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ANTHROPOLOGY IN ACTION: ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY'S OUTREACH PROGRAM**

Abstract

Public education in archaeology began out of a need to educate communities surrounding archaeological sites on how to preserve and protect these lands. However, in recent years, many of these programs have expanded to not only include efforts to preserve and protect sites, but to also reduce public misconceptions about archaeology/anthropology, improve public awareness, and educate the next generation. As important as public education and outreach events are though, they are not always structured, which causes the lessons to become inconsistent and ineffectual. Furthermore, many of these programs are not assessed to evaluate their effectiveness so it is unclear whether they actually fulfill their prime objectives. This paper presents a study of the effectiveness of the anthropology outreach program at Kennesaw State University and suggests improvements that can be implemented by this and other outreach programs. It presents the results of observational studies and assessment data collected from four outreach events conducted by KSU’s Anthropology Program between the months of October 2019 and March 2020. These events offer a variety of different anthropological activities and an optional assessment for minors in the form of learning checkpoints. The learning checkpoints are fun assessment activities where kids interact with quiz boxes to answer questions pertaining to the activities at the events. As this program has never been assessed before, it is expected that we will gain a more comprehensive picture on the effectiveness of this program.

Acknowledgements

KSU Department of Geography and Anthropology

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