Frederic GIRAUT, University of Geneva, Switzerland
In 2020-22 under the umbrella of the UNESCO Chair in Inclusive Toponymy the Department of Geography and Environment has been developing a programme of a SPOC – small private online course – titled “Naming the World”. In this presentation we will share both our result (the course syllabus) and the interim challenges we encountered while shaping it. These challenges originated from two causes: the specifics of the interdisciplinary field of the course and its educational parameters.
Preparing an introductory online course on Critical Toponymy is a challenge on its own right as it is an amalgam of over a dozen of disciplines with a pivotal role of linguistics, history and geography. In the presentation we will reflect on our logics of structuring the course and creating the assignments for mastering the key notions, theories and approaches in Critical Toponymy.
The educational and technical characteristics of the course also required careful consideration while designing the course. On the one hand, the course had to include elements of supervised interactions and in this way had to be different from an online remote course like MOOC (massive open online course) where there is no interaction between lecturers and learners. On the other hand, the course had to be designed for a targeted audience – students of the University of Geneva. Therefore, in the syllabus we attempted a) to reflect on the Swiss and Genevan contexts and b) to integrate the strengths of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Geneva – African Studies and Border Studies.
We have consciously decided to submit our abstract to the session devoted to Place Name Studies and not to the one on Geography Education as this time we want to engage primarily with the specialists in the subfield of the course. Besides, one out of six course modules – “Toponymy of emergence and private toponymy” - is explicitly dedicated to place names as brands while several others touch upon this theme.
Mots clés : critical toponymy|inclusive toponymy|place names|online course
A105077EM