3 Hours
R.H. Evans Course Objectives: 2. Spend a few hours in
the library or on the World Wide Web, gathering a few very relevant articles
or book references for your question. If you can't find any, you may want to
consider another research question or ask Dr. Evans for help. If you get these
before leaving Winton-Salem, show them to Dr. Evans to get credit towards the
11/100 pre-trip points. If not, bring copies of the several relevant articles
and the book citations on the trip with you to get credit during the first five
days of the tour.
3. Prepare a preliminary
questionnaire of approximately ten questions, which you can use in each target
country to interview five people. These questions should get at the point of
your research and give you considerable information to help you write your paper
after the trip. You’ll need to have that fully approved by Dr. Evans (via e-mail
attachments) and loaded on your iPAQ before we leave for the tour. (See sample)
Wake Forest University
Summer 2006
1. Explore the physical, economic, social, aesthetic and cultural environments
of six to eight European countries.
2. Design and implement a research project aimed at answering a relevant question
about European culture.
3. Experience enough structure to encourage meaningful encounters with each
country but not so much as to hinder free and individualized discoveries.
4. Take responsibility for your own learning and develop the initiative to learn
from your surroundings.
5. Develop a new perspective on your own native culture and on your identity
within that culture.
6. Use your their liberal arts coursework from Wake Forest to gain a fuller
understanding and appreciation of the European milieu.
7. Learn to become travelers rather than tourists.
Activities:
PRE-TRIP 11/100 points
1. Select a research question for the summer, which will deepen and enrich your
travel experience. Your question should be genuinely interesting to you and
possibly applicable to your major or other work at Wake Forest. You'll investigate
your research question in the following eight countries: The Netherlands, France,
Italy, Germany, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Great Britain and the United States.
It should meet the following criteria:
a. Be defined as a "research question" which you intend to answer. For example:
"What evidence is there that xenophobia is affecting social and political decisions
in Europe?" Or, "To reach a cross-national European market, which elements of
an advertising campaign transcend borders and which do not?" Or, "What is the
relationship between the historical importance of Opera and its current popularity
in these cultures?"
b. Lend itself to investigation by a person-to-person questionnaire in each
country. So, for the first example above, you could develop a group of questions
about perceived threats from foreigners and intended-voting patterns based on
those perceptions. For the second, you could ask for people's reactions to various
examples of advertising. For the third you could find out how often your sample
attends, sees on television or listens to operas and how well informed they
are about them.
c. Lends itself to a place or site visitation or object collection in each country.
You'll need to be able to visit some institution or place to gather insightful
information about your research question. In the first example above, you might
visit a neighborhood populated mainly by "foreigners" in each country to find
out for yourself how people are being integrated into the dominant culture.
For the second example, you might visit an advertising agency or media business
in each country to gain expert insights into your focus question. For the third
you'd naturally want to attend one opera in most of the target cultures. For
other topics, it may be more appropriate to collect relevant objects such as
magazines, pictures of architecture or sketches in each country. You'll need
to get this research question approved by Dr. Evans in the weeks preceding the
tour. Once you agree on your question, you can develop your questionnaire and
download it onto your iPAQ.
4. During the first five
days of the tour you'll be asked to share your final questionnaire and article
copies (if not already shared) with Dr. Evans, for up to 11 course points. 2. Go to your best local
library (probably at a university) or use the Web and do some serious research
on your focus topic. Now that you've collected data, it should be easier than
it was before the trip to find relevant articles and books. You need to find
current, relevant and worthwhile material to add to your paper. Only 50% of
your research may come from the Web.
3. By early August (August
1st), you need to write a paper that answers your tour research question, and
submit it Dr. Evans. Rather than recounting what you did on the tour, your paper
should intelligently answer your research question cross-culturally. When added
to CURRENT library information, it should make some sense of what you saw and
experienced. Again, your writing and synthesis should reflect your liberal arts
education and individual interests. Length is not important, but making some
sense of your research is. Past experience has shown that you'll be tempted
to put off your paper until the last minute...after all, it's summer! But, most
people also say they wish they'd have done it the first week after getting back
so it was off their minds and finished. The paper must include significant and
not perfunctory use of your interview and site visitation data from your journal.
You are encouraged to use a combination of quantitative as well as qualitative
methods in both your data collection and reporting. This means that you may
well want to use appropriate graphs and charts to summarize collected data,
as well as descriptions of relevant experiences or interviews that help resolve
your research question.
DURING TRIP 49/100 PTS.
Each class member will keep an electronic journal during the course of the trip.
We’ll use the iPAQs for this and you’ll ‘hand-in’ each entry to Dr. Evans using
IR. This will give you an opportunity to store and analyze your interview data,
report on your site visits and general feelings, impressions and interpretations
of what is happening around you. A major purpose of this electronic journal
is to encourage you to think actively about the circumstances you encounter,
to analyze your own responses and reactions, and to consider the meaning of
these events. Eight times during the trip (after France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, The
Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark and Great Britain), the journal will be shared
with the instructor for feedback and grading. There are three categories of
things that must be included each time the journal is beamed in:
I. Your interview data using your research questionnaire. You must interview
at least five natives of each target country, about your research question,
using your questionnaire! This is an important component of the "data" which
you will collect about your research question to ultimately use for the post-trip
paper. This "data collection" should be useful in cross-cultural comparisons
in the final paper. Turn in both the original questionnaires via IR as well
as your preliminary analysis of them for each feedback with each journal. This
might include a simple spreadsheet in EXCEL.
II. A review of your site visitation in each target country, specifically with
regards to your research topic. This should contain all the information and
impressions that you'll be able to use for your post-trip paper. It might include
artifacts, like handouts or programs or media materials.
III. A thoughtful reflection on a newspaper article specified by Dr. Evans from
among those handed out for each target country. Dr. Evans will indicate which
article and perhaps the question to write about.
Each of the eight journal submissions is worth 5/100 course points. All together,
the three parts of each entry for all eight countries are worth 40/100 pts. Of
course you’ll have all of your journal entries and questionnaire data stored
on your iPAQ to take home with you and download onto your ThinkPad to use in
writing your paper. In addition, there will be four short quizes on the newspaper handouts while on the train worth a total of 9 points.
POST-TRIP 40/100 POINTS
1. Replicate your five-person interview and site visitation at home, being sure
to use the same kind of people and situations you used in Europe. Here's a chance
to really see how your own culture compares with those of the seven-targeted
European countries.
Send your paper as a Word attachment to Dr. Evans at: evansr@wfu.edu
by midnight on August 1st. Insert charts and graphs in the body of the text
at the appropriate points. If you have questions during the preparation, simply
send an e-mail message to Dr. Evans.