Much to my two survey classes’ delight, I have now, in week three, mastered their names. I have only tripped over the podium twice and have only one chalk incident to report. It is the beginning of a banner year! I spent some of time on the blog last year puzzling how to ensure my…
For the last day of my American Revolution class, I asked the students to send me a youtube clip, meme, or other pop culture reference to the revolution, founding fathers, etc. I organized the material so that we covered political comedy, political usage of the founders, memes about the founding fathers and sex, and so…
My colleagues and I were joking the other day that academics should get therapy for their undergraduate group work experience because we were always the one who worked the hardest and felt put upon by the group work system. My fear of group work has kept me from assigning a group project these past four…
One of my students just observed that in my department, “I’m the technology guy.” Now, I’m certainly not a very sophisticated “technology person” but I do like to use digital tools in my classes. Over the past year I’ve had students make a digital database of sources (More on that here), listen to podcasts, create…
I’m not teaching a survey class this semester but I feel like I’m always thinking about the survey. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the balance between content and analysis in all of my courses. In particular, I’m thinking about how to do a better job of delivering content while helping my students practice analysis in…
When I summarized my research paper in the survey experience last semester, a very nice twitter discussion developed about how to give students feedback on long, research-based papers. I thought I would use my space this month to discuss how I approach guiding and grading such assignments. The biggest revelation I had as an undergraduate…
There is nothing like the feeling of bliss after your press submit on your final grades. I think of it as one of the few moments of completeness that an academic gets. Everything related to the class is over and done. Unless you are like me and you can’t seem to let go of the…
All due apologies to Mr. Ed for the title. My survey students are hard at work on their research papers which are due a week from today. Despite my best efforts to intertwine research skills with survey-level content, I feel like I have failed my students in one important category; finding and evaluating sources. My…
We often tout that history, and indeed the liberal arts experience, teach critical thinking skills. We are often less clear what that phrase actually means. I’ve been trying to define critical thinking over the past few weeks and have decided that it has a few possible meanings. An ability to assemble and disassemble an argument…
It is the beginning of another academic year and here I am at another new institution with a new student body, new curriculum requirements, and a new conception of the purpose of the history survey. Centre College, my new academic home, has a general education curriculum and the history surveys serve as the gen. ed.…
