Jeffrey Snodgrass said he taught three courses: (1) Anthropology 100 (introduction to cultural anthropology), (2) Cultures of Virtual Worlds, and (3) a practicum. Jeffrey said he aimed for doing integrative teaching and research as well as getting students excited about both (including students’ own research). To record his Anthropology 100 lectures, he used Audacity software to create MP3 audio files (bought a Yeti microphone and used headphones). His lectures were an hour or more. His students told him that they wanted these audio files to have echoes, reverb, and musical tracks (these are slide breaks – included music from the musical acts, The O’Jays and Pink Floyd versions of the song “Money”). He said he had some of his strongest papers from students. Examples of Anthropology 100 student papers looked at: (1) black Twitter, (2) Instagram, self-esteem, and young women, (3) self-reflective paper on the Zoom process, (4) US gun culture and media, and (5) hyper- and inclusive masculinity and social media. Jeffrey showed a slide of feedback on his courses that he received from students. In chat feedback, students said positive things about this Anthropology 100 course. A small number (10-15) of students did most of the talking in the Zoom class; this is an area to be improved.
For his Virtual Worlds class, his students did final public anthropology projects. One student’s project looked at politics, TikTok, and political identity, using the TikTok app. A few students used iPoster (interactive poster software) for their final projects. A few of his cultural anthropology students won both of his department’s cultural anthropology student prizes. Jeffrey said that the winning projects looked at: (1) virtual ethnography on Hindu religious signaling in online temples during COVID and (2) toxicity in online gaming. He said students were involved in practicum research, leaned heavily on Google, using collaborative interview protocols, online free-listing activities, Visual Anthropac (software to analyze free-list data), and Google Forms survey. From these surveys, he developed three cultural consonance or social status scales. Jeffrey concluded his presentation by saying that one of the surveys is the basis for a biocultural project with his students.