Allison Varian's ID Portfolio Page

This is a template for the ID portfolio page, where you will document your instructional design work in progress during this semester. This template is used to organize your own portfolio page. DO NOT EDIT the template page itself. See the video guide on how this project works and how to set up your ID portfolio page: Zoom Video If you need to see examples, see Gërt Arnold Portfolio Page; Sarah Stolberg's Portfolio Page.

Navigation links: ETAP 623 Fall 2026 | Link to my mini-course front page

Allison Varian

At the time of writing, I am second year master's student in Anthropology studying Female Werewolves in Horror Cinema through a feminist perspective. My interest in teaching comes out of a desire to give to future generations what my teachers and professors gave to me, entire worlds tucked away inside of books, theory, and culture. I believe that passion and love for what you do is the most important aspect of life and I want to channel all of that into my future career.

Integrating Anthropological Ideas into the Classroom

For this mini-course, I want to explore ways in which teachers and professors can integrate anthropological idea into their classrooms. An anthropological approach can help learners of all levels understand the importance of diversity, representation, and reframing how we think about the world. This course will apply theory and methodology from cultural anthropology and feminist theory to examine why anthropological ways of thinking can be beneficial to fostering an inclusive classroom.

Scope of Learning Outcomes and Content

The goal of this mini course is to foster/grow understandings of anthropology and how its methodology can help teach students about cultural diversity and the importance of representation. Cultural diversity and representation will be the main focus of this lesson with the ultimate goal being to help teachers create activities and lessons plans for students to understand both of these topics.

Needs Assessment

Educational Problem

An educational problem that could arise is figuring out what method is best to integrate within the classroom. Anthropology is a vast discipline that has a wide variety of subfields each that approaches their topics through multiple different lenses.

Analyzing the Gap

In order to close this gap in methodology, I want to focus this mini course on a specific method that will integrate well into the classroom. The method that I want to focus on is participant observation which aims to understand people through an emic perspective, an insider's point of view.

Effort to Address the Gap and Participants Involved

Addressing this gap starts with defining what participant observation is in detail in unit one of this mini course and returning back to it throughout when discussing both anthropology and cultural diversity. The main participants involved in this discussion will be educators so there will be a deeper dive into how they can use participant observation strategies to understand their students' diverse cultural backgrounds.

Intent Statement

For my mini course, I want there to be a focus on the cultural anthropological method of participant observation, so educators can use those strategies to understand their students' diverse cultural backgrounds. The focus will be on learning more about the lives of students and how to generate goals for them based upon their individual needs. The ideal would be that teachers would give their students an activity to participate in as a group and as individuals (unit three of the mini course) at the beginning of the year to observe what students' cultural backgrounds and how educators and learners understand cultural diversity and its importance. From the information gathered through this activity centered around participant observation, teachers will use it to build and rebuild lesson plans to fit both the needs of their students and what criteria needs to be met throughout the school year.

Analysis of the Learner and Context

For this mini-course, I want to have a wide range of learners and participants as the importance of participant observation and cultural anthropological methods are tools that can be used by many. This course will be useful for teachers, professors, and instructors of any kind that teach in any setting or context. This course will be designed for any teacher, professor, and instructor of any background, knowledge, skill set, and interest.

This course will be designed so that participants can use this course in and outside of the classroom. The amount of time that will be spent on this mini-course will be two hours, more or less, to give learners the opportunity to work through videos, assessments, surveys, and the creation of a group activity.

Performance-Based Objectives

After completing this course, learners will be able to understand the cultural anthropological method of participant observation and how to apply it in their classroom. Learners will also understand how to use this methodology to help students and fellow instructors alike in their conceptions of cultural diversity, how multiple environments shape the ability to learn, and how teachers can get their students to use participant observation in and out of the classroom. Those who are participating in this course will be able to define anthropology, participant observation, and cultural diversity.

Task and Content Analysis

Before starting this course, the learner will need:

1. a basic understanding of culture and cultural diversity
2. basic knowledge of integrating theory into practice

These two prerequisites will be explored on deeper levels in Unit One and Unit Two.

Unit One: defining the anthropological approach and participant observation

• After this unit, the learner will be able to:
  • define anthropology and participant observation
  • establish participant observation as a tool to be used in any instructional setting

Unit Two: understanding cultural diversity

• After this unit, the learner will be able to:
  • know what protected characteristics are
  • understand how their own cultural backgrounds impact their teaching and instructing
  • start connecting cultural diversity and its importance in the classroom to participant observation strategizes

Unit Three: connecting participant observation and cultural diversity

• After this unit, the learner will be able to:
  • build the bridge between teaching cultural diversity and using participant observation strategies
  • begin building individual and group activity for Unit Four in order to teach students cultural diversity
  • how to observe students during this activity using participant observation
  • building a strong rapport between institutor/student and between students

Unit Four: putting theory strategizes into practice

• After this unit, the learner will have:
  • created a group and individual activity for students at any grade level for students to reflect on their cultural backgrounds and how it could impact their individual learning and classroom dynamics
  • the learner will also understand why teaching cultural diversity in both a group setting and as individual instruction is ideal for implementing participant observation strategies

Unit Five: into the future

• After this unit, the learner will:
  • be able to reflect on participant observation strategies
  • analyze how this method would be useful in teaching different subjects
  • be able to answer if they believe this method would be useful in their own classrooms/teaching space

Curriculum Map