Field school students talk about their experience

Field school is interdisciplinary
Complex Stories
Eemergent Learning
Student-Driven Learning
Challenging Beliefs

About Washington Park

A Typical Day

Student Words

"We’re not studying it. We’re joining in the oral history. We’re not telling someone else’s story. We are helping them tell their story."
--George Ananchev (2014) on the collaborative nature of the Field School

"I expect somebody not to have time because they are too busy, but maybe they do—even if they are busy working and taking care of their family, maybe the fact that somebody asked for an interview is enough for them to be interested. That is a kind of classed bias that I came into it with that while I was in it and coming out of it I’ve had to reexamine."
--George Ananchev  (2014) on challenging beliefs

"I guess I called it a neighborhood study. I had a minor in anthropology so there you learn about ethnographies. A large part of it was ethnographic. You go and you ask and you observe but in the end you take it and analyze it. You do something with it."
--George Ananchev  (2014)  on the interdisciplinary focus of the Field School

"Some people would be talking about different parts around the city of Milwaukee that don’t correlate with our boundaries of it. So boundaries and labels. The language we use to designate what’s Washington Park and what isn’t."
--George Ananchev  (2014) on the co-creation of neighborhood narratives

Memorable Moments

Experience of Field School

Future Plans

Interest

Professional Evaluation of the project

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Click here for a research paper on BLC field school student learning.
How do we evaluate our work?
An integrated approach to assessment of publicly engaged scholarship is guided by the following core values:
  • Collaboration– An integrated approach to assessment engages community- and university-based stakeholders in defining what are meaningful outcomes and indicators of success, long before the assessment itself begins, and often in implementing the evaluation activity itself. It is grounded in a shared understanding of interrelated goals.
  • Reciprocity – An integrated approach to assessment is useful to community- and university-based stakeholders. It goes back to the stakeholders involved; it invites reflection, feedback, and critique.
  • Generativity – An integrated approach to assessment feeds the project, program, or course at hand. At the same time, it looks beyond the semester or project unit and invites stakeholders to evaluate the overall, long-term relationships at the heart of community-based education and public scholarship. It is part of an ongoing and dynamic process of programmatic, institutional, community, and/or regional development.
  • Rigor – An integrated approach to assessment utilizes sound evaluation methodologies and practices.
  • Practicability– An integrated approach to assessment promotes activities that are proportionate to the project and resources available.
From, Core Values
http://imaginingamerica.org/research/assessment/values/