It’s Always Spring in San Diego

Spring 2012: United States History through the Civil War

We’re doing it backwards this year: second half of the survey in the fall, first half in the spring. The reason: I’m not in charge of the universe … yet. In my case, I teach what I’m told so United States history from colonization to the Civil War and Reconstruction, here we come. I have some distinct plans for the spring and the blog – and here are some of them.
  1. We’re going to have interviews from leading scholars here at the blog. Major Problems in American History (and the other Major Problems volumes) set up scholarly debates for each time period. I think it’s time the authors get to directly interact with one another. I’ll be inviting them to discuss what they think of the debates, what primary documents they use, and how they see the fields moving. I’ll also interview more junior scholars in these fields to address the debates and discuss what primary documents they find most useful. Are there any scholars you would love to hear from in particular???
  2. We’re going to have some other commentators here, including some first time teachers of the U.S. history survey and some other longtime friends. If you want to contribute, just email me.
  3. I’m ditching exams this term in favor of reading quizzes … and I mean lots of reading quizzes. The class will have about 150 students, and I have a grader (another topic we will discuss). I’m tired of students not reading (isn’t it obvious when only those three lovely students who always read are the only ones who have even cracked open the book). I’m tired of trying to lead discussions or debates where I’m just telling everyone what was in the reading. So this term, there will be a reading quiz just about every class, and I will divide the students into three cohorts. So on a given day, two cohorts will be quizzed and the third will be left out. Students are going to hate me for this, but I don’t care. It’s time they treated the reading in my class as seriously as they do their calculus problem sets. And I’m thrilled to ditch the midterm(s) and final. They break up the class too much – with study sessions, review guides (or rather students mad at me that I don’t give them a review guide … although I love the idea brought up in our comments section last semester of the class making the review guide). Anybody else with me???
  4. Washington, appointed Commander in Chief
    Currier & Ives 1876
    Library of Congress
    I’m going to focus on three big issues. How a United States was born, which will run from colonial contact to the Revolutionary war; how the United States was made, which will go from the Articles of Confederation to the 1830s; and how the United States was almost unmade, which will run to the late nineteenth century. Obviously, the theme will be nationalistic – with the United States as the central artifact of being. But underneath that I can deal with cultural and racial diversity, economic growth and development, political transformations, war, peace, and everything else. Thanks to Lilian for her previous comments on how she is structuring her class. I look forward to hearing from others.

For those who will be at the AHA in Chicago, I look forward to seeing you.

7 thoughts on “It’s Always Spring in San Diego

  1. Hi Ed,
    Does SDSU structure the survey history course with a separate weekly discussion class, or is this something that you need to set time aside for?

    I think many if not most of us can commiserate with your plight of conducting a reading discussion when few if any of the students have read the material. Often times there are a lot of open mouths but no one is answering the question.

    My preferred method is to post questions on the assigned readings on Blackboard in advance of the discussion and make it worth points. This method not only provides students with an incentive to read the material, but it also facilitates improvement in critical thinking. It allows me to direct their attention to parts of the reading, and I can also ask them to explain the general argument that is being made. From my experience quizzes given on the day of discussion have been less effective.

  2. Hey Wayne, good points. I wonder if a combination could work – of posted questions and in class quizzes (or where the posted questions become the class quizzes). The upside to your plan is it doesn’t eat up class time.

    At SDSU, we have a version of the survey that has break out sections with teaching assistants leading discussions (that’s for the lecture with 500 students). My course will NOT have break out sections, although I’ll teach that in the fall. For this term, I have 2 days a week (hour and fifteen minutes) and I’ll probably try to lecture on one day and have discussions the other day.

  3. I hate to be a downer as I enjoy this blog immensely and will continue to read it even though I’m not teaching the first half of the survey anymore, but I predict that the lots of reading quizzes thing isn’t going to work.

    Look at it from the student’s perspective: They (hopefully) listen to the lecture AND they have this gigantic textbook that they have to read. If you hold them responsible for both that’s an enormous amount of ground to cover, especially if the textbook isn’t particularly well-aligned with the material you teach in lecture. Reading the textbook isn’t all that onerous for you because you know what questions you’re going to ask them on the reading tests. [And certainly, if you go this route make it clear that the stuff you’re most likely to ask on the reading test is the stuff you’d lecture about anyways. If you don’t, it will all seem random to them.] For them, reading anything is difficult enough, but making it a textbook (rather than something better written) is like torture.

    If you haven’t guessed it by now, I joined the kill your textbook school of history pedagogy about a year ago and have never been happier. That doesn’t mean I’ve killed reading. In fact, I did exactly what you’re doing and clamped down on reading. I just realized that if I was going to play hardball on reading I had to start from a level of reading that’s less than 800 or so pages of textbook in 14 weeks, especially since I assign three outside books too.

  4. Quizzes may be effective under the right circumstances. I was generally disappointed by the results, and to me it seemed as if they were trivial pursuit drills that did little to improve their critical reading skills.

    What have been your experiences with using quizzes, Ed?

    I should clarify from my earlier post that the reading questions I posted on Blackboard were for assigned materials other than the textbook (primary source documents, newspaper articles, and historiographical interpretations). The weekly discussion readings I assigned averaged a dozen pages (give or take), and the historiographical works consisted of short excerpts.

    I too used to be an anti-textbookite before I taught my first survey course last year, in part because the students seldom seemed to engage it and also because of the cost. But I felt more comfortable adopting a textbook – especially one priced under $40 – for the structured narrative it offered the students if they needed it.

    The textbook I assigned had its greatest use as a study resource for the midterm and final exams. I gave them a pool of five or six essay questions beforehand, which I narrowed to two for the exam. I also found that giving students the pool of questions and identification terms eliminates the need for an in-class review session.

  5. Hi Ed,
    I’ve not usually assigned quizzes. What I did at FSU was to have students post a response to a question or issue involving the reading. It was made clear that this counted as a percentage of class discussion. I would sometimes (thanks to the technology at FSU) blow up (enlarge on a project screen) responses so that the whole class would see how their fellow class mates responded to a question. It prompted more students to read the material and it often made students more involved in class discussions (an added incentive if they knew their comments would be subject to class comment and scrutiny). I hope they work for you, but I’ve never liked giving quizzes and they did not seem to motivate most students. But I’ve heard different stories from different teachers.

  6. This class has 150 so discussions have a little ping-pong feel to them. I usually have them in groups of 4-5 talking to one another and then interact with each other. I serve as moderator, usually.

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