Teaching United States History

http://www.teachingushistory.co/2015/12/the-dbqs-use-in-the-college-classroom.html

http://www.teachingushistory.co/?p=2993

What methods from high school history courses are useful in the college classroom? I’ve been trying to understand how history education in college connects to that of the secondary and primary level. One of the clearest areas of overlap is the Advanced Placement (AP) history curriculum offered in many high schools. These classes culminate with an exam administered by the College Board to assess if a student has sufficient subject mastery to be awarded college credit.

A key part of the AP exam is the Document-Based Question, or DBQ. For those not familiar with AP exam, the DBQ requires students to answer a historical question with a series of short documents that the test provides. For example, a student might be asked to discuss the effects of the New Deal on American society, and be given a series of documents that include parts of legal opinions, political cartoons, photographs, and political opinions (for examples, this pdf includes the DBQs used on the AP exam between the years 1973-1999). Students need to use most but by no means all in order to answer the question. In fact, realizing which sources are useful or extraneous to an argument is part of what the DBQ is assessing.

The DBQ has been part of the AP test since 1973, but until recently the rest of the exam consisted of multiple choice problems and free response essays that focused on content knowledge. However, recent reforms have shifted the test away from being a series of random history questions. Most of the multiple choice questions now require students to draw conclusions from primary sources, graphs, and chunks of historiography (I was impressed looking a model AP test to see that high school students are asked in the multiple choice sections to look at historical analysis by scholars like Mae Ngai and Alan Taylor).

This shift from evaluating purely content knowledge to historical literacy was partly behind the controversy that the reforms have sparked (mostly due to the perceived political bias of such a shift). While college instructors definitely paid attention to the reforms and mostly defended them, less attention has been paid to how we can use techniques from the AP curriculum in the college classroom.

I suggest that something like the DBQ would be useful as semester midterm or exam. One downside of the DBQ is that students need time to read through the sources to determine which would be helpful to answering the question. Given this, I think the DBQ would work best as a take home exam. Since the DBQ requires that the student use a specific set of sources to answer a given question, there is less of a chance that students will plagiarize with a generic essay on a historical topic.

Of course, many college instructors do a variety of things similar to the DBQ. We ask students to analyze primary sources or to include them in research papers. Primary source readers like Major Problems in American History thematically or chronologically sort chunks of primary sources along thematic or chronological lines. However, a set of DBQ documents are not chosen to provide an overall view of something like the era of the American Revolution, but to help students answer a specific historical question.

There are a few possible dangers to using the DBQ as an exam or assignment. By design, students will only be seeing snippets of historical sources, or at least ones cherry picked to be useful to answering a given question. On the AP test, the documents tend to be short, no more than a couple paragraphs. At the college level, these sources could conceivably be longer, but adding too much could lead to a student feeling overwhelmed.

More than the length of the sources, instructors constructing a DBQ would need to make sure to include sources with a variety of different perspectives. The set of documents should allow students to present different answers to the historical question, without the student feeling railroaded into a particular interpretation.

One problem that the DBQ has raised since its inception concerns how much historical knowledge is actually needed to craft an answer. There is a chance that a bright student with good analytical ability/BS skills could scan the documents, use them to answer the question in a cogent way, and know virtually nothing about the historical topic. An instructor using the DBQ approach should be sure to require students to use both the documents and content from the course to answer the question. While the strongest essays in class will probably already do this, it’s important for students to clearly understand that incorporating context with sources is at the heart of the assignment.

Some people might worry that assigning a student a DBQ eliminates the chance for a student to develop the research skills necessary to find their own primary sources. There are some ways to mitigate this. Drawing on his experience teaching AP history, educator Daniel Kotzin has suggested having students create their own DBQ. Kotzin describes how he had students craft a question on the Civil War and then choose sources from the Valley of the Shadow Project in order to answer the question. On a smaller scale, an instructor could require students to use one or two self-discovered primary sources in the essay along with the primary sources given in the DBQ. In fact, already having a set of primary sources might help students reason what type of additional sources might be productive to add.

Obviously the same techniques used in the secondary and primary classrooms education won’t always translate well to the college level. Still, we should be trying to steal from each other whenever possible. Has anyone done something like the DBQ for an exam or an essay assignment? For anyone who has taught AP US History, what are your opinions of the DBQ? How have you had students practice the skills necessary to answer that part of the AP exam?

http://www.teachingushistory.co/2015/12/research-papers-in-the-history-survey-a-retrospective.html

http://www.teachingushistory.co/?p=2988

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 semester the same way I struggle to send an article out for review.  So, inevitably, I end up spending a day of my break reflecting on what worked and what didn’t.  Since I’ve written several times about my department’s commitment to assigning research papers in survey-level classes I thought I would let you in on my retrospective of this assignment.

The assignment: Write an 8-10 page research paper on a topic within the class timeframe and scope.  Students needed to use at least 3 primary sources and a minimum of 3 secondary sources.  Footnotes, bibliography, etc.

In class activities related to the paper: Although I would like to think that every class period gave students skills and knowledge for the paper I set aside 4 “workshop” days: 1. How to make a thesis, 2. What makes a viable topic, 3. How do I find sources, and 4. How to make an argument.  These workshops served two purposes.  First, they gave students deadlines throughout the semester to help them budget their time and second, they gave me time to talk with students individually within the class period which helped me show weaker students that they needed to see me outside of class.

We had a library visit, and we also made a giant database of sources for students to use.  Finally, I spent about 10 minutes of 6-7 other class meetings talking about something simple; when “I” was acceptable in a paper, how to put in a footnote, etc.

Out of class mentoring: I made myself really available to my students.  I know that this isn’t feasible for everyone but it was feasible at my SLAC and the students who availed themselves of this opportunity really benefited.  I held extended office hours in the two weeks before the paper was due and I offered to read and comment on any level of draft throughout the semester. Ultimately, I would give one “grade estimate” on a finished draft as a way of showing the student concretely where their paper stood.

Grading and Outcomes: I graded into a comment-based rubric and consciously chose not to spend much time marking up their papers.  These were final drafts and while I noted excessive grammar mistakes and other distractions, I tried to focus less on the small problems and more on the general strengths and weaknesses of the papers.

Honestly, I think students like seeing the papers marked up.  Even if they don’t pay attention to a single mark they want to know that we spent time with their papers.  I had hoped that my copious comments would show that I had spent the same level of care in my grading, but I’m not sure that it did.

In the end, the papers were good; some were great, some…less great…and many students showed marked improvement over their first drafts.  There were some things that went very well:

1. Over 40% of my class either came to my office or emailed me a draft. I got to know them, their topics, and their writing strengths and weaknesses.  I did feel slightly like a crazy woman by the time the paper was due but I saw SO MUCH progress from students who came to see me.
2. The workshops broke up the monotony that can become the survey and it allowed hard-working students an opportunity to check their progress and get feedback from me and their peers.
3. They handed their papers in the Monday before Thanksgiving and I then used break to grade them. I liked this a lot because I had time to talk with them about the outcome of their paper.

There were some common problems though that bother me.

1. Too many students still don’t understand why primary sources are necessary for a good research paper.
2. I didn’t do enough to address how to use secondary sources. Some students used them like crutches quoting them constantly while others tossed them in a footnote and called it a day.
3. A sizeable portion of the class still presented me with a summary of events and not an argument. I’m most bothered by this point because the ability to lay out a logical argument seems like one of the central skills a survey-level student should walk away with.

All in all, I’m heartened by the experience of assigning a research paper to 61 survey-level students.  Many of them got excited about a historical topic and others improved or at least learned about their writing weaknesses.

And now, I’m going to sit back and enjoy my break.  Oh, who am I kidding? I have a January term class that starts in two weeks! More on that next month!

http://www.teachingushistory.co/2015/12/reflecting-on-hybrid-electives.html

http://www.teachingushistory.co/?p=2981

This semester I offered my first U.S. elective as a hybrid. The course, America Meets the Modern, 1920-1945, met once a week for an hour and fifteen minutes, with the other “half” online.

Eschewing Blackboard, I had the class meet online in a wordpress blog. Each week, students produced one of two types of posts: a reading reflection or a movie analysis. They blogged about a supplementary reading, which tended to be lenghtier essays, evaluating the arguments and making connections to the documents discussed in class that week. For the movie analysis posts, they watched a feature-length film and analyzed it as a product of its moment. Films included several famous Chaplin productions, The Golddiggers, It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Casablanca. I also assigned supplemental readings regarding the Hays code and some readings about film and depression-era culture.

Grading for the blog posts was by participation, but every four posts I would write a summary post elaborating on what students did well and what they were missing, with the idea that these reflections would be applied to their formal writing projects, which were a formal movie analysis paper and a final research paper based on a series of digital archives, a thematic exploration of the course, or a project to add to the Living New Deal (no one chose the last option, sadly).

For this course, what made it successful was the size. Had I had a group of twenty-five, it would have forced me to use a rubric to grade the blog posts, and would have made the individualized sessions on their research papers more complicated to schedule and perform.

So the question remains, is hybrid teaching in electives worth it?

• A hybrid course made me feel freer to assign films as additional course materials. I assigned films that could be rented through Amazon or other sources.
• The weekly writing assigned online provided a low-stakes environment to focus on mechanical issues and analytical skills.
• Students were able to have a true seminar-style experience — while this was more a matter of circumstance than design, I think the hybrid format lends itself to more active learning in the classroom.

• Less time for historiography. Because I focused on primary sources and analytical essays in class, I found I had less time to go into the historiography of the New Deal or the welfare/warfare state.
• That feeling that I’m missing some key points. Having them in front of you more often provides more opportunities to explore the course themes, to reflect, and to have students engage more in small groups with readings and arguments. I often felt rushed to get to the big points of a topic and felt that some of the nuance of topics (the discussions of nativism and welfare capitalism in the 1920s, as well as the in-class discussions about Depression culture, got particular short shrift). Perhaps if I recorded lectures this would be less of an issue for future offerings.
• The online environment. Don’t get me started on Blackboard. And while I like giving students the opportunity to learn a new web-based skill like WordPress blogging, finding just the right tools still eludes me.