Another semester begins...

After the first week of classes, all I have to say is, I know I had a good class when I had more energy at the end of class than at the beginning of a 2.5-hour class. I think the students had a good class, too.

All three of my classes are full now.

As of today, all three of my spring semester classes are full.
History 353 is the seminar that is going to Budapest during spring break.
History 354 is History of the Holocaust (which filled a long time ago).
History 391 is History of the Crusades.

Book reviews

Asking students to write a book review of a book directly related to class but supplemental to the assigned readings for the class, I think, was a very good idea. I can see how students process the books they chose for their reviews in a number of different ways but primarily in terms of how the books "fit into" the course - especially its assigned readings and class discussions. The other main way that students process the books is that they identify and assess the books' argumentation, a skill we've been working on all semester in shorter writing assignments. The result is evident in the grades: consistently students earn higher grades on the book reviews than they were earning on the short assignments. I think this is because they've learned how to home in on the main point quickly in the short assignments, which were two-page analyses of long readings and now, in the longer assignment of the book review, they have the space to develop their analysis of one book but still are practicing the skill of expressing themselves succinctly.

Dehumanization, part three of three

Finally, my third class from last week. (I wish I had more time to blog.) My third class is History of the Holocaust and perhaps it's obvious that Nazi victims were dehumanized. Yet the particulars about how they were dehumanized came to be highlighted as we turned to a new part of the course about "culpability," in other words, we turned to examining perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers (including resisters). An excerpt from Lifton's work on Nazi doctors highlighted how the use of language distanced the doctors from the prisoners of Auschwitz, making them into things other than human beings in their minds. An excerpt from Browning's famous Ordinary Men made plain that not all perpetrators were able to dehumanize the victims, but that most could become used to killing civilians.

None of the readings intended to excuse the "willing participants" (a phrase we came up with to describe and encompass all who exhibited behavior that did not help the victims), but it was clearly difficult for students not to keep very clear the distinction between understanding a person's behavior and exculpating a person.

A theme across all my classes this week (will post more later)

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

"History Help" Session

The History Help session - I had to give it a title in order to reserve the room and this is the best I could come up with - was a success from my point of view. A dozen students from all three of my spring classes attended. They came with questions and we covered the two topics that earned the most votes on the questionnaire I had circulated in the classes last week. We talked about how to write a proper Chicago style full citation in a footnote. We even talked about other uses of footnotes. Finally we spent a little time in the library databases looking for articles. This last part surprised me a little because I thought it was going to be more productive than the footnoting part, but I couldn't tell if students were actually finding articles for their papers or if they were learning anything new about databases.

In order to find out if the session was a success from the students' points of view, I sent out a link to a very quick survey (from surveymonkey.com) to all those who attended. If they respond, it'll help me determine if holding such a session again - as in, next semester - would be worthwhile.

Impressed with the discussions

Only brief notations for this week: no time for blogging and impressive discussions in all classes (as the whiteboards demonstrate), despite a few grumblings about "dry" or "too detailed" reading assignments.
Students underestimate themselves.

First Week Reflections

Two things stick out for me this week: 1.) the variety of questions and skill sets students bring to a class; and 2.) the amount of time it takes to take care of the administrative side of courses.

The variety of questions and skill sets led me to decide to offer an "extra help" session to those who need or really want some extra help with what I tend to think of as the "technical" parts to studying history, writing history, and participating in class. There were questions (or just questioning looks) about how to find scholarly articles and how to cite sources properly using the Chicago style. There were also questions about D2L. Even though D2L truly is a supplement to these courses, I would like students to feel comfortable enough at least to click around D2L to see not only the announcement/news and materials and links I'm putting up there, but also what other students are writing on the discussion boards. There were also questions about how to write an history essay or paper. My first step in responding to this particular need was to make available a paper a former student of mine wrote; we'll see what other steps become necessary. Finally, students seemed confident about knowing what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, but this may be just the most vocal students in class--those who are actually unsure may be a bit shy about asking about plagiarism, so I also included plagiarism as a possible topic for the "extra help" session.

Every semester I am amazed and a little frustrated by how much time is needed to take care of the administrative tasks: making enough photocopies, setting up attendance records and gradebooks (Excel), figuring out if students have added or dropped, and emailing newly added students. I estimate I spent about 2 hours per class just this week on administrative tasks, and I bet that's a low estimate. Administrative tasks always take up less time in weeks subsequent to the add/drop deadline.