This week’s news story on Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell reinstating Confederate History Month inspired a series of assignment ideas on incorporating news in our history classes. Confederate History Month and the manner that it was proposed by McDonnell would make a great debate/discussion question. Topics for this question might include:
1. Why do we designate months to remember categories of history and is this still necessary in today’s world?
2. What is the controversy around this history month and how should we remember this important war in our nation’s history?
3. What were the causes of the Civil War? Social, Economic, Political?
4. Why is the Civil War romanticized?
5. How are state’s rights important then and now?
A second assignment idea is to have students search for history in the news (any medium would be appropriate) and report to the class about the current news story they found. Additionally students should report how that news relates to history, did the news include all the important historical information, and whether the student’s knowledge of history effects how they understand and view the news report.
Finally, pick a couple of events in the period of study and have the students write newspaper articles as if they were reporting the event at the time it occurred. For example, a student might imagine they are reporting for the “Valley Virginian” on the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimac in Virginia waters. One resource you don’t want to miss on the Civil War, which includes primary source newspapers, is The Valley of the Shadow Project.
No matter which assignment you try, incorporating current news in our history courses can help students find the study of history relevant and interesting.
Showing posts with label assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label assessment. Show all posts
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Monday, May 4, 2009
Questions to Ponder
In April, I attended the eLCC conference and presented with Alice Bedard-Voorhees on New Designs for Assessment. Alice is the person I credit most for giving me an opportunity to teach online and for inspiring me to try innovative teaching tools and concepts. At the conference, I am pleased to share that Alice won the eLCC Faculty of the Year award. You might visit Alice’s blog at for inspiration.
I would like to share two questions that Alice asks that always encourage me to think differently. We all have students who are more difficult to manage. Sometimes students have bad attitudes about the course or fellow classmates. Sometimes they are frustrated with us about the type of assignments given or the technology. Sometimes they plagiarize. The question that Alice always asked me as my Chair and later Academic Dean was “How can we get back to the learning?” Alice empowered me to find a way to have a successful outcome for the student and class rather than getting stuck and frustrated by what wasn’t working. Not only did this help me not take the student’s problems personally, but it also helped me brainstorm ways to avoid the same problems in the upcoming semesters. By always thinking about how to best facilitate learning among my current students, I find that each semester I am more effective and patient. The question reminds me that students are there to learn and its my job to help them.
In a CCCOnline training webinar and at our presentation at eLCC, Alice posed this question for students. “What could you do, use, or create to demonstrate your learning for outcome X?” This question opens a dialogue between the instructor and student to select the method of delivery to demonstrate their knowledge. Students might choose to do something in Second Life, use a Web 2.0 tool like audacity, create a slide show, or write a traditional paper. The question allows students to develop their own assignment to achieve an objective or competency. In correspondence and cooperation with the instructor, a rubric for evaluation of the assignment can be developed and gives the student ultimate ownership of their learning. Imagine developing assignments and rubrics through open communication between the students either one to one, instructor to group, or class to instructor. What a way to focus on the individual learning and outcomes in a course!
I would like to share two questions that Alice asks that always encourage me to think differently. We all have students who are more difficult to manage. Sometimes students have bad attitudes about the course or fellow classmates. Sometimes they are frustrated with us about the type of assignments given or the technology. Sometimes they plagiarize. The question that Alice always asked me as my Chair and later Academic Dean was “How can we get back to the learning?” Alice empowered me to find a way to have a successful outcome for the student and class rather than getting stuck and frustrated by what wasn’t working. Not only did this help me not take the student’s problems personally, but it also helped me brainstorm ways to avoid the same problems in the upcoming semesters. By always thinking about how to best facilitate learning among my current students, I find that each semester I am more effective and patient. The question reminds me that students are there to learn and its my job to help them.
In a CCCOnline training webinar and at our presentation at eLCC, Alice posed this question for students. “What could you do, use, or create to demonstrate your learning for outcome X?” This question opens a dialogue between the instructor and student to select the method of delivery to demonstrate their knowledge. Students might choose to do something in Second Life, use a Web 2.0 tool like audacity, create a slide show, or write a traditional paper. The question allows students to develop their own assignment to achieve an objective or competency. In correspondence and cooperation with the instructor, a rubric for evaluation of the assignment can be developed and gives the student ultimate ownership of their learning. Imagine developing assignments and rubrics through open communication between the students either one to one, instructor to group, or class to instructor. What a way to focus on the individual learning and outcomes in a course!
Saturday, February 7, 2009
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?
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?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
To Test or Not to Test with High Stakes Exams
This week I have been grading all-essay midterms in one course and in another reviewing research paper outlines. I am pondering the value of high stakes exams in a freshmen/sophomore level course. Frankly, I have long been running an internal debate about the value of this kind of assessment, which some universities like the University of California require. I am hoping that you all will join me in this debate and share your ideas, alternatives, and resources.
Some pros for high stakes exams:
1. Prevent online cheating by watching tone of essay assessment versus other assignments.
2. Examine higher levels of thinking with essay exams, particularly the important skill of thinking on your feet, recalling information to make an argument, and then synthesizing all that quickly together in a cohesive way.
3. Students in my courses it seems perform better on the essay exams rather than other formats like multiple-choice and matching. Essentially, they can show off what they know.
4. Gives immediate purpose to students for practice assignments.
5. Gives students practice for exams in upper levels of college that are likely to be all essay, but also exposes students to the real world experience of composing under pressure.
Some cons for high stakes exams:
1. Students are very tempted to plagiarize or cheat to do well on the exam that is a significant portion of their grade.
2. Online courses really are open-book unless students go to a test center, so the exam may not really demonstrate more knowledge than other formative assignments.
3. All-essay exams often test writing ability more than a student’s knowledge of history, which is often reflected with some students not “writing” much and scoring poorly.
4. Online exams can be even more intimidating than face to face exams due to technology concerns, and there is no one to ask a question of once you start.
5. There are many alternatives to one or two big assessments per semester that may evaluate student knowledge of content just as effectively if not better.
With the recent push for exit high school exams and other standardized tests in our nation, many states are reporting negatively about their impact. If you have exams, here is an article with ideas for writing good exams and another about complaints by students about how exams sometimes don't relate to what they study and do in practice.
I want to hear from you! Do you use exams? Are they an effective evaluation of your learning objectives? What alternatives do you use instead of exams?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
