Making Big Connections: Geography Assignment
As a geographer, I see how everything connects. From the way the natural landscape molds the way we live to the way anti-immigrant policies in France impact the EURO, I seek to understand the networks. This is my number one objective while teaching World Regional Geography: for students to critically think about what they learn, read, and hear and ask themselves how it connects to other phenomena.
I strive to achieve this not only by continually keeping discussions open about the topics we cover in class and asking, “What will the result be,” but also with the three mandatory assignments for the semester. I am continually collecting academic articles, editorial stories, and news stories about current topics in the world regions we cover in my class. Examples include “The Flight of Japan’s Immigrants” from Bloomberg BusinessWeek April 25-May 1, 2011; “Investigations: Africa’s Elephants” from The Informer 2011; and “Is the EU taking its over-fishing Habits to West African Waters” by John Vidal in The Guardian. I have at least 11 articles for each of the nine world regions I teach. The AAG Smart Brief is a fantastic resource for these types of articles.
Students can choose to pick three articles to write individual responses to. The three responses must be from different regions, and each region’s response due date corresponds with the second day of the lecture related to that region. This is in hopes that students will share what they read with the class and relate it to the class material. Essentially, three times in the semester, every student will have something concrete and interesting to share and relate to the class that only one or two other students will also know (because of the multiple due dates and a large variety of articles).
But the response itself is where I am pushing students to do something they rarely do these days in college, much less in the liberal arts: critical thinking. Summarizing and interpretation are the typical requests for these types of assignments, but not here. I give students the benefit of the doubt that they can summarize a 1000-word article. What I do not expect them to do, at first, is to “find” a multidisciplinary interrelationship. What in the world do I mean by that?
An example is probably best here; after reading the article “The Year of the Dragon” in Bloomberg BusinessWeek that does not mention migration, urban change, or cultural tensions, this student wrote this paragraph showing the reader a multidisciplinary interrelationship between the article material and the ethnic tensions in China learned about in class.
“As family size in China increases, due to the Year of the Dragon, parents will predictably seek more income and larger homes. At some point, affordable urban housing will become scarcer and more expensive because of the increase in demand. The Year of the Dragon will contribute to China’s already overly crowded eastern cities, which could lead to a steady urban-to-rural migration of middle and upper-income families. This would contrast with the massive rural-to-urban migration by poor Chinese. Specifically, people might move to the western part of China, which is less crowded and developed, resembling a “go west” mentality in the US. One of the negative outcomes of this change in migration could be an increase in cultural problems with ethnic minorities, such as tensions between Han Chinese and both the Tibetans and Muslims in the western part of China. This may lead to a major conflict between China's coastal and western parts.”
The actual core directions are: Examine at least one multidisciplinary interrelationship (political, economic, geopolitical, military, social, ethnic, etc.) that relates to the article. For example, an essay on Russian weapons sales to Iran can consider the interrelationships from (1) its geopolitical consequences to the US and/or (2) the benefits to the Russian economy (explain to me how this relates to different countries/regions of the world). This information is not in the article, after reading the article I want you to ask yourself, “what does that mean for the people, cities, region, neighborhood, or country in the article or those not mentioned?” Once you latch on to an idea of what will change on the ground due to what you just read, ask yourself more detailed (small-scale) questions. For example, how will this affect family size, cultural exchange, globalization, tourism, food prices, migration patterns, acculturation, homogenized markets, local or regional health, city layouts, population patterns, and so on? You will be on the right track when you start to answer these questions. Show me you can think geographically.
For the first time in the semester, when my Dropbox fills with student responses on various topics with different connections, I prepare for a long week. This type of critical thinking activity asks students to sit back and take the time to explore with their minds what the implications of what they just learned might be “on the ground” is, unfortunately, minuscule in their college careers. For their first of the three responses, students almost always turn in a summary with a few predictions without any strong supportive reason; thus, I give excessive feedback and direction. I truly want students to “get it!” When I have a student make a big connection, and I can read their enthusiasm for their accomplishment, I am satisfied. By the third response, 90% of my students had knocked me off my socks! I think, “Wow, that is cool, that is absolutely possible!” Nothing is more exciting than a student unleashing their own exploratory thought process and coming up with something new and exciting.
As a geographer, I see how everything connects. From the way the natural landscape molds the way we live to the way anti-immigrant policies in France impact the EURO, I seek to understand the networks. This is my number one objective while teaching World Regional Geography: for students to critically think about what they learn, read, and hear and ask themselves how it connects to other phenomena.
I strive to achieve this not only by continually keeping discussions open about the topics we cover in class and asking, “What will the result be,” but also with the three mandatory assignments for the semester. I am continually collecting academic articles, editorial stories, and news stories about current topics in the world regions we cover in my class. Examples include “The Flight of Japan’s Immigrants” from Bloomberg BusinessWeek April 25-May 1, 2011; “Investigations: Africa’s Elephants” from The Informer 2011; and “Is the EU taking its over-fishing Habits to West African Waters” by John Vidal in The Guardian. I have at least 11 articles for each of the nine world regions I teach. The AAG Smart Brief is a fantastic resource for these types of articles.
Students can choose to pick three articles to write individual responses to. The three responses must be from different regions, and each region’s response due date corresponds with the second day of the lecture related to that region. This is in hopes that students will share what they read with the class and relate it to the class material. Essentially, three times in the semester, every student will have something concrete and interesting to share and relate to the class that only one or two other students will also know (because of the multiple due dates and a large variety of articles).
But the response itself is where I am pushing students to do something they rarely do these days in college, much less in the liberal arts: critical thinking. Summarizing and interpretation are the typical requests for these types of assignments, but not here. I give students the benefit of the doubt that they can summarize a 1000-word article. What I do not expect them to do, at first, is to “find” a multidisciplinary interrelationship. What in the world do I mean by that?
An example is probably best here; after reading the article “The Year of the Dragon” in Bloomberg BusinessWeek that does not mention migration, urban change, or cultural tensions, this student wrote this paragraph showing the reader a multidisciplinary interrelationship between the article material and the ethnic tensions in China learned about in class.
“As family size in China increases, due to the Year of the Dragon, parents will predictably seek more income and larger homes. At some point, affordable urban housing will become scarcer and more expensive because of the increase in demand. The Year of the Dragon will contribute to China’s already overly crowded eastern cities, which could lead to a steady urban-to-rural migration of middle and upper-income families. This would contrast with the massive rural-to-urban migration by poor Chinese. Specifically, people might move to the western part of China, which is less crowded and developed, resembling a “go west” mentality in the US. One of the negative outcomes of this change in migration could be an increase in cultural problems with ethnic minorities, such as tensions between Han Chinese and both the Tibetans and Muslims in the western part of China. This may lead to a major conflict between China's coastal and western parts.”
The actual core directions are: Examine at least one multidisciplinary interrelationship (political, economic, geopolitical, military, social, ethnic, etc.) that relates to the article. For example, an essay on Russian weapons sales to Iran can consider the interrelationships from (1) its geopolitical consequences to the US and/or (2) the benefits to the Russian economy (explain to me how this relates to different countries/regions of the world). This information is not in the article, after reading the article I want you to ask yourself, “what does that mean for the people, cities, region, neighborhood, or country in the article or those not mentioned?” Once you latch on to an idea of what will change on the ground due to what you just read, ask yourself more detailed (small-scale) questions. For example, how will this affect family size, cultural exchange, globalization, tourism, food prices, migration patterns, acculturation, homogenized markets, local or regional health, city layouts, population patterns, and so on? You will be on the right track when you start to answer these questions. Show me you can think geographically.
For the first time in the semester, when my Dropbox fills with student responses on various topics with different connections, I prepare for a long week. This type of critical thinking activity asks students to sit back and take the time to explore with their minds what the implications of what they just learned might be “on the ground” is, unfortunately, minuscule in their college careers. For their first of the three responses, students almost always turn in a summary with a few predictions without any strong supportive reason; thus, I give excessive feedback and direction. I truly want students to “get it!” When I have a student make a big connection, and I can read their enthusiasm for their accomplishment, I am satisfied. By the third response, 90% of my students had knocked me off my socks! I think, “Wow, that is cool, that is absolutely possible!” Nothing is more exciting than a student unleashing their own exploratory thought process and coming up with something new and exciting.
I somewhat dread grading/commenting on the 1st responses, but I get giddy to read their 3rd responses!
Check out that divergent boundary!
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