Teaching “Anthropology for Liberation” Part 2: Redesigning assessments

This is the (overdue!) second part of a series reflecting on changes I made to my undergraduate course Anthropology for Liberation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington in 2025. In Part 1, I wrote about what happened when I dropped a book from the reading list, and what a student’s observation taught me about the way that reading lists themselves make arguments about what is important in a course. This post focuses on the three assessments for the course (which I wrote about in 2022) – the book review, the research journal, and the final research project – and the changes I made to each.

Expanding the book review list

To partly compensate for dropping Black Food Geographies from the required reading list (as I discussed in Part 1), in 2025 I significantly expanded the list of books students could choose from for their book review assignment. This gave students a broader range of texts to engage with, and over half of the class chose from the new additions to the list.

New additions are highlighted in bold:

Alonso Bejarano, Carolina, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein. 2019. Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Durham: Duke University Press.

Byler, Darren. 2022. Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. Durham: Duke University Press.

Dave, Naisargi N. 2012. Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics. Durham: Duke University Press.

Dokumaci, Arseli. 2023. Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Farmer, Paul. 2004. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. California: University of California Press.

Fein, Elizabeth. 2020. Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community. New York: New York University Press.

Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. La Vergne: AK Press.

Kirsch, Stuart. 2018. Engaged Anthropology: Politics Beyond the Text. California: University of California Press.

Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mora Bayo, Mariana. 2017. Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Schuller, Mark. 2021. Humanity’s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Shange, Savannah. 2019. Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco. Durham: Duke University Press.

Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press.

Speed, Shannon. 2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. 2019. Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.

Three students also chose to write their reviews about fictional works: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth, and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. These reviews pushed students to consider how anthropological concepts illuminate colonialism and oppression in speculative fiction, and how the genre itself can both challenge and reproduce Western ontologies. In my view, this was a harder task than reviewing one of the books on the list as it required students to balance literary analysis with anthropological critique, but it generated some of the most creative thinking about how anthropological concepts travel across different genres and modes of storytelling.

Adding a research focus and AI position statement to the research journal

The main change I made to the research journal from 2022 was replacing the group bibliography with an individually written research focus and AI position statement. My goals were to encourage students to start work on their research projects early in the course, and to foster transparency and honest conversations about AI use in anthropological research. AI has had a significant impact on learning and teaching in higher education worldwide and I wanted to address it directly.

The assignment still used task-based grading, and here are the instructions for the new Task 1:

Task 1. Research focus and AI position think piece

Task 1 helps you articulate your research direction early in the research process and establish your approach to using AI tools. This reflection will guide your research journey and ensure you are making intentional choices about how you engage with both your topic and available technologies.

What you need to do: write and submit two short paragraphs (no more than 150 words each) outlining:
a. What you plan to focus on for your final research project;
b. Your position on using AI tools for this assignment and your final research project.

Paragraph A. Research focus
Describe your intended research topic, including what draws you to this area and how it connects to an anthropology for liberation. You might mention specific communities, practices, movements, concepts, or questions you want to explore. Don’t worry about having everything figured out – this is a starting point that can evolve as you engage with course materials and develop your thinking. You can also change your mind about your research focus after you submit this task.

Paragraph B. AI position think piece
After working through the Cultural Anthropology Student Guidelines for Using AI module on Nuku, reflect on how (or whether) you plan to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, or other assistance technologies in your research and writing process. This refers specifically to generative AI tools as outlined in the guidelines, not assistive technologies you may use for accessibility or disability support. Consider:

What are the benefits and limitations of these tools for anthropological research?
How might they affect your learning process?
What ethical, environmental, and other considerations are important to you?

Be honest about your current thinking – there’s no “right” answer and you aren’t being judged on your response. You can also change your mind at any time. However, being intentional about your approach will help you make better choices throughout the course. I recommend spending up to 1 hour on this task.

Asking students to think about their research focus earlier in the course worked well. The AI position think piece, however, did not quite go as I anticipated. Many of the students positioned themselves as opposed to using AI at all, citing ethical, environmental, and academic integrity concerns, as well as worries about cognitive offloading. We had very different in-person conversations about AI use in class: responses were much more varied, and several students spoke about the stigma and shame they felt in admitting to AI use. This was an important insight that I took into future teaching, and one that Emmy Martin also wrote about in the Chronicle of Higher Education piece on how AI use has become something students police in one another, which can result in students using it in secret.

In hindsight, I think that asking students to write a formal position statement on their AI use, and submit it as part of their assessment, was not the right way to achieve my goal. Students were likely aware that work submitted to Nuku (my university’s learning management system) was connected to their academic records, which probably shaped what they decided to write.

Adding a game design option to the final research project

The last assessment change I made was to add a new, fourth option to the final research project: inviting students to design a simulation or live-action role-playing game and submitting a game design document. I am grateful to Dr Barbara Andersen for the inspiration behind this option; it is based on a game design assignment she uses in one of her own social anthropology classes, and she generously shared her assessment design with me.

Students had a concrete model for what this could look like because, partway through the trimester, we played Tina Ngata and Tāwhana Chadwick’s Good Ancestor Game together in seminar, part of their Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery training programme. I write about that in Part 3 of this series.

Here are the assignment instructions for this new option:

Option 4. Design a simulation game and submit a game design document

This option invites you to put what you have learned about an anthropology for liberation into practice by designing a short simulation or LARP (live-action role-playing) game. The goal is to design a game that brings your research findings to life and demonstrates how anthropological insights can be communicated through interactive gameplay. Note that you don’t actually have to produce the game for this option; instead, you will write and submit a game design document.

If you would like to see an example of an educational game, Tina Ngata and Tāwhana Chadwick released “The Good Ancestor Game” earlier this year as part of their Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery training programme. This public Facebook post has more information about the game: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FJsa95LFe/

You are encouraged to discuss your game concept with me as you develop it. We will have opportunities to workshop game ideas during seminars.

Your game should:

Build directly on the research and ideas you developed in your research journal
Be designed for 3-8 players and take 45-90 minutes to complete
Include clear instructions that would allow others to facilitate the game
Demonstrate how your research connects to key course themes

Your 2000-word game design document should include the following sections:

An introduction that explains how and why your game communicates key themes from ANTH 302. Connect your game to broader course themes by citing at least two sources from your research journal or two assigned course readings.
Game setup. Describe the context and scenario. Where does the game take place? How many players? What props or materials are needed? How long should gameplay last?
Characters and roles. Who are the characters and what can they do? What are their goals, motivations, constraints?
Rules and mechanics governing gameplay. How do players interact? What actions are possible?
Structure of play. Outline the phases or rounds of gameplay. What should happen during each round? How does the game progress?
Ending and debrief. How do players know or decide that the game has ended? What debriefing questions or activities will help players reflect on the key course themes you want them to experience?
A conclusion that summarises why this game effectively communicates your research findings. Like the introduction, this is the more “scholarly” part of the document where you make connections between your game design and key themes relevant to an anthropology for liberation.
Reference list formatted using the Chicago 17th author-date referencing style.

Only a few students chose this option, but the ones who did were clearly gamers. Their design documents showed a level of fluency with game mechanics and genre conventions that went well beyond what I had expected, and it was a pleasure to read work that drew as confidently on tabletop and video game design as it did on our course readings.

Reflecting on these changes, I think that expanding the book review list and adding the game design option worked well because they gave students more choice and room for creativity within a format they knew was being marked. The AI position statement worked differently: because it asked students to commit, in writing, to a stance on something ethically and socially fraught, it showed me more about what students felt safe saying on record than about how they actually engage with AI. In contrast, the game design option was a success that I will keep in future iterations of the course. If you have used game design, simulation, or role-play as an assessment in your own teaching, I’d love to hear about it!

Developing a ‘Cultural Anthropology Pathways Explorer’ for a university Open Day

If you work at a university, you’ll know that Open Days are an important recruitment event. Universities here in Aotearoa are facing increasing financial challenges (a result of neoliberal higher education policies, years of government underfunding, and recent changes to the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund that saw funding removed for humanities and social sciences), and all staff are expected to contribute to Open Day in some way. This year, we were asked to create interactive activities for prospective students and their parents to draw them to our Expo Stand. After learning that we would have access to a button badge making machine for Open Day, I decided to see if I could create a ‘pick-a-path’-style tool to answer the questions we are most frequently asked: what is anthropology, and what kind of career path does it lead to? I envisioned a web-based tool that would provide people with a scenario based on the kind of research that my colleagues and I do, give them some options to choose from, and then have an ‘outcome’ page with an anthropology pathway that they could then turn into a badge. This post describes how I developed that interactive tool.

(If you want to skip ahead to see the interactive tool about Cultural Anthropology at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, please visit: https://lorenagibson.github.io/ANTH/)

Developing the tool with Claude AI

I don’t have the technical skills to build an interactive tool, so my first step was to ask Claude AI whether it could build a pick-a-path web app to guide students through our cultural anthropology pathways. Of course it could:

A pick-a-path app for Cultural Anthropology is a fantastic idea! It’s definitely doable and would be perfect for engaging high schoolers who learn best through interactive experiences. Here’s how you could structure it:

The Core Concept: “What Would an Anthropologist Do?” – Students face real-world scenarios and make choices that reveal different anthropological approaches and career paths.

Sample Pathways:

Urban Explorer: Click if interested in cities → scenarios about studying street art cultures, food truck communities, or gentrification patterns

Digital Native: Click if interested in technology → paths exploring online gaming communities, social media rituals, or digital activism

Global Citizen: Click if interested in travel → scenarios about documenting disappearing languages, studying migration patterns, or working with indigenous communities

Social Justice Advocate: Click if interested in equity → paths through medical anthropology, educational inequality research, or corporate culture analysis

Interactive Elements:

Photo/video snippets from real fieldwork

“Field Notes” mini-games where they observe and interpret cultural practices

Quick polls: “What would you investigate first?” with branching outcomes

Meet-the-anthropologist video clips triggered by their choices

Technical Feasibility: Very manageable! You could build this as a simple web app using tools like Twine (designed for interactive stories) or even a basic HTML/JavaScript setup. No complex programming needed.

Engagement Hooks: End each path with “Your anthropological superpower is…” and connect to specific courses or faculty research areas.

Want me to help you map out the decision tree structure or create a prototype?

(Claude Sonnet 4 response)

I asked Claude AI to create a decision tree structure and a prototype so I could see what it might look like. I ran the idea by my colleagues (who were all happy for me to experiment with this), arranged to have an iPad as well as the button badge machine at our booth, and set to work on revising the decision tree structure and writing my own content.

Designing the content

I am somewhat unusual among my colleagues in that I enjoy creating communications materials about cultural anthropology. (Yes I know that makes me susceptible to the ‘busywork’ that academics are increasingly asked to do.) Cultural anthropology is not taught as a subject at many secondary schools in Aotearoa, so it can be challenging for us to entice students into taking our courses at Open Day when we also need to explain what it is in the first place. In 2023 I created a new Cultural Anthropology flyer for Open Day that explains what cultural anthropology is, lists New Zealand secondary school subjects that are suited to it (which I developed by trawling the New Zealand Qualification Authority’s list of subjects and learning areas), lists a number of workplaces that our graduates have gone on to have successful careers at, and groups our courses into pathways so they are legible to students planning their degrees. You can check out our 2025 flyer here:

Cultural Anthropology 2025 Open Day flyer

We’ve received a lot of positive feedback on our flyer, especially the careers section, and I wanted to use these pathways as the foundation for a pick-a-path style interactive tool.

The first design decision was the main entry question. It needed to communicate what cultural anthropology is (the study of humanity) and why we are drawn to it (we’re fascinated by people). I found this one easy: What fascinates you most about people?

Next, I created a list of possible career paths that people could follow with a degree in cultural Anthropology. I read Career Tools for Anthropology: An Anthropology Career Readiness Network Workbook (edited by Jennifer Studebaker, Elizabeth K. Briody, Zahra Malik, and Riall W. Nolan) – which I highly recommend – and the ‘careers’ sections of various anthropology association websites to expand my initial list. This information would appear on the ‘outcome’ pages I wanted, along with recommended courses.

After that, I worked on what the outcomes would be. Claude AI’s initial decision tree had four pathways each with three choices and 12 outcomes, but that was too many for me to create so I decided that our five pathways would each have two choices and only 10 outcomes. Looking at the list of courses associated with each pathway, and thinking about my colleagues’ areas of research expertise, I came up with 15 possible outcomes, ran them past a colleague (thanks Eli!), and settled on the final 10 that appear in the interactive tool.

The most challenging aspect involved creating scenarios and choices for each of our five pathways. The scenarios needed to speak to the courses associated with each pathway, and I wanted to ground them in the research that my colleague and I do so that we could talk about it further with students on Open Day. Each scenario would end with a question (“what do you do?”) followed by two choices, which needed to clearly lead to different outcomes. Here I sought feedback from Claude AI on my scenarios, sharing what I wrote and prompting Claude AI to check for clarity, accessibility (for a target audience of 17 year olds), and alignment with each pathway and its intended outcomes.

I started with the Science, Technology and Innovation pathway, which was a new addition for 2025. I wrote an initial scenario loosely based on my newest colleague Sumin Myung‘s research and shared that, along with the descriptions for our courses on STS and design anthropology, with Claude AI, which responded with:

Science, Technology, and Innovation Scenario: You’re studying South Korea’s celebrated forest regeneration projects, where scientists have transformed landscapes devastated by colonialism and war into thriving forests. But you discover that different groups tell very different stories about these “anthropogenic forests.” Government officials celebrate them as triumphs of national resilience and scientific progress. Forest scientists are developing new methods to help forests adapt to climate change, seeing themselves as “climate sentinels” monitoring environmental threats. However, some communities remember different histories – traditional forest practices disrupted by colonial forestry, or question whether these scientifically-managed forests truly represent ecological recovery. How do you want to approach understanding these different perspectives?

Two potential outcomes:

Focus on how scientific knowledge and practices shape environmental policy → Science and Technology Studies/Environmental Anthropology

Focus on how different groups understand progress, tradition, and environmental futures → Applied Anthropology/Development Studies

This captures:

The scientific/technological intervention (reforestation science)

Multiple stakeholder perspectives (scientists, government, communities)

Historical/political dimensions (colonial legacies, nationalism)

Innovation aspects (climate adaptation, new scientific methods)

Real anthropological questions about knowledge, power, and environmental futures

Does this direction work for your Science, Technology, and Innovation pathway?

(Claude Sonnet 4 response)

Claude AI’s feedback helped me see where my fictionalised scenarios were overly complicated and wordy, and once I shared the specific outcomes I had created for each pathway (here ‘Science and Technology Studies (STS) Anthropology’ and ‘Design Anthropology’), I realised it was especially useful for developing the two choices that would accompany each scenario. I revised the scenario, told Claude AI what the two choices needed to lead to, and prompted it to develop the choices. I edited and refined the choices and worked with Claude AI in a similar iterative manner to develop the outcome descriptions for each choice. Once I worked out the right prompts to use, I was able to develop the remaining four scenarios (always starting with my own writing), choices, and outcome descriptions within a couple of hours.

Building the interactive tool and badges

I saved the decision tree as a Word document and uploaded it to Claude AI with the prompt: can you build an interactive web app with this decision tree? It could, and did. Within minutes I had prototype to test, which immediately showed me that I needed to include more specific instructions about our university’s branding (colours, fonts) and how to lay out the tool. Again these changes were implemented quickly and I was able to send the prototype to my colleagues and web designer sister (thanks Corinne!) for their feedback.

I used Canva to design the 10 button badges, each with a pathway outcome (e.g. ‘Development Anthropology’), and again in consultation with colleagues. Graphic design is not my forte so both the button badges and the interactive tool are what I like to call “minimalist” but they did the job.

One hiccup occurred when I tested the interactive tool on the university’s iPad. I had originally planned to use the tool as a published artifact on Claude AI, but I was unable to open it using the iPad’s web browser. Instead, I downloaded the html file from Claude AI and set up the tool on GitHub (which, fortunately, was very easy to learn how to use).

Open Day Experiences

Open Day this year attracted a record number of prospective students so we had a good number of people try out the interactive tool. Those who used it said it was very useful and informative, and I was surprised to see several people pull out their phones to take photographs of the outcome pages they landed on. The button badges were a hit (although my plainer designs were not as popular as the ones made by the marketing team) and we had distributed all 500 by midday.

One issue I noticed was that there was too much text on the scenario and outcome pages for people to read at Open Day, when they are surrounded by people and noise and other visual elements all competing for their attention. I think the interactive tool will work better on a university web page, where people can spend time thinking about the scenarios and trying out different choices. We might also continue to develop it so that it has images and more interactive elements. If you’d like to check it out, please visit: https://lorenagibson.github.io/ANTH/

Using GenAI to think critically about grading in a Cultural Anthropology class

In 2019, my friend and colleague Grant Otsuki started experimenting with Generative AI (GenAI) – GPT-2 by OpenAI – to see how well it did at writing an essay for a first year Cultural Anthropology class he taught. As he wrote in a 2020 article for The Conversation, he trained GPT-2 on actual essays his students had written in response to the essay prompt, then worked with it to generate its own essay. I remember reading the work generated by GPT-2 and thinking that although I wouldn’t have awarded it a passing grade (for reasons Grant writes about in his 2020 article), it had potential and that a student could have turned it into a C-grade essay in less than 10 minutes. I also remember thinking that if Grant hadn’t told me it was generated by GPT-2, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell that it hadn’t been written by a student.

It is no exaggeration to say that GenAI technology and use has exploded since Grant wrote his article, where he argued that we should be teaching students how to work with GenAI tools rather than ignore or try to ban them. Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, where I work, recently developed a policy on Student use of artificial intelligence tools to help write assignments that directs students to check in with their instructors about whether they can use GenAI:

Take time to understand expectations around the use of AI

Expectations may vary from course to course or even from assignment to assignment. This may include rules around how you can or can’t use AI, and what kinds of AI it is acceptable to use. For example, it might be ok to use translation software, but not generative AI like Chat GPT. Your course coordinators should make it clear when you can and cannot use AI and if there are any limitations on how you use it. If you’re not sure, just ask.
(https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/exams/academic-integrity/student-use-of-artificial-intelligence, accessed 24 November 2024)

This policy offers teaching staff a lot of flexibility and accommodates people like me, who want to bring GenAI into our classrooms so students can learn how to use it while discussing some of the concerns around its use (including its environmental impact and the looming issue of reliable information only being available to those who can afford it).

Class activity: Grade a mini-essay generated by ChatGPT

Earlier this year, I decided to adapt Grant’s activity for my undergraduate course Anthropology, Education, and Social Change. The first assignment for that course asked students to write two mini-essays of 500-600 words about different concepts and/or theories that were discussed in lectures and assigned reading material. I asked ChatGPT (version 2, by OpenAI) to generate a 500-word mini-essay on the topic of “grades” for a course on anthropology of education, that drew on and cited Susan Blum’s book “I Love Learning; I hate School” An Anthropology of College, which we read and discussed in class. I also asked ChatGPT to adhere to the assignment instructions (below) and spent a bit of time editing the mini-essay it generated.

ANTH215_MiniEssayInformation Download

In Week 4 of our course, I brought printed copies of the mini-essay that ChatGPT generated to class and asked students to read it and assign it a grade using the marking guide for this assignment. I had two goals in mind with this activity: 1) to encourage students to think critically about GenAI use in the classroom; and 2) to encourage students to engage with the marking criteria that I was going to use to assess their work.

We began the activity by discussing the following:

how they can use GenAI in my class (e.g. to refine their ideas or fix errors with spelling, grammar, and referencing)
the University’s policy on using AI to help write assignments
the limitations of using GenAI (e.g. hallucinations)
some of the ethical, environmental, and privacy considerations involved in working with GenAI
how to acknowledge their use of GenAI by including an Acknowledgement Statement at the start of their work (our Library provides information about how to cite AI use)

After that, I handed out Chat-GPT’s essay (below) and asked students to give it marks and written feedback. They had the option of doing this individually or in pairs/small groups, and I invited them to share their marks and feedback to our class Miro board.

Mini Essay class exercise Download

After about half an hour to mark the mini-essay, we shared our marks and comments with one another. The students – who, for the most part, failed the mini-essay with very critical feedback – were surprised to learn that I had given it a C- grade, which prompted a constructive conversation about the kinds of grading-related issues that Blum writes about in her book and that we had discussed in earlier lectures. It also provided a good entry point for me to discuss why and how I had designed their second assignment using task-based grading (the term I now use to describe my version of labour-based grading). Finally, several students said that they appreciated the opportunity to grade an assignment like this because it helped them better understand the marking criteria.

This activity achieved my goals and I was pleased to see students acknowledging and citing their use of GenAI in later assignments. I also noticed a slightly higher grade distribution for Assignment 1 compared with the previous year. While this approached worked well in my classroom, I know there are many other innovative and meaningful ways to integrate GenAI tools into teaching and assessment practices. If you are working in this space, I am keen to hear about your experiences!