This post is part of a series on ethnographic teaching materials for undergraduate students both within and beyond anthropology. In this series, we offer various resources on introducing ethnographic methods to your students, supporting your TA-s, suggesting further readings on ethnography, and providing guidance on ethics approval when needed.

Scaling Down Ethnographic Assignments

In the previous post, we provided a list with ethnographic assignment topics that are best suited for major final assignments. While this is helpful in some cases, many professors prefer to incorporate a smaller ethnographic assignment in their undergraduate courses (these could weigh around 5% or 10% of the participation or final course grade). This can be a short in-class exercise, on-campus observation, or a short interview. This list provides some general topics that are easily adaptable to different course themes and class sizes. Below each topic is a rubric that makes grading ethnographic assignments more manageable.