Online Field Course

Summer 2021: Explore New Bedford in an online field course. What is that? Good question.

July 5 to August 6  || Mon-Wed-Thur || 10am to noon via Zoom

In the Fall 2020 semester, I had to convert my honors first-year seminar Discovering Brockton to a fully online experience, even though weekly visits to the city had been key to its success. The success of the online version of the Brockton course has encouraged me to reconceive New Bedford: Maritime City as an online field course.

The star of the course will be the city itself, which we will explore over a five-week period using several tools, including windshield and sidewalk surveys, Zoom meetings with special guest speakers representing many facets of the community members, and existing collections of audio, video, and photographic media.

The class will be fully online and partly synchronous, meaning that we expect to be online concurrently from 10am to noon each Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday during the second summer session of 2021 (July 5 through August 6), with the balance of learning time being at each student's convenience.

The course will be listed at BSU Summer as GEOG 296 and GEOG 520 -- available for both undergraduate and graduate credit. It will be open both to BSU students and to those wishing to transfer credits elsewhere.

Course instructor (pink hat) on New Bedford's working
 waterfront with some whaleboating friends.