In the spirit of continuing my week of post-conference active learning to stave off end-of-term slacking (theirs AND mine)… here’s another one that worked especially well this past week. I should explain – many of my non-lecture lessons are done off the cuff, “just in time,” or slapped together at the last minute (choose your…
Hey, I just got back from the OAH last week also, which had two consequences: returning to campus invigorated with a renewed willingness to experiment BUT having had very little prep time before Monday morning’s classes. So I turned to something I could pull off without a lot of prior work, to keep it from being entirely a…
Ben Wright’s class is a great example of how to integrate (free) digital tools into a history class, I’m enjoying hearing about it and hope there’s more in store. On a related note, I recently had the change to run some workshops for history majors who were going to be using WordPress for course blogging…
Starting the US history survey feels a little like poor Phil Connor’s life, since I teach it every single semester. Except I’m never quite getting it right, so I try it again a little differently each time. There’s a certain sameness to the first day of class, of course – meeting new students who all…
The second half of the US survey, at least in our course catalog, goes “to the present.” How many of us actually get there in a typical semester? Be real. My last unit tends to emphasize a particular theme (this time: immigration and demographic change), but rarely gets into much detail about recent events. I…
I have previously written about the little SkillBuilder papers I use in my survey course. In addition to exams and quizzes, I also have students create two projects. One, a paper, falls about midterm (due next week) and the other, called “History in Our Time,” is due at the end of the term so I’ll…
Back when I was planning for this semester, I got enthused about a free/paperless online textbook option. Maybe you’re wondering how that’s working out for me. 76% of my students decided to spend nothing and just read the textbook online. Another 17% of them purchased the “access pass” which allows them to download all or…
You may remember that (given my luxury of small classes and this term just one section) I have my survey course students vote in the first week on topics to explore in greater depth. Most of them have never been asked this question by a professor: what do YOU want to learn about in this…
I recently wrote about the “SkillBuilder” assignment I use in the survey class – which is a recurring, low-stakes 2-page primary source analysis exercise. Each time one is graded, I return it to the students with all their previous comments plus the new ones, so they can track progress throughout the semester. I have found…
For the vast majority of us, this week or next week will include the first day of school (Ed’s already been there AND blogged about it). Already my Facebook feed and email inbox include adorable groupings of nieces, nephews and children of my friends in their first-day best, grinning (or weeping, as the case may…
