General Operations Required for Success in this Course

At the beginning of the process I created a list of the general tasks that students needed to master to succeed in the course and to derive from it the learning that I felt was possible. As time passed, I added new items to the list, and I had to make strategic decisions about which of these learning tasks were essential for this particular course and which I would not model in any systematic manner. I also realized that most of the items on this list involved multiple operations, and I began to break some of them up into their component elements. Nonetheless generating the original list was a useful part of the process.

Here is the original list:

• Listen to a lecture and take notes on the essential elements
• Read a document or portion of a textbook and separate what is essential from what is not
• Support an argument, drawing relevant evidence from a variety of sources
• Generate an interpretation of a historical situation based upon materials borrowed from different readings and lectures
• Understand the relative nature of a historical interpretation
• Evaluate the interpretations of several historians and decide which argument is best supported by the available evidence
• Consider an intellectual issue from two or more different perspectives and understand that a historical situation might have appeared in the same light to two different observers at the time
• Distinguish between a secondary and a primary source
• Read primary sources as a means of understanding how individuals or groups in the past viewed their world, not as a means of obtaining direct information about that world
• Play an effective role in discussion, making comments which follow logically from what went before and evaluating the appropriateness of the number of times one enters the discussion
• Draw upon materials from lecture, the readings, and other students' comments to support positions in discussion
• Read an essay question and decide what operations are called for
• Use the library and assemble materials for a paper
• To work effectively with other students in a task-oriented group
• Write a paper with an appropriate audience in mind
• Understand the variety of issues examined by contemporary historians
• Manage time effectively across a day, a week, and a semester
• Make conscious choices about study strategies, the balance between academic and nonacademic commitments, and the role played in class discussion
• Use the material covered in the course to broaden their own world view and to see the relevance of this material to contemporary issues in both the private and the public sphere
• Feel comfortable in the classroom, regardless of gender, race, class, or level of previous skills preparation
• Feel a sense of accomplishment and mastery from the work accomplished during the semester