LARCH 065: Built Environment and Culture

LARCH 065: Built Environment and Culture

Activation Code This course requires the purchase of an activation code. This is a nine digit number that allows you to access this online course. The code must be purchased online through MBS Direct at this website: ( ). You will be unable to access the course website prior to its purchase. The funds generated from the activation codes are used by the College's e-Learning Institute to support the ongoing maintenance and revisions of certain courses.

Once purchased, simply point your Web browser to the Course URL (see above) and enter your code exactly as it appears on your card. You will only need to enter this code one time. Please see the Course Materials pdf and Welcome Letter for more information.

Course Prerequisites The course does not presuppose any background in design fields like architecture, landscape architecture or urban planning. It begins with an overview of some of the salient ways in which the relationship between the built environment and culture has been theorized. It then investigates the relationship between built environment and culture by analyzing settings at different scales: 1) home and housing, 2) streets, and 3) cities.

Required Textbooks There is no required text for this course. Instead we will be using readings from several books, journal articles, newspaper articles and popular media. Readings for each lesson are identified under the readings tab associated with each lesson. Reading materials can be accessed through the library course reserves () and/or via direct link through the Angel course under the Resources tab. If going through the University library page, you must login with your PSU user id and password. This will take you to the CAT search page. Click on Course Reserves from the list on top of the page. You can then type in Bose and click on By Instructor. This will take you to a List of Instructors. Click on Bose, Mallika. This will take you to a List of Courses. Click on Built Environment and Culture. This will take you to the list of readings for this class. Scroll down the list and locate the readings for each week. The title of the reading and the author(s) will help you locate each reading. The list continues on the second page and if needed you will have to click on Next to advance to the next page to select the reading. In addition all students should regularly read the New York Times newspaper. The paper can be accessed through the student readership program at the University Park Campus or electronically at .

Course Description This interdisciplinary course is based on the premise that space is an active structuring element of human experience. Using theoretical orientations from landscape architecture, architecture, urban planning, geography, sociology, and cultural anthropology, this course will investigate how social structures are spatially embedded in contemporary built environments. It will do so by examining environments at different scales (house, street, city), and regions (western and non-western). Within each scale and region it will focus on the spatial experience of different groups based on racial, ethnic, gender, class, and other identities.

Course Structure The course consists of four major units of content. Unit 1 is called Course Foundations and is a two-lesson unit providing a course orientation and a lesson in theoretical perspectives for the built environment. Unit 2 is called Homes and Housing and is a five-lesson unit analyzing a variety of issues related to housing. Unit

3 is called Streets and is a three-lesson unit dealing with the built environment of streets. Unit 4 is called Cities and is a five-lesson unit analyzing the most complex built environment encountered in the course: the modern city and its roots.

Course Goals ? To introduce students to a variety of mainstream and alternative built environments in different parts of the contemporary world. ? To help students develop a basic understanding of the different ways in which social and cultural practices are embedded in a variety of everyday built environments. ? To facilitate students' understanding of how social and power structures are rooted in a variety of mainstream and alternative built environments in both western and nonwestern contexts. ? To equip students with the necessary skills to understand and analyze the relationship between specific built environments, their users and the activities that such environments facilitate and/or hinder. ? To help students acquire the skills to: research a topic by combining information from a variety of sources, critically review information from a variety of sources, reach informed opinions and conclusions on a topic, and write cogently.

Course Delivery Format This course will be delivered entirely online. There are no face-to-face class sessions. Be sure to go through the course orientation thoroughly to prepare yourself for how this course will operate and what is expected of you.

In short, the course is Web-based. It makes extensive use of ANGEL for discussion activities, quizzes, and exams. The course Web pages reside outside ANGEL and supply you with most of the course content, directions, media, and activities you will need. You course orientation will explain the delivery format in more detail.

Operating System:

Windows 2000/XP or Vista, Mac OS X 10.2 or higher (10.3 or higher recommended).

Web browser:

Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6, Safari 4 Windows: Firefox 3.6, Safari 4, Internet Explorer 8 Firefox and Safari are preferred as they will provide the fastest experience possible for e-Learning Institute courses. Due to nonstandard handling of CSS, JavaScript and caching,we do not support using Internet Explorer 6 as your browser. Note: Cookies, Java, and JavaScript must be enabled. Pop-up blockers should be configured to permit new windows from Penn State Web sites. Also, some students have reported conflicts in the display of course content with the newest versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Other:

? Adobe Flash Player 9 or later ? A minimum of 256 MB of RAM ? 1 GHz or higher processor ? 500 MB of available (a.k.a "free") hard disk storage is recommended ? Broadband (cable or DSL) connection required

Course Grading Scale

Quality of

Grade Grade-Point

Performance Excellent Good Satisfactory Poor

Failure

A

Exceptional achievement

A-

B+

B

Extensive achievement

B-

C+

Acceptable achievement

C

Minimal achievement (The student may be seriously

handicapped if he/she enrolls in a more advanced course for which this course was a prerequisite. The course may be

D

repeated.)

Inadequate achievement (Credit is not earned. The course may be repeated.)

F

Academic dishonesty (Credit is not earned. The course may be repeated.)

XF

Equivalent 4.00 3.67 3.33 3.00 2.67 2.33 2.00

1.00

0.00

0.00

The marks corresponding to letter grades are as follows:

A = 93%+

C+ = 77%+

A- = 90%+

C = 73%+

B+ = 87%+

D = 63%+

B = 83%+

F = < 63%

B- = 80%+

Assignments: The table below summarizes the assignments you are required to complete in this course by type, quantity, and point value.

Assignment Type

Quantity x Value

Percent of Total Grade

Weekly Quizzes

9 @ 4% each (Best 8 of 9) 32%

Exam 1 (based on Unit 2) 1 @ 15%

15%

Exam 2 (based on Unit 3) 1 @ 15%

15%

Exam 3 (based on Unit 4) 1 @ 20%

20%

Discussion Assignments 3 @ 6%

18%

Assignment Notes

Weekly Quizzes Each quiz (except for the orientation quiz) will be 10-15 minutes in length and 10-15 questions long, taken in the ANGEL environment. Questions are multiple choice, check-all-that-apply, matching, true/false, drop down lists and fill-in-the-blanks. You may take the weekly quiz anytime in a 96-hour window. Make-up quizzes will be scheduled (as necessary with approval). Although all course materials are available to you during a quiz, it is highly inadvisable to expect to look up answers as you go. If you are not already prepared, you will likely do poorly on the quiz. Your final quiz average for the course will count your best 8 of 9 scores.

Note that all quizzes are set for two attempts. However, only the FIRST attempt will be recorded as your grade. Because there is a small possibility of encountering a technical problem during the first attempt, you may immediately retake the quiz a second time after such an event. However, you will then need to e-mail the Instructor regarding the particular circumstances of the technical problem that you faced. Failure to do so will result in the first quiz attempt grade, usually a zero, being recorded as your quiz grade.

In contrast, the Lesson Quiz 1-1 (Orientation Quiz) assesses how well you understood your course orientation and its navigation. There will not be any academic content on this quiz because it functions as more of a learning activity than a quiz. You may therefore take this quiz more than once to improve your score, and the quiz is not timed. It will also be available to you beginning on the first day of class and will remain available for the first two weeks of the course.

Unit Exams Unit exams will be delivered online using ANGEL. These will also be timed (about 60 - 90 minutes), single attempt examination sessions in several parts. The main body of the exam will consist of typical exam questions: multiple choice, check-all-that-apply, matching, and fill-in-the-blanks. However, the second section will require you to write one essay and complete two Applied Reasoning Challenges. The Applied Reasoning Challenges are much fewer in number, take longer to answer, and involve reasoning your way through an interrelated series of questions. The intent of these questions is to assess your critical thinking skills in a way that approximates the complexity of a brief essay.

Exams 1, 2, 3 will be scheduled during Week 5, 8 and 12 of the class and will be available for a 96-hour window. Each exam will be graded and returned in 10 days time. Make-up exams will be scheduled as necessary. Each Exam covers one unit and is weighted according to complexity and the amount of content it covers. They are not cumulative. However, the concepts and ideas do build on each other.

Discussion Questions Students will be randomly assigned to one of four different Discussion Teams beginning in Unit 2. You will receive a notice of your team assignment after the regular add/drop period has closed. Each week, team(s) will be assigned to discuss a separate issue from the lesson through an online discussion board in Angel. Although only the assigned team(s) will have posting rights in the discussion that week, all other students will have the ability to read and follow the discussion. The discussion issues are posted in the course web pages within the lesson and are included on the Angel discussion board for your reference. Your team will be assigned a week and topic three times during the semester. Each discussion assignment is 6% of the final grade, thus 18% total.

Discussions will be graded individually for each team member. Your primary grade for the assignment is based on your individually posted response to the issue. An essay format is expected and a simple summary of the relevant issues from the lesson is considered B level work in this assignment. Demonstration of how the relevant issues work together to support your position, taken together with relevant experience or outside evidence, will increase your primary grade significantly. Please note that these assignments, taken together, represent a higher value than most exams. Do not take them lightly.

In addition, comments, question, or challenges to other students' initial responses or ongoing discussion will increase your overall score 1-3% for each quality comment made. It is intended to be a discussion over a series of days and not a single response assignment. There will also be a general make-up discussion offered in Week 15 for all students to replace or improve a missing or low score on a discussion assignment during the semester.

Lesson Activities

Every lesson will have a relevant Lesson Activity. Lesson Activities are exercises meant to deepen your understanding of essential concepts in the course. They will take a variety of forms: Some will involve analyzing content on other Web sites, some watching a video segment, and still others locating and interpreting information. All activities require you to respond to several questions.

Although the lesson activities themselves are not submitted or graded, the knowledge and experience you gain from them will be required at later points in the course and will also be assessed on quizzes and exams. Be sure you can answer the questions adequately at the end of each lesson activity. For each lesson activity, answer sheets will be posted in Angel by Wednesday of each week so you can compare your responses to them.

Course Calendar

Course Calendar Unit 1: Course Orientation and Theoretical Perspectives

Week 1 Week 2

Unit 1 Lesson 1: Course Orientation ? Read welcome letter ? Review course syllabus ? Review lesson pages ? Complete Lesson Quiz 1-1 (Orientation Quiz) ? Introduce yourself in ANGEL Unit 1 Lesson 2: Theoretical Perspectives of Built Environments ? Complete reading(s) ? Review lecture and complete lesson activity ? Complete Lesson Quiz 1-2

Unit 2: Home and Housing

Week 3 Unit 2 Lesson 1: Conceptualizing Home Environments

Week 4

? Complete reading(s) ? Watch video ? America by Design: The House ? Review lecture and complete lesson activity ? Complete Lesson Quiz 2-1 (Combined with Lesson Quiz 2-2 in Summer Session) ? Read/participate in Discussion Forum (as assigned) Unit 2 Lesson 2: Federal Subsidies and the American Dream ? Read synopsis of Discussion from Lesson 2-1 ? Complete reading(s)

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