Topic of the Month: Black History Month

Black History Month originated in the 1920’s when history books and classes often neglected the significant roles that minorities, particularly African Americans, played in US history. However, the question today is should educators still specifically address Black History Month separately from the rest of the study of US history?

Today’s modern textbook publishers focus a great deal on social history intertwining the contributions of all minorities throughout their texts. The content at Hippocampus.org is a good example of minority contributions incorporated as part of the whole US history story rather than a footnote or separate section. Our modern classrooms are integrated environments where students have quick internet access to information on nearly any topic that interests them.

Yet, an argument can be made that there is simply too much history to study in a survey course and that important contributions by some individuals and groups may never be recognized without specifically addressing them in a format like Black History Month.

I do not expect to resolve the debate in this blog. Below are some resources for teaching Black History Month, but I would argue that these resources might be valuable all year rather than just in February.

History.com

For interactive timeline, games, and more

List of books and teaching resources

Time magazine

More educator resources

Smithsonian Virtual Tour

Webliography

Very similar to an annotated bibliography, I ask my students to create a short Webliography, on a specific term. There are many ways to do this and one that I would like to explore, but have not tried yet, is for students to research a bigger topic like Black History Month. I would like them to create the Webliography as a team on a wiki. Each semester the class would explore a different topic with access to previous semesters Webliographies for research reference for other assignments. As Learning Management systems offer diverse ways to create and grade wikis and other tools, I believe this format could become a preferred way of student collaboration, and overtake discussions role for building a sense of community.

Since I want to limit access to my students work and keep their work in the course, for now I use this webliography assignment. Learning how to research topics is not only an important skill for history courses but also for future history and college courses students take. Students practice acquiring information, breaking sources of information into parts, using library sources, demonstrating understanding of primary and secondary sources, and using technology. Also since there is a wealth of sources on the internet, some good and some bad, this assignment asks students to go a step further beyond just finding sources to explaining why they chose certain sources to include in their webliography.

Assignment Tasks:
1. Select a term from a list provided by the instructor.
2. Search the internet for web resources on this term.
3. Select the 5 best web sources.
4. Create a bibliography that lists the web sources.
5. Describe each source in a brief paragraph and why choose it as a reliable, informative source on the topic. Does the source include primary and secondary sources?
6. In addition to turning it in to the instructor, students can also post their assignment in an optional Study Hall discussion in the unit so that classmates can see the list of sources and possibly use them in upcoming assignments.

While writing a grammatically correct bibliography is an important skill for college students, I believe it is even more important for them to analyze those sources and be able to explain why they chose to use them.

Savenger Hunt Assignment

In October, I described the idea of an internet scavenger hunt specifying that students might search a particular website for information. This week my students researched a particular identification term. I designed the assignment to explore several course competencies including acquiring information, breaking multiple sources down into parts, using library resources, recognizing secondary sources, and locating specific primary sources.

First, create a bank of terms for students to select a term that most interests them. Second, encourage students to search their course resources and the internet for the following that relates to that term (I require 10).
a. Map
b. Video Clip
c. Audio Clip
d. Photograph
e. Government document
f. Letter written by someone related to the term
g. Diary written by someone related to the term
h. Newspaper Article
i. History Journal Article
j. Web Article
k. Glossary or Wikipedia type definition of term
l. Picture of artifact
m. Artwork related to term
n. Novel or short story
o. Textbook Reference
p. Museum Exhibit
q. Memorial
r. Modern movie made about term
Then students submit a one-paragraph description of the term describing who, what, where, when, and historical significance of the term, their list of sources with a brief description of what they found at each source and how it relates to the term, and they identify the web source is a primary source or secondary source.

Another option to this assignment is to do a scavenger hunt for a larger topic like Black History Month. Create a list of what to look for and have students search in groups posting their results in discussions. How do you incorporate the concept of Primary/Secondary sources in your assignments?

Survey Assignment

This semester I am teaching a new Western Civilization Course for CCCOnline that has some new assignments in it. Designed to incorporate course competencies, encourage originality, and be relevant to students by allowing them to focus on topics that most interest them, I believe these assignments are applicable to many courses and topics.

To provide my online students time to become acquainted with the course layout and their digital learning materials, the first assignment in the Introduction Unit asks students to create a survey of ten multiple-choice questions. They write only one question per chapter, because I want them to get an overview of the content in the course. The students then give this survey to ten people who are ten or older and record the results. They report their findings and share what they learned about the general-public’s knowledge of history and the reactions to the survey in a discussion. While giving the survey to people students inadvertently talk about history and the answers to the survey with their friends and family, which accomplishes one of the course competencies which is simply to speak about history. They also consider assessment design and delivery, which is particularly beneficial for my students who often plan to be high school teachers.

Then students post their five best or favorite questions for classmates to see and review. This student-generated content gives me an idea of the topics that most interest the class, and the students learn from each other by reviewing this bank of questions. Later in the semester, I will use my favorite questions for an extra credit quiz. This brings an added sense of relevancy when they are generating questions for their own exam.