So in the anthropology program we have a really
strong emphasis on active learning and
in particular building skills that students will
need both in graduate school
and in careers as anthropologists.
One of the things that we do in our methods
class is teach students skills they'll need
to do fieldwork.
I for example had the pleasure of teaching
a class in archeological field methods
a few years ago.
And in order to assess the degree to which
students had mastered those skills
we designed the first ever archeological field skills
Olympiad.
All the students in the class participated
in the trials and all the trials were judged
by all of the members of the anthropology
faculty as well as some of our faculty emeriti
and affiliated scholars and graduate students.
So for us it was a really fun way to bring
everybody together to see how students had
done in that class and figure out how we needed
to make changes to actually succeed in
teaching those skills more effectively in the future.
So what we did was to set up a course that
included four different skill sets.
Students had to lay out a one by one meter
excavation unit.
They had to take an archeological photograph
of record with proper labeling,
lighting and  other setup.
They had to take G.P.S. points, so that we
could locate the site in space.
And then they also had to do what we call
munsell color chart assessment which involves
using color tiles to then record the color
of certain objects, soils, features, in the
archeological records so other archaeologists
can actually use that data more effectively.
One of the things we found out as a result
of this assessment is
students seem to have come into the class with different skill levels
that we hadn't really benchmarked at the beginning of the semester
and so in future years we've
decided to do sort of a skills benchmarking activity
at the beginning of the course so
we can then see how far students have progressed.
It will also help us gauge exactly where we
need to pitch the levels, what additional
skills we might have time to incorporate in
that semester, and then to make sure that
everybody's coming out not only with the skills
at the level that we want them to perform
but then also has a chance to build on their
own initial skill level
to then get as much as they individually can out of the course.
