Caitlin Fouratt
As part of our ATS workshop series, faculty from CSULB and beyond share case studies and key lessons learned from implementing new approaches in their teaching practice.
Dr. Caitlin Fouratt
Dr. Caitlin E. Fouratt is an Assistant Professor of International Studies at CSULB. Her research explores transnational family-life, immigration policy, and forced migration within Central America. She has examined how Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica and their families in Nicaragua respond to economic crisis, environmental pressures, and failed government policies through reconfigurations of care and kinship. Her current work looks at the shifting Costa Rican response to an emerging refugee crisis within Latin America.
Insights on Using Technology in the Classroom:
After several semesters of teaching the course with a traditional culminating research paper and presentation, I wanted to find a way to get students more excited about the research project and to develop ways of communicating their results that went beyond our classroom. At the same time, I wanted them to continue developing effective writing and communication skills.
I implemented a multimedia project. I have used digital storytelling in other classes, but wanted to leave it more open-ended for this course. For this project, students can pick any topic related to migration. They then build a multimedia project about that topic aimed at a general audience. They submit a proposal, we workshop the projects in class, and they present their projects in a gallery exhibit during the final class sessions.
During the gallery walk, student rotate around the room to view and interact with different projects. They evaluate each other and provide feedback. Students can then revise their projects and resubmit for a new grade.
Finally, they submit a final paper that demonstrates the research behind the project.
I provide students with past examples and possible formats, but they always surprise me with their creativity. We have had twitter threads, Instagram stories, infographics, comic books, and videos. This semester, a pair of students went low-tech and made a DACA-themed boardgame. Another made a set of baseball cards about Cuban migration and professional athletes. Still another wrote a computer program to create a “choose your own adventure” style story about Vietnamese refugees.
From my end, the hardest part about the project is navigating the technology and ensuring ample space and time for everyone to interact with the projects. Students put an enormous amount of effort into these, so they deserve to be seen. BeachBoard has file size upload limitations, so setting up a multimedia gallery for everyone to share their work is challenging. We end up patching things together – some get emailed to me, some post YouTube or Twitter links, and we end up staging laptops around the room to view projects.
On the students’end, they often don’t know what media is best suited to the argument they want to make or the story they want to tell. We often think of these students as immersed in technology and the digital world, but they don’t necessarily know how to interact or communicate in particular formats. For example, the first few Twitter threads I received were just long stream of consciousness ramblings. I realized that I had to provide some guidance on what makes a good tweet. On the other hand, students are always teaching me new things too – this semester a student showed me how to use the map in snapchat to see a series of public pictures about daily life along the US/Mexico border.
Student Samples:
