Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

A geographical introduction to how humans shape our world, with attention also given to how it shapes us. Themes may include: culture, economic activities, environmental change, globalization, politics, population, resources, and urbanization. Breadth-Humanities/Social Sciences.

COURSE DETAILS:

Delivery Mode: Online, Asynchronous. This course is fully remote with no in-person requirement.

Course Description

This breadth-social science course introduces students to the field of human geography. The Greek roots of the term geo (earth) and graphy (writing) signal the field’s focus on describing and inscribing the relationship between humans and the world around us. Human geographers use concepts like space, place, scale, mobility, and relationality to pursue questions like: How do places acquire meaning for different people? How does location impact how we understand the world, and the possibilities presented to us? How are places related, and how can this knowledge help us address pressing social, political, ecological, and economic challenges?

In this course, students can expect to develop a framework for understanding what it means to ‘think geographically’. Special attention will be paid in this course offering to the problematic aspects of the field’s history; exploring the ways that the biophysical, built, and social world shape who we are; and, finally, how we shape and re-shape the world around us (whether intentionally or unintentionally). As you progress through the course, it is hoped that you will see the value of thinking geographically as a means of being engaged and remaining curious about how our environments shape us, and how we, in turn, shape the world around us.

A special note about GEOG100, Summer 2022

This course is the focus of an SFU Teaching and Learning Development Grant. For more information on how this course is being designed, delivered, and assessed, please see: https:// www.sfu.ca/istld/faculty/grant-programs/projects/fenv/G0443.html

Online Learning Format

• All instructional content will be made available to students asynchronously in the form of short recorded lectures, online modules, reading, and course engagement activities. Students have the option of attending weekly, synchronous Q&A sessions, but attendance at these sessions is not mandatory. Accessibility will be prioritized. These optional sessions will be spaces to connect, interact, and share challenges and
• Asynchronous course engagement activities. Most weeks, students will complete 1-2 course engagement assignments that will be available as part of the learning module. Students are asked to complete 10 (out of a possible 12) of these through the semester. These mini- assignments invite you to think more deeply about the week’s required material through observation, reflection, application, and
• Self-Reflection and Self-Assessment will be prioritized. Through storytelling, examples from your work and and learning activities, you will be asked frequently throughout the course to reflect on your learning. Where it happens and how, your struggles, your triumphs, and how it is showing up and/or impacting your everyday
• Peer Learning and Support. You are expected to engage with your classmates throughout the course. This can include providing feedback to one another, sharing stories about your learning, and participating in community-building

Assessment

This course will focus on qualitative assessment, both with reference to your own work and the content we will be studying. While you will get a final grade at the end of the term, individual assignments will not be graded but assessed using questions and comments that engage your work rather than simply evaluate it. This approach to assessment is informed by an ethic of care, and is meant to account for and capture your learning experience, as well as the complexities of your failures, struggles, and successes. This approach centres mutual respect, transformative values, building inclusive learning communities, and responsiveness. For more information on the rationale behind this approach to assessment, please visit: https://www.sfu.ca/istld/faculty/grant-programs/ projects/fenv/G0443.html

Means of assessment and communicating your learning in this course will include:

1. Weekly Course Engagement Activities
2. Creating a StoryMap (using ArcGIS) - this will be shared with your classmates, and will undergo peer- feedback
3. Module Self-Assessments
4. Final Self-Reflection and Learning Assessment

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Learning outcomes 

By the end of the semester, students should be able to:

• Understand and use key human geography concepts (e.g. space, place, scale, mobility, spatial imaginaries)
• Interpret relations between power and knowledge, appreciating how diverse experiences influence the way people perceive places
• Using spatial reasoning in order to identify how places are connected across space and time
• Understand how social, political, and economic structures take place in our surroundings
• Learn to critically assess the validity of geographic data and images as they are presented in the public square and media
• Understand the problematic beginnings and their ongoing legacies in the field of human geography, and be aware of the emancipatory spaces in scholarship and practice that are being created by Black, queer, Indigenous, disabled, and critical human geographers
• Have sufficiently developed early undergraduate-level research, communication, and citation skills

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING: