Stage I: A Concern with Modeling Basic Learning Tasks

Since the late 1980s I have been very concerned with modeling the basic operations required of students in introductory history courses. Influenced by the pedagogical literature on issues such as cognitive apprenticeship and disciplinary differences, I sought to explore these issues in our survey of modern European history, in an article based on my experiences with this course ["Beyond 'Sorting': Teaching Cognitive Skills in the History Survey," The History Teacher, Vol. 26, No.4 (February 1993), pp. 211-220] and in a book-length introduction to taking history courses for undergraduates [Studying for History, (Harper Collins, 1995) (co-Authored with Professor Sharon Pugh)]

In the mid-1990s with the assistance of a grant from the Indiana University Campuswide Writing Program I sought to make this process of defining and modeling basic operations the core of a new COAS freshman Topics course, "From Apocalypse to Star Trek: A History of the Future." I began by defining a set of operations that seemed crucial for success in history courses, sequencing these operations in a logical order, and developing exercises and assignments that modeled these operations and gave students an opportunity to practice them. The result was a course that self-consciously set out to level the playing field by taking entry level students step by step through such operations as reading secondary sources in history, understanding what essay questions call for, or identifying the assumptions and values in a primary text.