Observation Guidelines - Timeline
Site visits and interviews are designed to get you to experience first hand the people and behaviors linked to the Buddhist traditions studied in the course. In SacCT, you will sign up to visit a particular local worship site; you will then then visit the site at the scheduled time, observe participants, and interview one of them to get a sense of what they are thinking. This experience will serve as the foundation for the observation report. Choose a local place of worship
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that you have NOT previously visited yourself and OR known much about from friends or family;
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that is reasonably accessible (see me if you have problems with transportation or commute from a distance);
- whose times of formal worship match your schedule. (I recommend going with at least one classmate, family member or friend.)
NOTE: I strongly recommend that you go with at least one classmate, family member or friend. Though the people in charge of these sites are always welcoming, you should take the same precautions as in any other public place.
IMPORTANT: you must observe one of events listed under Local Sites, not simply visit the site and talk to people. Although you may at other times have interesting informal interactions with community members there, it will be difficult to tell what they normally do when outsiders are not present based exclusively on such interactions.
Timeline
You will need to choose your site by Thursday, February 21 and indicate your choice on the sign-up sheet available in SacCT. Make sure that you call ahead to verify the time of the event if that is indicated and that you can commit to attending the event with another person at the time specified.
Once you choose a site:
- make sure that you know where you are going so that you can get there on time.
- you may want to print out or at least view the Observation Report Worksheet (ORW --> PDF/MS Word) and consider, and perhaps even start generating, the questions you'll need to ask and respond to in reporting about the visit.
I also recommend that you read my further advice about observing and interviewing people that you meet.
As listed on the schedule, your ORW will be due **IN CLASS** the first day of unit during which we are studying the branch of tradition you are researching:
--> if you visit a site affiliated with Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese Buddhism, your ORW will be due at the beginning of Unit 3.
--> Theravada (Southeast Asian) and Tibetan traditions are dealt with in Unit 4.
See schedule for the exact dates and also when to submit the final Observation Report product.