the unobservant anthropologist » applied anthropology

Selecting the 2009 round of SfAA Podcasts

Jen Cardew Kersey — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:21:01 +0000

Happy New Year!

Planning for the 2009 round of SfAA Podcasts is now underway. We’re asking for your help in selecting the 20 sessions that will be recorded so that we can ensure a wide range of topics and interests are covered.

Suggested selection criteria include:

Topic is “hot”
Topic is of widespread interest to many people
Famous speakers

The preliminary program can be found here. In listing sessions, it would be helpful if you could copy and paste the session number and the session name, e.g. “W-01 Lessons and Questions from Applied Settings” directly from the program into an email or Word doc. We would like to request your suggestions by Friday, January 15. Please send them to Jen Cardew at jencardew@gmail.com or post them here in the comments field.

Every year people come up to me at the conference and ask why their session wasn’t recorded or how we select sessions so now is your chance to speak up

Posted in SfAA Podcasts, Uncategorized Tagged: Anthropology, applied anthropology, SfAA Podcasts

Invitation to join our UNT Brown Bag presentation online, May 15 at noon CST

Jen Cardew Kersey — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:51:44 +0000

My advisor, Christina Wasson, and I have been working on a research project for the last year and half that explores students’ experiences in the same graduate-level course, taught at the same time, by the same professor, in an on-campus format and an online format. We’ve presented on this research to our department, at the AAA 2007, and the SfAA 2008. Most recently we were invited by the University of North Texas to present as part of the Center for Distributed Learning’s Brown Bag Lecture series.

Tomorrow, May 15, we will do an online presentation at noon CST and you all are welcome to attend! Here’s information on how to attend:

Please join us online in Live Classroom this upcoming Thursday, May 15, 2008, from noon – 1:00 p.m. CST for the monthly CDL Brown Bag. This session will be held online, so you can join us directly from your desk!

Christina Wasson, Associate Professor, and Jen Cardew, Graduate Student, in the Department of Anthropology, conducted an applied anthropological study comparing a graduate-level course taught by a single instructor in both an online and face-to-face format. They will discuss how their ethnographic and linguistic analysis of the data shed light onto students’ experiences in both formats, and led to recommendations for the design of virtual pedagogy and building community in online courses.

To log into Wimba Live Classroom at noon CST on Thursday, May 15:

a. Go to: http://untlive.horizonwimba.com/.

b. If this is your first time to use Live Classroom, click on the “run the Setup Wizard” link to the right and then click “Start.”

c. Click “Finished” when you are done.

d. Enter your name in the Participant login box. (There is no username or password.)

e. Click on “CDL Brown Bag Room.”

f. Click the “click here” link provided on the screen to enter the room.

My SfAA presentation is now available as a podcast “The Scholar-Practitioner in an Organizational Setting”

Jen Cardew Kersey — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:06:52 +0000

My advisor, Christina Wasson, and I have been doing research comparing students’ experiences in the same graduate course for the last year and a half. The data that was collected came from an on-campus and online version of the same course, taught at the same time, and by the same professor.

Our panel was selected to be in the 2008 SfAA Podcasts. It’s a coincidence that I was on the panel- a group of people vote on the sessions. You can find the blog post containing the podcast, our PowerPoint, and our paper here.

It was an excellent panel and I really enjoyed it so I recommend you listen to it

2008 SfAA Podcasts have begun

Jen Cardew Kersey — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:08:45 +0000

The first of seventeen 2008 SfAA Podcasts is up over at SfAApodcasts.net.

“Presidential Plenary Session in Honor of John van Willigen: The Art and Science of Applied Anthropology in the 21st Century” including Satish Kedia, Susan Andreatta, Metta Baba, and Erve Chambers is the first one up. I’ve only listened to portions of it, but I’m enjoying it so far.

One of the best things about having a podcast team this year was that I’m looking forward to the podcasts being published as much as everyone else. Last year I recorded each session so I heard all of them but this year I only recorded five

My SfAA presentation (about the online course research)

Jen Cardew Kersey — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:14:51 +0000

While in Memphis I will also be co-presenting a paper with Christina Wasson about our online-on-campus research that we’ve been working on for just over a year. The session is on Friday morning (F-10) 8:00-9:50 am in the Nashville room and is entitled “The Scholar-Practitioner in Organizational Settings.” Our paper is titled “Theory and Praxis in an Educational Setting: Building Community Online.”

Here is the session abstract from Crysta Metcalf
“In this session we introduce and model the concept of the “scholar-practitioner,” practicing anthropologists who explicitly draw on theory in their work and contribute to theory development. Although such an integration of theory and practice has long existed, it has been gaining greater recognition in recent years, especially as more and more anthropologists are applying our discipline in organizational settings. The members of this panel draw on their experiences in both academic and organizational settings, presenting case studies and examples in order to explore the challenges and opportunities inherent in working toward the advancement of anthropological theory in applied practice.”

I’m excited about this session because I am co-presenting with my advisor and many of the other women on the panel are the ones that I’ve followed their work for the last four years. It’s quite an honor

I’ll upload a copy of the paper post-conference but I can let you in on a little secret…
it will be recorded for the SfAA Podcasts. I guess I’ve done a good job in finding my way into cool panels because this is the second year that my session was selected for the podcasts. I do oversee the selection of sessions but the sessions are picked from suggestions submitted by lots of people.