of postgraduate training. The aim was to compare the diversity of teaching methods and institutional provision in departments across the United Kingdom, and to come up with recommendations for research training.

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This report comments on the findings of a research project that was conducted between February and March 2004, the preliminary results of which were presented at the 54th Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association. The research team was headed by Professor David Marsh, whilst the primary research was conducted by four first year PhD students from The University of Birmingham. We would like to thank both the Political Studies Association and the Sociology, Anthropology, Politics (C-SAP) Network for the funding that has made this research project possible and the Universities that participated in the project for contacting students on our behalf and arranging room bookings. The objective of the research project was to begin to address the question: why are there relatively few women in the political science profession? This research deals with one aspect of that question, focusing on final year undergraduates, with a particular emphasis on the way that this group perceived the accessibility of postgraduate study – we hope to explore further aspects of the issue in future research. In our view, this was the best point to start research in this area because the decision as to whether to proceed onto postgraduate study is an obvious initial determinant of an individual’s access to an academic career. The research was conducted at three large ‘civic’ universities and one university established in the 1960s. We are aware that this biases the sample, but we needed sites where there were a larger number of students who might be considering graduate work and an academic career. Again, we hope to follow up our research at other sites in future. We asked the host institution to select students who achieved either a high upper second or a first class classification in their penultimate year of study, simply because these students have a more realistic chance of being able to undertake postgraduate study. Students were invited by letter or email to participate in the focus groups. In all but one site, students contacted the administrative Department in the host institution to confirm whether they wished to attend. At each University, a separate focus group for female and male participants was held. The focus groups lasted between thirty and sixty five minutes, with the average time being forty five minutes. At the end of each of the female focus groups, the respondents were asked whether they would like to participate in an individual interview with one of the female focus group leaders. As a result, eight focus groups were held, one for each gender at each of the Universities. In addition, fifteen women participated in the follow-up interviews. All of the focus groups and individual interviews were carried out at each site over two days. We undertook the male focus groups to assess whether men identified different reasons for undertaking, or particularly not undertaking, graduate work, than women; thus, our aim was to establish whether those factors were gendered or not. This is a largre report, please download the full version of the document.

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A one-day workshop held at UCL in September 2003 for 25 postgraduate anthropologists involved in teaching from across London and the southern part of the UK. The workshop consisted of a number of practical exercises and discussions of issues faced by tutors in small-group teaching, as well as reflecting on some of the structural and status issues facing postgraduate teachers.

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This project consisted of a number of initiatives within the anthropology courses offered in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Hull. These included a dedicated new postgraduate module with 'hands-on' camera-teaching entitled 'Filming Ethnography', together with new visual components added to other first year and postgraduate courses. The practical aspects of the filming-skills module were supported by an expert film-technician and consultant from outside the University. The long-term aim of the project is for film-making skills and a critical attention to visual media to be included in the teaching of anthropological research methods for all postgraduate students. This will be a powerful way for postgraduates to make links between their own study, the lecturer’s research, and the disciplinary literature. This project developed and enhanced the use of film and visual media in the teaching and learning of social anthropology for both postgraduates and undergraduates. In particular, it established a new postgraduate module of practical training in camcorder and filming skills for anthropological fieldwork, combining this with discussion of the theoretical issues that visual media raises.

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The project developed means of diversifying methods for teaching, learning and assessment at undergraduate level. Students participated in the design of assessment criteria, and submitted 39 CD-ROMs (for the History of Anthropological Theory) and 8 visual ethnographies on video ( for Visual Anthropology).

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