In order to successfully complete this course, you must demonstrate your understanding of the course materials by:
Here is an overview of all of the different types of assignments in the course. You can find detailed directions for the assignments and the grading rubrics in the module where they are assigned.
The course starts off with your introducing yourself to all other students. I’d be great if you could post a photo of yourself and/or an animal (if you prefer). No pressure here. Within the course you will be responsible for applying some concepts from the chapter readings to different geographic situations. For each discussion board activity please make sure to use terms from the reading in your post to demonstrate your comprehension of course material. Each discussion board activity requires you to reflect on different aspects of geography and write a substantive response. You will also receive points for replying to posts submitted by your fellow classmates.
In the movie discussion you will examine several central theories of cultural geography and apply them to a film of your choice from the list provided for you. The focus will be on cultural traits and how they are depicted in your movie. Specifically identify several artifacts (important cultural objects), sociofacts (important social structures of a culture such as family, tribe) and mentifacts (important ideas and beliefs of a culture) in the film and discuss to what extent these taken together provide a sense of cultural identity.
Geography is a lot about observation in the ‘field’ –outside our walls. Originally these class contributions were designed to act a bit like geographers but that was pre-COVID. At this time it would be great if you went outside and took photos but it is not required to talk / interview people. Instead you should conduct your observations also online. Try to get statistics from government-run websites.
During class you are asked to provide four (4) different field trips. These are:
For the Portfolio, these four field trips should be shortened to include the most important information. In addition, you should research three other topics—
Choose a format for your portfolio as described in the course.
For this particular writing assignment you will search for a relevant and substantial CURRENT (up to 4 months old) news article for each of the topics given to you. You are to read this article in its entirety and then provide a short summary. You will then reflect on how each particular article relates to the course material in your textbook using course terminology whenever possible.
This assignment requires of you to choose a key term of a list provided to you, find a definition for this term online, and then search for a news article in which this term is used extensively. In this case the article should not be older than five (5) years. You will then summarize this article and reflect critically about its contents as it relates to your key term. This is an opportunity to learn something new if you choose a term you are not familiar with.
Each of the 13 chapter readings is accompanied by a quiz. It is best to read the entire chapter first, check the web links and then work on the quiz with your book open. Once these quizzes are graded you have access to them again so that they become a study guide.
There are two (2) proctored exams in the course. These exams are without your textbook. They are to check your understanding of the concepts learned in the course. Study for the exam by reviewing the chapter readings, the chapter web links, and by taking the quizzes.
Please find the information on how to take a proctored exam in the Taking Proctored Assessments section.