Documenting Communities

This year-long Focused Inquiry Group (FIG) supports the development of culminating assignments in undergraduate courses that invite students’ engagement with their communities. Culturally-responsive projects create connections between the disciplines and students’ experiences outside the classroom. The process of documenting the city, its neighborhoods, and the lives of its inhabitants can help students build a new perspective on familiar spaces, invigorating their scholarly reflections.

This project will cultivate assignments where students create artifacts that presume an audience outside the classroom, fostering engagement with broader publics. Handbooks, podcasts, zines, short documentaries, and websites are possible projects that position the student as a producer of knowledge, while integrating the exploration of disciplinary content with other skills. Scaffolded multi-media projects create varied opportunities for self-reflection and feedback.

The Teaching and Learning Center invites Graduate Center students to apply to be part of a group that will come together to design project-based culminating assignments that will be integrated in courses taught in Spring 2020, and to reflect upon the experience.