One of the perks of working at my institution is a somewhat unusual academic calendar in which our graduation occurs the last Saturday in April. We may start our spring semester alarmingly soon after New Year’s, but it’s all worth it come May and nearly four months of open time beckons. This longer summer recess…
When I was a graduate student, one of the professors I TA’d for taught the survey like, well, a survey. We “visited” a variety of places examining not only the history but the ways in which the place had remembered that history. So, for example, we visited Santa Fe and thought critically about the Fiesta…
Tara Strauch wrote a thought-provoking post about using children’s books in her U.S. history survey course. It’s a great idea, for the reasons she lists. And it speaks to an update I’m planning on making to my survey course for the fall. I’ve been reading some pointed criticisms of the traditional lecture format recently. Like…
A few years ago, as part of a general curricular revision, my department moved to a three-semester sequence for both our World and US History surveys. There were several reasons we made the move: we wanted more room to focus on the particular outcomes these courses embodied as part of our university’s core curriculum (particularly…
This semester I took an experimental approach to the dreaded online discussion board. Unless discussions are significantly scaffolded, it can be troublesome to effectively facilitate back-and-forth among students. While a mediated discussion does resemble survey-level discussions in class, with the professor usually acting as the conduit to connect student points, an online environment seems to…
I had a great new idea for a final project for my survey classes this semester. It was going to be awesome. This assignment was going to draw on the skills my students were practicing every week but then take it all to a new level. Critical thinking! Public writing! Digital tools! The semester started, and…
We are pleased to include the following guest post from Dr. Gary Wilson of College of the Mainland in Texas City, Texas. In the following post, Dr. Wilson reflects on four decades of teaching and administration, highlighting his use of online quizzes and his attempts to minimize reliance on lecturing. I taught my first college…
Recently I caught another article about an approach to high school writing instruction that many of you are familiar with: “progressive mastery.”1)Full disclosure: I have not read the deeper literature on this, and much of what I’m doing in this post is simply riffing on some of its broader ideas. If I have fundamentally misunderstood…
Next semester, I’ll be offering an online version of my Civil War and Reconstruction course. This is the third time I’ll be teaching this upper-level, reading- and writing-intensive course in a fully online environment. Thanks to being a part of the initial cohort of the Council of Independent Colleges’ Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction, I’ve…
I’m still on maternity leave so I headed to the library with my kids last week. While perusing the picture book section hunting for Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late with my 4 year old, I came across a book I had been meaning to read. A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins and Sophie…
Recently, I suggested a grading workshop to my colleagues. I wanted to see how my grading standards compared to fellow history faculty at NOVA. I had looked at my colleagues’ syllabi, but I wanted to discuss grading with them a bit more in-depth. It’s great to say on your rubric that a thesis statement needs…
Teaching the U.S. survey in an blended/hybrid format offers certain challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, it is a chance to flip the classroom and have students get a hands on experience with big questions, deep textual analysis, and interactive in-class work, having had a lot of time outside of class to engage with…
Carol Goodman is the author of fourteen novels and the winner of many literary prizes. She teaches creative writing at The New School and SUNY New Paltz. Her work frequently engages the past, including her latest novel The Metropolitans. This winter, I sent her a handful of questions about how she understands and employs history…
My university’s Center for Teaching and Learning has created reading groups in each of the university’s eight schools. The reading group for the School of Arts and Humanities has decided to read Linda B. Nilson’s Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time (2015). Nilson proposes a grading system called specs grading that…
This week in my U.S. survey, we’re discussing Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of an American Slave. It’s a venerable text, and used so often in the survey that it almost feels like a cliche’ when I assign it. But Douglass is, you might have heard, doing a terrific job that’s being recognized by…
