GEOG 303.04 Geography and World Affairs

Syllabus

Fall 2009                                                                                         Dr. Scott Brady

                                                                                                   Office: 523 Butte Hall

Location: Cyberspace                                                                       Phone: 898-5588

Office Hours: MWF 9:30 – 10:30, Th 1:30-2:00                                    mailto:sbrady@csuchico.edu

Geography Computer Lab: Butte 501

        Hours: ?

Writing Center http://online.csuchico.edu/public/Writing_Center/

Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things... For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

     Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Bk. v, ch. 1 (Carlyle, tr.) [source: Stevenson]

General Education:

THEME G: GLOBAL ISSUES

Theme Coordinator: ?

This theme focuses on the enduring global issues of food, environment, human rights, justice, and social conflict. Exploration of these issues can be done through careful selection of courses in the theme. Global food issues focuses on the area of worldwide food production, distribution, and consumption. It explores crop production systems, biotechnology/GMO, environment, politics, and economics of food production and distribution, hunger and poverty as a method of inquiry into the theme issues. Geo- politics investigates the nature of the world and its physical, cultural, economic, and political evolution and studies how the process of global interdependence, in its clash with local authorities and conditions, forces re-evaluation of the enduring theme issues.

Foundation Course - to be taken first:

1 course required:

RELS     332     World Religions & Global Iss            3.0     FS *Eth


1 course selected from:

GEOS     370     Energy in the Human Environ           3.0     SP *
                                Prerequisites: One course from Breadth Area B1.
PSSC     392     World Food and Fiber Systems        3.0     FS *NW


Capstone Course - to be taken last:

1 course selected from:
ABUS     390     World Food and Hunger Issues        3.0     FS *NW
GEOG    303     Geography and World Affairs           3.0     FS *NW
POLS     341     International Relations                     3.0     FS *

Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education

1.    Good practice encourages student-faculty contact.
Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of classes is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement.  Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working.  Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students' intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and future plans.

2.    Good practice encourages cooperation among students.
Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race.  Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated.  Working with others often increases involvement in learning.  Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions improves thinking and deepens understanding.

3.    Good practice encourages active learning.
Learning is not a spectator sport.  Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing pre-packaged assignments, and spitting out answers.  They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives.  They must make what they learn part of themselves.

4.    Good practice gives prompt feedback.
Knowing what you know and don't know focuses learning.  Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses.  In getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence.  In classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement.  At various points during college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.

5.    Good practice emphasizes time on task.
Time plus energy equals learning.  There is no substitute for time on task.  Learning to use one's time well is critical for students and professionals alike.  Students need help in learning effective time management.  Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty.  How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis for high performance for all.
 
6.    Good practice communicates high expectations.
Expect more and you will get it.  High expectations are important for everyone-for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated.  Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when teachers and institutions hold high expectations for themselves and make extra efforts.

7.    Good practice respects diverse talents and ways of learning.
There are many roads to learning.  People bring different talents and styles of learning to college.  Brilliant students in the seminar room may be all thumbs in the lab or art studio.  Students rich in hands-on experience may not do so well with theory.  Students need to the opportunity to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them.  Then they can be pushed to learning in new ways that do not come so easily.

General Education Course Requirements

All courses accepted as components of CSU, Chico’s General Education (GE) program must also help students use writing to engage in rigorous study of the body of knowledge essential to the discipline represented by the course content.  Each GE course section must include the following:

•    A writing requirement (at least 2500 words, total), or comparable problem or laboratory set requirement, in the genres and forms appropriate to the discipline.  This requirement is intended to engage students in a rigorous study of the bodies of knowledge represented in the course, including the ways in which writing constructs and communicates knowledge.
 
•    Multiple writing assignments, at least one of which is graded and returned to students prior to the due date of the later assignments

•    Some significant, written work within the first two weeks of the semester. returned to students with informative feedback as soon as possible. This requirement is intended to assess entry-level knowledge, attitudes, and skills, and to provide feedback on coursework expectations.

Course Description:

This course is a geographical survey of several of the world's major regions with emphasis on those features important to an understanding of cultural differences and economic and human sustainability. This course presents fundamental geographic concepts in the context of the world's places and regions. Special emphasis is placed on factors that link and isolate peoples of the world.

Course Objectives:

Course Format: This is an online readings course.  We never meet.  We read, do exercises, take 3 exams and write a paper.  Students may utilize the chat room feature on our Vista site.  I will not monitor chats and they will not be graded.  Students should utilize the chat room as a support tool.  You can exchange questions, information and helpful hints in the chat room. 

Email: Students should utilize the email feature on our Vista site for all communication with me. Sometimes students ask questions that are shared by other students.  In such cases, I'll post my answer as an announcement on the Vista site.

Office Hours:  I also will use office hours to answer students’ email inquiries. This will require patience. Students should not expect immediate responses to emails. I will respond only during office hours.

Website: will regularly update the course website.  Students must visit the site to be aware of changes and additions.  You will find links to websites embedded in each week of the course.  I will also post questions beneath these links that will guide your viewing of these sites.  The information that I guide you to will be covered on exams.

Readings: A fundamental element of a liberal education is the development of the ability to read critically. Hence, your success in this course largely depends on the amount of time and effort you devote to the assigned readings.

Question Sets:  To ensure that students keep up with the assigned readings, students must complete question sets that guide them through assigned textbook readings. You do not turn in question sets to be graded.  You simply complete them to prepare yourself for the exams.  I post question set keys every week or so, so that you may check your answers against mine.

Atlas Exercises: Students will complete several atlas exercises during the course.  These are self-directed exercises that you will not turn in to me.  Similar to questions sets, I post keys every week or so, so that you may check your answers against mine.  I use atlas exercise to create exam questions.

Exams: There are 3 exams.  They are open book exams that include information from the readings, question sets, atlas exercises other materials that I direct you to through the web-site.  Exams contain 25-30 multiple choice/short answer questions.  I will make exams available for a 48-hour period. Students will have ~60 minutes to complete exams.

Make-up Exams: No make-up exams will be given.

Research Project: Students are required to complete a research project in this course.  The research project is an annotated bibliography of at least 1500 words. Students will turn in this project in the body of an email, not as an email attachment.  You can do that if your email program allows you to send the message/paper to me in the "rich text" format.  Try it. If it doesn't work send it to me as a MS Word attachment. Send it to sbrady@csuchico.edu. Of course, send it to me after you have submitted it to turnitin.com. 

Plagiarism: Unfortunately, students have committed plagiarism on their annotated bibliographies during past semesters.  They copied work from an online source and presented it as their own.  I referred these students to judicial affairs and asked that they receive the most severe penalty.  I will continue to do so. 

The University catalogue http://www.csuchico.edu/catalog/cat05/ includes an overly general description of activities that constitute plagiarism.  I have included it below.  

"Plagiarism: Copying homework answers from your text to hand in for a grade; failing to give credit for ideas, statement of facts, or conclusions derived from another source; submitting a paper downloaded from the Internet or submitting a friend's paper as your own; claiming credit for artistic work (such as a music composition, photo, painting, drawing, sculpture, or design) done by someone else."

Please review the detailed explanation of plagiarism found at this site: http://www.collegeboard.com/article/0,3868,2-10-0-10314,00.html.  Please use in-text citations to give credit to your sources.  If you have any questions about plagiarism, please contact me.

Grades:

Academic Policies and Regulations

Final grades are based on % of 225 total points, earned from the categories below.
A=92-100%; B= 80-91%; C=68-79%; D=50-67%; and F= less than 50%.

Exam 1

50 points

Exam 2

50 points

Exam 3

50 points

Research Project

  75 points

Total

225 points

 

Required Materials:

CSU-Chico's bookstore will have these books.  You should also bargain shop online.  I like http://www.abebooks.com/

Online Resources:

Language, Vocabulary and Esoterica

Magazines and Newspapers

Maps

Population

Religion

Tentative Schedule:

Week 1  (8/24-8/28) Course requirements; Introduction to Geography

Question Set 1

Remember that you do not turn this question set in to me for grading.
Answer Key

 8/28 Orientation paper due:  Students will turn in a double-spaced, 250-word essay in which they answer the following questions. Send me your paper in the body of an email, not as an attachment.

    1) Why did you enroll in this course?
    2) Why did you choose to complete this theme?
    3) What international experience do you have?
    4) What do you hope to learn in this course?
    5) Which regions most interest you?
    6) Which global issues most interest you?
    7) Who are you?

Week 2  (8/31-9/4) Europe

Question Set 2
Answer Key

Europe Atlas Exercise
Key

Web Resources:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/europe_ref01.jpg

Week 3  (9/7-9/11) Europe

Annotated Bibliography information: I have received questions about topics for this assignment.  I allow a wide range of topics because I want students to research a topic that interests them.   My only restrictions are that the topic must be focused in a region that we study this semester and the topic must be mappable.  We will study Europe, Middle America, South America and North Africa/Southwest Asia this semester.

I encourage you to send me any ideas that you have for the assignment.  I'll let you know if you are on the right track.

Your proposal for your annotated bibliography is due on October 5.

Research Proposal Due: October 5
Proposal Guidelines

Example of a complete annotated bibliography

Required Reading
Friedman Chapter 1 Questions
Key


Web Resources:

Roman Empire
European Union Map
http://www.3dphoto.net/stereo/world/europe/great_britain/gb/great_britain_locator.html

Required Online Reading:
The two links below contain information about immigration to Europe.  Read them and consider the parallels between migration of laborers to the US and EU.

http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/billysjourney.htm

Europe's Back Doors.  

Week 4  (9/14-9/18) Europe

Required Online Reading: The readings at the links below highlight the growing influence of Muslims in Europe and some of the tensions it has caused.    

http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=60
This link will inform you about the growing population of Muslims in the EU.  You are not required to read the pdf at this link

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0201/dailyUpdate.html?s=rel?s=widep
This link will inform you about a European-Muslim controversy from a few years ago.  

I also want you to read the articles at the two links below. One shows how the Danish cartoon controversy persisted. The other demonstrates Islam's growing influence in Great Britain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7251378.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7232661.stm

Week 5  (9/21-9/25) Middle America

Research Proposal Due: October 5
Proposal Guidelines
 

Question Set Ch 4
Key

Atlas exercise
Key

Required Online Reading


Maquiladora Life
History Moving North

Maquiladora comes from the Spanish word maquilar meaning to perform a task for another. In Mexico, the word referred to the portion of grain collected by millers from grinding other farmers' grains.

Friedman Chapter 3 Questions
Key

Sample exam questions

 

Week 6  (9/28-10/2) Middle America continued

Exam 1 will be available at our Vista site from Tuesday 8 am until Friday 5 pm.

Week 7  (10/5-10/9) Middle America 

Hello Onliners.  This week I want you to view the documentary, Life and Debt.  Just click on the link and you can view it.  Below the link you will find questions for the video.

 

http://oneheartbooks.com/resources/videos/life_and_debt.htm

 

Some students have had problems accessing “Life and Debt” at the link above.  Here’s another link with the video:

 

http://www.livevideo.com/video/BESToftheBEST/8572389162284FFD9468AD17757C5D95/life-and-debt-1of-4.aspx

 

Life and Debt Questions

Key

Research Proposal Due: October 5
Proposal Guidelines

Week 8  (10/12-10/16)  South America

Question set
Answers

Atlas exercise
Atlas exercise key

Week 9 (10/19-10/23) South America


Hello Onliners. Read the articles at the 4 links below to learn about the role of coca in Andean South America.

Required Online Readings:

http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/03/bolivia-the-un.html#more

http://ain-bolivia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=28

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6934807.stm

http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/02/bolivia-coca-ce.html

Week 10  (10/26-10/30) South America

Plan Colombia is a US-Colombia plan that came about during the Clinton administration.  Read this document closely.  Consider what amounts of money are being used for what specific activities and supplies. 

Plan Colombia

I also want you to read the report from the US government’s Government Accountability Office (GAO). It is a report on the successes and failures of Plan Colombia

GAO Report on Plan Colombia

And finally, view this 25-minute video. Shoveling Water, from Witness for Peace, which details the consequences of one aspect of Plan Colombia

Shoveling Water

Week 11  (11/2-11/6) South America and Exam 2

Hello Onliners. This week I want to conclude our look at South America by considering the region's most provocative figure, Hugo Chavez.  Read the articles at the three links below to learn how Chavez is using his country's petroleum reserves to shake up the geopolitics of Latin America.

 

http://www.upi.com/Energy_Resources/2008/01/30/Analysis-Venezuela-expands-influence/UPI-28541201713650/

http://www.coha.org/2007/12/07/bank-of-the-south-another-step-toward-latin-american-integration/

http://www.coha.org/2007/03/05/chavezs-oil-largesse-winning-fans-abroad/

 

 

Exam 2 will be available will be available at our Vista site from Tuesday 8 am until Friday 5 pm.

Exam 2 will include questions about this week’s readings.

Sample Exam Questions

 

Week 12 (11/9-11/13) North Africa/Southwest Asia

Question set
Key

Atlas exercise
Key

Friedman p. 249-256.

Friedman Questions
Key

Web Resources:

http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf
British Mandate 1920-1946
PASSIA: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs - Jerusalem
http://www.mideastweb.org/mrefugees.htm
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/pillars.shtml
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html


Week 13  (11/16-11/20) North Africa/Southwest Asia

Required Online Readings:

1. http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/transcripts/2002/sep/020919.conan.html

I also want you to read the article at the link below. The first link is the actual article from the Armed Forces Journal and suggests what the map of the Middle East might look like after the war in Iraq ends. The second is a link to the map that he discusses in the article.

2. http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ralph_Peters_solution_to_Mideast.jpg

Web Resources:

http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/maps/default.htm

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/maps/index.html

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/sykes-picot-1916.gif

 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/uk-mideast-1917-1971.gif

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/dates-independence.gif

http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/0_pal_facts_MAPS.htm

http://www.mideastweb.org/mrefugees.htm

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/atlas_middle_east/iraq_timeline.jpg

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iraq_dissident_areas_1992.jpg
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iraq_oilfields_1992.jpg

Week 14  (11/23-11/27) North Africa/Southwest Asia continued

 

Week 15  (11/30-12/4) North Africa/Southwest Asia

Example of annotated bibliography

This link http://www.aallnet.org/products/2004-47.pdf no longer works.  It used to lead to an example of an annotated bibliography that a student copied during a previous semester.  The primary lesson is do not copy or plagiarize.
 
This week you should make final edits and complete your annotated bibliographies.  They are due on ?.  Be certain to review the assignment instructions above and the description about plagiarism.  If you have any questions, contact me.

The instructions for Turnitin.com are at this link. This is a required part of your annotated bibliography assignment.

Week 16  (12/7-12/11)

TBA

Week 17  (12/14-12/18)

The final exam will be available from Tuesday at 8 am until Friday at 5 pm.

Final exam questions from past semesters