Teaching intro to history

So, it's been quiet here not because, like everyone else, I'm caught up in the first days of the new term. No, in fact, I don't teach till the week after Labor Day. It's been quiet just because not much has been going on (besides pedicures, and they provide only so much mileage for a blog post).

But since I do start teaching in about ten days, I decided that yeah, I should probably write a syllabus. Lest I seem cavalier, I have two sections of the same course, and it's a course I've taught a whole bunch of times, so I'm not that worried about coming up with the basic course schedule.

What's different this time around, however, is that I'm teaching this course as a general education, "Intro to History" kind of course. (First/second-year students at this school have to take x-number of "intro to something" courses in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, where x = a number I don't know. Presumably they do the same in the sciences, but that's a different academic division.) Previously, I've always taught this subject as a relatively upper-level course. I have, however, taught topics courses at the introductory level before, and this seems basically the same thing: a relatively focused topic intended to catch students' interest and show them that history can be fun, at the same time that it introduces students to what professional historians actually do. (This doesn't always look very much like what they learned in high school. Though I have to admit that wonderfully, sometimes it does - I have had a significant number of students who come to college with a pretty good grasp of what real history looks like, not just having had to learn dates and names. You still get the dates-and-names approach, though.)

So I've been thinking about what I want to focus on in this course, and trying very consciously to articulate to students the skills that historians need/use, and how each component of the course will develop those skills. For instance, in terms of writing, I say in the syllabus that there are three main skills necessary to write history: the abilities to analyze a primary source, to critique an argument (here I'm thinking mostly of secondary sources, but also primary sources, because critiquing the argument that a primary source makes isn't quite the same as analyzing the source as a piece of historical evidence), and to present one's own argument. So each of the three papers will tackle one of these skills - one paper will be an analysis of a primary source, one will ask them to critique a scholarly article, and one will ask them to present their own argument drawing on the primary and secondary sources.* (Obviously I provide more details/guidelines for each of these assignments, which I'll leave out here for the sake of space.) The main thing is that I want to be very explicit about the purpose of each of these assignments and how they relate to the overall goals of the course.

In writing these assignments, however, I realized how many things there are that I tend to assume students should know about writing that they don't - in the sense that I don't address these issues generally in class, just in individual comments in papers, which works okay but seems less than efficient. So I started writing up these guidelines too, which at this point include how and when to use direct quotations, and what kind of audience they should envision for their papers. I also plan to include the obligatory plagiarism stuff, and some nit-picky style-type things (like, don't use contractions!). Of course, a handout isn't ideal because while we can go over it in class, students (like most people) tend to zone out when being read to, and there's nothing requiring them to look at it when they actually sit down to write. (Though I should add that a lot of students actually do look at such things. For instance, once I started explicitly saying in my syllabus/assignments that students had to proofread their papers, the incidence of dumb typos and grammatical infelicities dropped noticeably. They didn't vanish, but I saw fewer things like, say, spelling "Charlemagne" three different ways throughout a paper.)

So, my purpose in writing this blogpost is twofold:

• first (and this is directed to anyone, though especially those of you teaching history or historically-informed stuff): what do you think is the most important thing that students new to college don't know, that you need to tell them? This can be specific to the study of history, or general to the college experience - whichever. (Although if the latter, I'm really thinking about academics - certainly students learn a lot about being adults and dealing with people from going to college, but I'm not here to guide their personal social development.)
• second (and this is again directed to anyone, though the writing stuff especially I suspect will draw out the comp people among you): what is the best way to get such things across to students effectively? I'm a fan of the old-fashioned handout, but am trying to think about how to present such things actively, so that students come to realize them through their own thought process, rather than me just telling them. For instance, I'm going to ask them to read an encyclopedia article and a scholarly article (or excerpts thereof) on the same topic and tell me what's different about the two, as a way to get them to think about NOT writing encyclopedia articles. I'm also considering bringing in a not-very-good student paper and a really good student paper and asking them what the differences between the two are, or at least to critique a poor student paper. (The advantage of being at a new school is that they can't know the authors of these papers, which is what has tended to stop me from doing this before!) (And this is assuming I can dig up an example of a bad paper from my hard drive - a did a big dump of a lot of stuff when I moved. Though I suspect if I needed an example of a poor student paper, someone out there might be able to provide one for me? ;-D)

And yes, I have taught first-year students before - although strangely, at Former College I really didn't teach them very often due to what I ended up scheduled to teach - and I do have pretty clear ideas/plans about what I want to do - I just thought it would be interested to see everyone else's ideas on the subject.

*One might also argue that there's a fourth skill: the ability to tell a story about what happened in the past. Myself, I'm not so big on this particular skill, partly because I'm not an especially narrative historian myself, but mostly because I think for students it tends to mean they write something that looks very much like an encyclopedia article, and that they tend to take "stories" at their face value and assume that they're true and accurate. So I don't want to emphasize this in their writing assignments. I do, however, tackle this issue in class; when we read a particular medieval chronicle describing the events under study, I often put them in small groups and ask them to come up with a narrative of what actually happened during the time described in the chronicle. The trick is, of course, that it's really really hard to come up with a clear narrative from this particular chronicle, as it usually is from primary sources - it's limited and presented from a very specific viewpoint, one that doesn't represent the events as a whole but only as experienced by one person, a person who has a very specific goal in writing, and moreover writes about forty years after the events described. Yeah, students love me  for this one.

Comments

[Dr. Moonbeam]

Well, one of the important things that new students need to learn is simply the very basic one: follow instructions accurately and turn in the work on time. That will get them a LONG way towards doing well overall.

And, along with that, at least pretending like they care a little bit and aren't blowing the class off is nice, too. Nothing makes a prof less likely to cut a student slack than being asked just a few days before a major research paper is due, "What topic should I write on and can you tell me some books I can use?"

[Sisyphus]

ooh I love the calls-for-teaching-discussions posts!

First of all, I don't know how "beginner" your students will be, but I had to do comp from a "writing across the curriculum" approach, which meant I got to teach about what history was and how to do it (even though I have no clue).

Anyway, it wasn't until I finished the entire module that I figured out our problem: my students assumed history was "everything that had ever happened" and I assumed it was how those everythings were transmitted and passed down. So getting freshmen to think about "history" as something not transparent and self-evident, I found, was near impossible.

Of course, historians probably know this and have way better ways of teaching about this than me, who was reinventing the wheel. But it's very similar to how students tend to "read for plot and character" and look at me funny when I try to get them to talk about _how_ the literary work is crafted or narrated. Is it an age/maturity thing? Just something that's not taught in high school? Dunno.

And, in terms of what I think will be most important to them academically: I tell my students that a good student will look back at my syllabus and notes and figure out what I want for my assignments, from staple vs. binder to where the thesis goes and what sort of support it needs. A _great_ student, of the A level variety, will understand that these requirements are different from class to class and professor to professor, and will understand that it is their responsibility to figure out what the requirements are for each context, just like they will need to do for their bosses.

Sorry about the long comment!

[ppb]

I would second the "follow the instructions accurately" suggestion. Many college students are used to being considered "good kids" and cut some slack on assignments that aren't quite right because at least they did them. I would elaborate by saying that it is their responsibility to read, understand and follow the syllabus.

Second, one must understand the use of sources and how to correctly attribute them---and its corollary: failure to correctly attribute has very dire consequences in college. (In many high schools, the consequence is having to re-write the paper.)

[Belle]

I'm like Sisyphus; I love these kinds of questions. First, as to what they need to know. I think they need the freedom to learn and make mistakes in doing stuff. (I get this from helping train dogs: set them up for success and don't penalize for failure right away.) They don't know what they don't know. So writing is essential, and good research skills - but don't just show them. Give them a chance to work out a problem themselves.

I do history too, and what I've done the past two years has had some interesting outcomes. I start with job skills: application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation (from Bloom's Taxonomy) and then walk them through those skills in a work-related context. Once they've grasped that the whole academic experience can really help them, they're more open to discovering history as a fun and interesting way to practice and hone the skills. And then I use all of that as a way to get them to play with the tools and skills used by historians. They do it in class, with lots of feedback and interaction.

I also do a Historiography class for majors, and even though some are seniors, we go through some very basic kinds of stuff. This past week, I gave them three different kinds of sources and let them work in pairs to create a footnote. Open book, open source - another pair had to create the corresponding bibliographic entry. Hands on, collaborative and really intensive learning experience as they had to problem solve right there. Without any prompting, they started examining and critiquing each other's work, digging through their notes... and we all had fun. They'll also do lit reviews that way, annotated bibs, even a historiographical essay - and it really works well.

Yikes. Apologies for the ramble.

[A]

I'm delurking for this, since this subject is very much on my mind as I polish my semester outline for comp.

A goal I have for my students this semester is for them to figure things out on their own: track down information, wrestle with issues, and do some independent thinking. I'm not abdicating the instructor's chair, but I do want them to be curious and follow through on that curiosity with some success.

There was a report on NPR this spring about universities in my state. The most common complaint about our graduates (from prospective employers) was that they were not able to think independently and solve problems on their own.

[hilaire]

This is sort of implicitly captured in your last bit of your post, and by Sisyphus, but for me, the most important thing for them to learn is that there are competing approaches. That truth, in academic disciplines, is contested! They're so oriented to the "digest-information" mode of learning, that they haven't a clue that scholars are arguing about methods. So your historiographic exercise sounds great for that.

Not that this is applicable to your situation, but as an aside: my hoped-for solution to this is to team-teach the Intro course one day, with several of us coming from different disciplines (I'm in an interdisciplinary program) illustrating the various approaches.

[Susan]

A few thoughts. One is that instead of thinking about narrative just as a writing skill, I think it's incredibly important to get students to understand that narrative is an interpretation. Most students read narrative and think it's objective, "true", etc. So you might want to make an objective around analyzing this aspect of narrative, rather than just telling a good story. (There are lots of good exercises for this kind of thing, and they can be fun.) My brain can't quite formulate the objective, but it's important. And I think it helps in the transition from high school to college.

As to the question Sisyphus raises, I think I would hope students come out of a course like this with an understanding of what Natalie Davis called "History's two bodies". (A paper I love, but my students never seem as excited. Sigh.)

As for advice, reading (and then following) instructions has got to be the most important. Mind you, I could say that to faculty too!

[squadratomagico]

These all are excellent suggestions. I would add that I find it useful to encourage students to brainstorm about how they are defining their central categories of analysis. Students often take the words they are using as transparent, without realising that they often are very complicated concepts. For instance, if a student is writing about community, well, what does that word mean? Is it any group above x number? Must there be common economic/social/political/religious/whatever interests among the group for them to be considered a community? Can a community be scattered geographically? What, precisely, constitutes the boundaries of inside and outside for the community in question? Is the student's own conception of community the same as that of the authors she is examining? And so on... I think the first step towards learning how to think critically is to interrogate the words we use; and that the best way to come up with good answers is to brainstorm, i.e., free-associate a bunch of questions and then see which ones can be answered.

After doing all that, the student will proibably have a worthwhile argument to elaborate.

[Dave]

This is an interesting post and I've enjoyed reading the comments. My background is in physics, and I currently teach both physics and mathematics. The first thing that came to mind of something that new college students don't know that I need to tell them is the importance of working together and forming study groups. Many high school students find they can excel in their math and science classes by obediently doing nightly homework. This homework usually isn't that challenging; it simply requires skimming the textbook and looking for worked problems that match the problem the student is trying to solve. In most college classes, the homework is much harder and is designed to push students, to get them to think for themselves, work creatively, and so on. This sort of homework is much closer to what scientists and mathematicians actually do. Most students find the transition to "college style" homework a big challenge. The best way to meet this challenge is to work hard individually but also to collaborate with peers. This sounds straightforward, but it's tough convince students that they'll learn more working together. Some students have even been conditioned to believe that discussing ideas with their peers is cheating. (I do set out fairly clear guidelines for what sort of collaboration is appropriate and what isn't.)

My strategy for getting students to realize this is pretty typical, I suspect. I unapologetically assign difficult problems, so students realize pretty soon that they'll need to do more than just work alone in their dorm room. I tell students again and again that: they shouldn't expect to find the homework easy; they should seek help from other people in the class, from TAs, and from me; doing difficult problems is the only way to learn science and math; and it's a lot more fun. I run a problem solving session in the early evening once a week in which students can get help from me. But what often happens, since there's just one of me and many of them, is that they end up helping each other.

I don't know if encouraging (or requiring) students to collaborate carries over to humanities and social sciences, but I suspect that it does. When I teach our interdisciplinary first-year seminar I often assign student study groups, and require students to meet in their groups to discuss the reading before we discuss it in class. Often I'll ask each group to choose a particularly interesting passage from the reading and be ready to share that passage and say why they chose it and what questions they have about it. I also will usually ask each group to lead discussion at least one time during the term. My main goal here is to help new college students get used to the idea that they should be talking about ideas outside of class with their peers, and that they need to do thinking -- not just reading -- before coming to class.

[Ancarett]

I find that active learning in the classroom really helps at this level. I give out worksheets that they can work on individually (or in pairs) to hammer home a particular point or skill and we do it all together in-class (say 20-30 minutes).

Sample projects include: "find the thesis" for an abbreviated article; "generate a thesis" from a sample of student notes, bibliography and general assignment mock-up; generate a list of source types and subject headings for a proposed research project.

[Highlyeccentric]

Hi, New Kid. Interesting post :) As a random student dropping by, I'd say your students will appreciate any kind of guidance you give them on writing essays... even if they don't use it for your course, they may dig it out later on.
If you don't mind, I can drop in my studenty suggestions for your two questions. Feel free to just ignore 'em.

what do you think is the most important thing that students new to college don't know, that you need to tell them?
*it's always good to run over basic essay structure, or to offer a handout/website/something which will spell it out for those who don't get it.
*I don't know what the US school system does to kids, but the system in New South Wales tends to produce kids who think a history essay should be based around three historians:
Jones Says-
Bob Says-
The Revisionists Say-
Therefore I kinda agree with Bob and this is an essay.
Explaining how *not* to do that, especially in an historiography essay, is always a good plan
*Footnotes. Why they rock and how to use them.

what is the best way to get such things across to students effectively
Handout has always worked for my teachers- keep it short, so the maximum number of kids read it, but maybe make additional more detailed guides available either in hard copy or on the web.
I like the "spot the thesis" idea which was suggested above, though.

[Keri]

Excellent post! Something I try to emphasize is the sense of dialogue that necessarily accompanies academic knowledge. What I mean is the sharing of ideas, the different theories and methodological approaches, and the sense of "conversation" that happens in academic writing (i.e.: who cites what and why). I'm using course blogs this year for the first time and am hoping that this will be a way to encourage students to begin taking part in this process.

[Fretful Porpentine]

Ooh, interesting set of questions. I'd say that the one thing I really want students to learn is that intellectual risk-taking is good -- that I will respect them more for carving out an original argument and taking a stand, even if I disagree with their position, than I will if they repeat what they think is my position, or, worse yet, confine themselves to vague generalities that no reasonable person would disagree with. I think high schools tend to ingrain the fear of being wrong so deeply that students are afraid to make an argument at all.

I've found that it helps if I require students to fill in the blanks of the following two sentences: "Some readers believe ____, because of ____ but I disagree. I think _____, because ____." The sentences themselves don't have to appear in their paper, but the ideas do. This tends to ensure that they're making a real argument, one with which a reasonable person could disagree, and also that they can articulate the reasoning behind that argument. (I think I picked this idea up from one of Gerald Graff's books, by the way.)

[lifexhistory]

I have two major things: active reading and critical assessment of texts (primary sources are the easiest to do this with, I think, but secondary sources are great).

The first active reading activity seems pretty basic and some students will probably already know it, but most won't (I didn't get good at it until grad school). But it's actively reading a book efficiently. There are a number of ways to do it, so I give several examples in class, with a text book chapter, with an article, etc. But we discuss "How do you read? Taking notes? Underlining? Post-its? What do you have trouble remembering when you're finished? What is affective about the way you read and what's not?" Once we've done that we talk about reading the first and last paragraphs of an article or chapter, then skimming or reading the first sentence of every paragraph. I actually demonstrated this once. We started with talking about which chapters were relevant from the table of content and then by reading the first and last paras of a textbook chapter, then reading the first sentence of each paragraph explaining allowed why I would choose to skip the para or continue reading it. It was time consuming, but the students found it helpful to discover that I was thinking as I read. Then I had them put it into practice with a reading assignment in class.

The second builds on this. Once I've got them thinking when they read (gasp!) we pick a primary source (because they're the most fun and usually short) and I give them a handout with the appropriate questions that we ask. "When was this document written? For whom? By whom? What is the argument?", etc. In class we did this together as a whole class, then in small groups and discussed it together. We actually had some really great criticisms from the students-- some real thinking. After that, I handed out a bookmark with the 5 questions they needed to ask every time they read something for class. So they had a placeholder and a reminder ;)

[Christine]

what do you think is the most important thing that students new to college don't know, that you need to tell them?

As a professor of art I am always surprised at the students' lack of art history knowledge, particularly modern art. I know that this is not a core subject in high school, but it can be integrated into studio art classes. When I am presenting a topic I include a brief discussion on a related art movement. They also tend to lack any risk taking, which is strange in an art context. Students enter my classes wanted to know my exact expectations for work and I am constantly encouraging them to take creative risks. College, art especially, is not the SATs. When critically thinking about art I find students fail to include world events, history and society in context. They tend to see artwork solely as individual expression without considering outside influences on the artist.

what is the best way to get such things across to students effectively?
Since I teach art I rely on visuals (slide presentations, project examples and professional artworks and design).

[Sceopellen]

Well, having recently sat through a whole load of 'Introduction to...' courses, I feel justified in speaking!

The most important things I learnt from the basic classes I sat: Footnotes and Plagiarism. Both vital, both I had never before used. Please, please avoid lectures on punctuation and basic grammar. Assume we know how to use a semi colon and can define a noun. Please...

And number two: Please do keep going with handouts. I love handouts. However, don't fill them with random quotes or images - make sure that everything on them is need-to-know or at least interesting. I have so many handouts with just random passages of text that are in my coursebooks themselves, or images that are meant to represent the topic. They have a tendancy not to help. Also, one of our tutors added in the occasional flow/spider diagram of the key points. Also, perhaps a list of key headings so that students have a list of topics to revise when the exams come around.

Hope that is useful... Good luck!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

yay, what cool comments! It's really fascinating to see all the different things that people say, even when we often all want the same thing. Okay, lemme see...

Dr. Moonbeam - I know! I don't actually mind if students think their bio class is more important than mine - but they don't have to let me KNOW that!

Sisyphus - yes, definitely, that's something I often address - what on earth this history thing is anyway. It's funny, because when I started teaching, and would ask students to define history, they'd say, what happened in the past, and we'd go from there. More recently, I've found students talking a very good game about how history is written by the winners, and is interpretation and subjective, etc. etc. (so much so that they seem convinced we can't know ANYTHING, which is a little frustrating). But in practice, many of them still operate on the history = events that happened in the past paradigm. Thanks for reminding me of that one!

ppb - yes. citation of sources! A lot of students get hung up on format and my response is usually, look, when you're citing everything you should be, then we'll worry about format.

Belle, thanks for mentioning Bloom's taxonomy - I have that in the back of my mind, but don't always think about it when I plan assignments etc. - that's something I can definitely be more explicit about.

hilaire - I was lucky enough to teach a course with an English prof and (yes) a chemistry prof once, and it was a great experience for getting at the differences between disciplines.

Susan, thank you for the comment about narrative - it's definitely something students think is transparent. I've also had students get upset that they don't "have a thesis" when they write a narrative paper, for the same reasons. Definitely something to discuss.

squadratomagico - good suggestion! I do this sometimes, but not quite as pointedly as you do. I find myself writing on papers a lot, "what do you mean by X [community] and does the author define it the same way you do?", so it's worth bringing that discussion out of the paper margins into the classroom.

Dave, thanks for a science perspective! I've always been struck by the extent to which the sciences encourage/require collaborative work, and the humanities still really doesn't do much of that. Somehow students working together on history stuff doesn't seem as useful to them as working together on science stuff or business stuff (the other discipline where I see a lot of group stuff). Perhaps it's simply because the humanities are still largely single-authored disciplines? We don't really know how best to collaborate and may not quite see the reasons why. But I have had students, especially in larger courses with a lot of material, work together usefully for exam study and so on. I'll have to think about how to encourage more collaboration.

Ancarett, thanks for the specific ideas on active strategies.

And highlyeccentric, welcome, and thank you for a student perspective! I find your description of typical student essays interesting - in the US, students tend to learn the 5-paragraph essay - intro para, three paragraphs that each make a point, and conclusion. I've had students very concerned that their material doesn't fit into 5 paragraphs, and I've had essays in which there are ginormous paragraphs in order to fit the 5-para. model! But I think this does bear some relation to the three historians essay you describe. And thanks for the vote for handouts - I'm never sure what students think of them.

Keri, I'll be interested to hear how your blogs go. In theory I'm way behind using blogs in classes, but in practice I've been too lazy to work out a system yet. :-P I do think it might open up the dialogue aspect, which is definitely something I try to emphasize as well.

lifextimes, thanks for the comment about teaching them to read. I've done a little of that, but will do more - and I have a very similar handout of questions for primary source readings (which they will get long before they write that paper!).

Fretful Porpentine, I may steal that fill-in-the-blanks activity - they're often so wishy washing about stating an actual argument! That would definitely help them do so.

Christine, your comment is really interesting, because I've heard the same thing from friends who teach art - their students don't want to take risks, either. A friend of mine teaches art history at an art college and it drives her nuts how much the students want to say, I am special and inspired and that fuels my art and I don't need to know what other artists did! I like visuals - I try to use quite a lot to spur discussion or at least give another kind of hook for students to hang information on.

Sceopellen - thanks for more student perspective! Yes, I try to stay away from teaching grammar - I'm not trained to do so (just because I *know* it doesn't mean I know how to teach it) and it's so dull for those who don't need it! (Sadly, some do, but that's better worked on one-on-one.) I'm thinking of things just like plagiarism and footnotes, and other kinds of things like audience and use of quotes, that aren't strictly content but still not grammar.

I've enjoyed all these comments - thanks, and feel free to add more!

[just an undergrad]

I thought history at my university would be too hard, so I took an intro course at a local CC during the summer. Now I am on track to graduate with Honors in History at my u-- a very competitive one, I might add-- and I'm doing well in my advanced courses.

One thing that I liked in my intro course was the freedom to explore topics of personal interest. I actually wrote a paper on the contributions of one of my ancestors to early American politics--- very cool, something I am so glad I got the chance to do!

[thefrogprincess]

Great post! I just graduated from college two years ago and I went straight to graduate school in history, all without truly grasping that history was all about interpretation. I think "interpretation" is the most important concept that professors can teach their students and it encompasses a lot. For example, all the readings on the syllabus are interpretations of the past and not textbook-style renditions of events. Interpretations can be challenged and argued with, etc., etc. That sounds pretty basic but I didn't fully get it (and what it actually means to be a professional historian) until the beginning of my second year of graduate school. Up to then I still believed history was primarily about narrating the past through the use of primary sources. If you can get your students to begin thinking along these lines in their first year, they'll get more out of college and the few that may end up in graduate school won't be in for a rude awakening.

[Julia]

The most important lesson I received from early college assignments was how to answer the question using my own thinking and reasoning skills. In high school it was easy to get a good grade by parroting back the teacher's ideas and lectures; college forced me to think for myself and develop analytical skills that I would hone over the next four years. It was initially difficult to think for myself and not simply string together a series of quotes with two sentences of explanation accompanying them.

Another critical lesson I learned, in regard to writing, is the importance of structure. A five paragraph essay with basic ideas and concepts was no longer enough in college, a concept that I struggled to understand for my first two months (or so). I also think that lessons in how to develop one's voice, as a writer, is important and often overlooked.