Next semester (like every semester), I am going to try something new in my U.S. History survey courses.

At the beginning of this semester, when I asked students in my U.S. history survey courses what they wanted to learn, many of them said something like “anything and everything” or “I just want to learn about U.S. history.” Colleagues have shared with me how frequently their students want to know what the “right” answer is, and some of my own students have turned in papers that are little more than generic restatements of the text in question. All this is just further evidence of one of the major problems we all confront: a lot of students are not used to thinking in terms of analytical themes that could provide the basis for their own, unique interpretation.

My solution was to create analytical categories, at least one of which would be assigned to every primary source on my syllabus. The (admittedly broad) categories, as I’ve defined them so far, are as follows:

• Religion and Spirituality
• Government
• Gender and Sexuality
• Race and Ethnicity

Every student would read every primary source assigned, regardless of category. But for every primary source in a student’s category, that student writes a single paragraph identifying the sentence that best captures that source’s historic significance. This requires that the student read the entire source, think about how it fits into the larger story we’re telling, and identify evidence (a chosen sentence from the document) that they use to frame their explanation as to why that source is important.  Of course, some sources would have more than one category, as many of the sources assigned deal with a combination of these topics. In that case, multiple students would turn in papers from multiple vantage points: a Gender and Sexuality student might come up with a decidedly different analysis of Abigail Adams’s famous letter insisting that her husband and other lawmakers “remember the ladies” than a Government student, for example. The idea is that students learn to read texts from a specific perspective or analytical angle. I also intend for the assignment to help me, as well. Because the assignment is a single paragraph—not a whole paper—they make for less reading than a five page paper. I’ve actually experimented with this paragraph assignment (though without the categories) this semester, and the feedback that I’ve gotten from students is that, though brief, it is not easy. Some students have even said it’s a harder assignment than writing a full paper, so I don’t have to worry about sacrificing academic rigor just to make my grading load lighter. Also making the grading load more manageable is the fact that not every student is turning in paragraphs every week.

I’d like to crowdsource this “categories” idea. What do you all think of this idea? Should I assign students a category myself, or let students pick the category themselves? I want them to choose something they’ll be interested in studying in-depth, but I don’t want everyone in the class to pick only two categories, leaving the other two near empty. (Plus there is something to be said for pushing students out of their comfort zone by forcing them to analyze documents pertaining to a specific topic or analytical category). Does this open up innovative possibilities for exams and quizzes?

Post your reactions in the comments, or e-mail me at ncgreen@nvcc.edu. I’d love to hear from you!