I am looking forward to "The Era of the World Wars" course this fall. The amount of material to cover in sixteen weeks is daunting, but I think I will try an approach that has proven successful in other courses. I want to do a "year-by-year" series of lectures. Each year of each war would be covered in depth (with of course, in-depth discussion of the events leading up to each war as well as the aftermath in the following years). As many of our students want to teach History themselves, my goal is to give them material upon which they can build their own lectures and courses.
Rather than a 20-page research paper, I think I am going to require them to construct a notebook, a collection of chronologically-arranged notes, scholarly articles, pictures and other resources. At the end of the course, they would something other than a research paper to show for what they had done all semester! In this age of readily available information, the students shouldn't have too much difficulty in getting materials for their project.
Do you all have thoughts or suggestions about this approach?
6 comments:
That sounds like an excellent idea to me.
I'm fan of writing papers, because if was told to compose a notebook, it would be too easy. I could just type a search term into google and find anything I wanted and then print it and put it in a notebook. The notebook seems to easy.
I think like Milred, excellent idea. My cousin call me and ask if I knew who in our family was in the Civil War or World War I. He said he had the dog tags of a H.H. Green and didn't know which war it was. I am the family genealogist. and from the H.H. I knew it was World War I. He said it was in our grandfathers old safe.I am waiting on a picture of it.
Patsy
Patsy, that's grand. Can you post it on your blog when you receive it?
Yes I will post it. Not long ago I had posed about finding a ggg- uncle's grave stone with his name and the other prisoners of the Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Infantry,from the Civil War. Great family story about him and the family.
Patsy
Thank you, Patsy. Kate, I know what you mean. They all will have papers for Dr. J. I will monitor what they are doing as closely as I can. Thanks for your insights.
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