The Indigenous

Integrated Seminar 101

Pilgrimages

Learning Activity B: Class Discussion, Note-Taking and Reflective Writes

 

In order to more fully explore and, in turn, understand the rich meaning and insight messages offered in the assigned readings, you will be expected to attend all class sessions, and have the assigned readings for this semester completed before class sessions.  Come to class prepared to discuss.  There will be two opportunities for you to share your interpretations and questions on the assigned readings and class sessions, one verbal and one written. 

Class Discussion: Throughout the semester you are expected to contribute, voluntarily, to the on-going class discussions.  Add your voice to the class dialogue.  In addition, at various times throughout the semester you will be randomly called upon to add your voice to the class discussion, responding to questions posed by the instructor or other students, as well as contributing your own questions to the class dialogue, all relating to the assigned readings and/or class presentations or evening sessions.  After you have read, applied the "eye juggling" method of interpretation to the texts, and have a sense of the significances and insights of the readings assigned, formulate key questions that will bring those significances and insights to the entire class and engage your fellow students in some stimulating and engaging discussion.

Note-Taking:  Active listening and attentiveness to the content presented during the seminar is critical to the learning process.  The best and most viable way to engage and learn the seminar's content is to take good notes as a seminar presentation is unfolding.    See the discussion on note-taking.    Write out your notes on paper that can be easily detached and submitted to the instructor for periodic review, and then returned to you.

Reflective Writes: In addition, you will be periodically asked  to respond in writing to a specific question posed by the instructor on a given assigned reading or course topic.  These responses will ask you to reflect on the significance and meaning of a specific passage or idea conveyed in the reading or presentation.  The reflective writes will be a timed exercise, lasting no more than two - three minutes.   To reflect is not to summarize, but to seriously contemplate and consider the cultural meanings, assumptions and implications of a specific text, i.e., a textbook reading, a guest speaker, or a video.  Your goal is two-fold.  1. Seek to articulate your own cultural, philosophical and/or religious perspectives, as well as, 2. seek to understand what you consider to be the epistemological and religious principles of those represented in the encountered text, from an Indigenous perspective.   This means having the assigned readings completed and make reference to them in your write. 

You are being asked to articulate the larger implications of a specific Indigenous text, concept, or behavior, and relate it to your own orientation and experience.    To help you articulate and reflect upon both your own epistemological assumptions and those whom you are encountering, apply the "coding method" as considered in class and presented in Eye Juggling reading.  Ask yourself how your own religious and epistemological meanings and assumptions similar and different from the religious and epistemological meanings and assumptions of those whose lives you glimpsed in the encountered text?  By juxtaposing that which is distinct along side that which is at hand, though often veiled, the contours of one's own cultural territory are more clearly revealed.

Grading criteria:

 

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