Trine Mygind Korsby

Abstract

Collaborative thinking and object exchange among anthropology master’s students

This TLHEP project is about enhancing collaboration and collaborative thinking among anthropology master’s students, when working on their individual master’s thesis projects.

The project is based on a collaborative exercise called ‘Object Exchange’ in which the students 1) choose an object that encapsulates their project idea, and 2) “switch objects/projects” and work on a peer’s project for a designated period of time.

The pedagogical idea behind this project was to find ways for students to collaborate more, and – especially during COVID times – avoid that students suffer from the “lone wolf syndrome”, which we see so often in Anthropology: that people work alone behind closed doors. Through the exercise, the hope was for the students to: 1) Gain clarity on their own project (its pros and cons), by having someone else work directly with it. 2) Learn that collaborating with others and work on their projects does not take away from their own project; in fact, research shows that the deepest learning comes from producing feedback for others, cf. Nicol et al., 2014; Cho & MacArthur, 2010; 2011. 3) Learn to work creatively with objects as ‘condensed’ versions of their projects.

The project was carried out over 3 weeks among 40 anthropology master’s students, and data on their experiences was collected through a series of anonymous survey-quizzes in Absalon after each step of the exercise, a qualitative focus group interview with 16 students, and finally observations in breakout-rooms during the exercise, by the teacher and the teacher’s THLEP supervisor.

The results show that the main part of the students (80%) agreed or strongly agreed that collaborating with another student on their project was useful for their own project design process. 61% of the students even experienced that exchanging objects with someone else, made their own project idea clearer. 85% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they got useful feedback from their peer regarding their project. 73% of the students responded that it was fun for them to find an object that encapsulated their project idea, and that it was easy to do so.

Based on these results, the exercise has the potential to be used in Anthropology teaching more generally, in order to enhance collaborative thinking among students, and in order to avoid student isolation, when working on individual projects, especially during COVID times.