You are attending college to avoid a service-industry or factory-line job. Until you graduate, attending college is your employment. If you have a part-time or full time job, then you have two jobs. Students are expected to take class as seriously as a paying job, even if they don’t like it.
Student requirements
There are no physical risks associated with this class, but participants will face and must discuss topics that should challenge personally held ideals. You are here to stretch your mind, and that can be a bit uncomfortable.
The course is designed around more than one type of learning, based on thirty years experience as a practicing historian, and a lot on what I wish someone had taught me as an undergraduate. Successfully completing this class requires your engagement on three fronts: participation, preparation, and demonstration. Students:
- explore, whether in the text, in supplementary material, or on your own
- attend class regularly
- contribute (willingly or unwillingly) to class discussions, including making observations and raising questions
- complete quizzes and exams
Exploration (mostly reading) is required, is the basis for Exams 2–4, and must be completed before every class. This course is a survey (a broad, hasty overview). Students are not expected to master what we cover; but, because this is a survey course, what is expected is personal engagement in the form of completing scheduled reading (did you know that a legal apprenticeship was once called reading law?; same principle applies here). Streaking through five different themes across four hundred years cannot be done without putting a premium on your individual effort. All classroom assessment focuses on what you choose to do outside of class.
This class offers students a dual-track grading option. It doesn't matter to me which you choose.
Consistent-effort track
Students complete all three of the class facets as named below.
Attendance A Canvas quiz opens at the beginning of class, which is completed by typing in the word on my first class slide. Attending class is a binary: you get credit for attending on a given day, and do not get credit for not attending. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to miss class but no excused absences whatsoever. Missed attendance cannot be made up but may be offset by completing other activities
Exploration summaries A check on your attention to what is covered in Explorations. Compiled from your Exploration and class notes, a summary is due weekly (even for weeks with one class). The sheet may be downloaded from Canvas or the Google Drive. This is not a substitute for notes but should be completed from your notes, requiring no more than 10 minutes or so to complete.
Examinations Four exams are taken outside of class. Exam 1 is the US Immigration Services practice exam for citizenship. Exam 2 covers classes 1–8; exam 3 covers classes 9–17; exam 4 (taken during Finals week in the classroom) covers classes 18–28. Exams 2–4 include 5 writing prompts, one from each class theme. Questions on all exams are drawn randomly by the computer. Each one requires a short-answer response. No need to complete these from memory; you are welcome—nay, encouraged—to write up your own study guide and put in any handwritten or typed and printed notes from any of your exploration interactions. Students must complete all exams to receive any grade at all in the class. No matter what we cover in class, exam prompts are drawn only from subjects found in Exploration content (textbook, supplementary reading, links, and the like).
Attendance = 54 (2 for each class attended; 1 for partial attendance)
Exploration summaries = 75 (15 × 5pts each)
Examinations = 72 (1 × 10pts + 2 × 15pts each + 1 × 32pts)
TOTAL = 193 [highest grade attainable: B+]
High-effort track
Students complete all Consistent-Effort facets plus the following:
Engagements (optional) Seven additional-effort reflection and writing essays scattered through the course. They are intended to foster reflective thought and expression in serious students, an opportunity for individuals to relate themselves and their experience to the national culture in terms of the course’s five major themes: the “political, economic, and social development of American institutions and ideas.” Only students who complete the 7 Engagements are eligible to receive a final grade of A or A- (though completing them is not a guarantee of either grade, and any other grade is possible). Students who don’t complete all seven Engagements revert to the Standard-effort track. On essays with proper college-paper headings are graded. Students are required to have their work reviewed by Writing Center staff ahead of submission. Essays which employ any form of AI technology, such as ChatGPT, are unacceptable for grading.
Consistent-Effort scores = 193
Engagements (optional) = 35 (7 × 5pts each)
TOTAL = 225 [highest grade attainable: A]
Course grades
Because of the complicated grading options, Canvas does not calculate accurate percentages or reflect course grades accurately; use the modeling spreadsheet in the <Files> menu of the course shell to track and forecast your progress. Final grades are not based on a fixed, top-down percentage of the total possible points. The grading scale accounts for the reality that no one scores all possible points, but please notice that even a capable student cannot simply ignore or skip a graded element of the course and do very well, even if everything else is perfect (and that is unlikely); at some point, a low cumulative score means a student will retake the course. See the class rubric or modeling spreadsheet for the grading scale. A student who demonstrates consistent effort and progress between term beginning and end may be graded more leniently at my discretion when filing final grades.
Why? Please realize that participation awards do not exist in the professional world. Employees don’t keep their jobs if they consistently perform at half effort. That principle applies directly to your college experience. No one should expect a passing grade by doing half the work halfheartedly, either. Coming to class regularly is merely half-effort; learning requires effort and consistency on the learner’s part. Knowledge, and certainly professionalism, is not something I can mechanically hand you, so this is not a push-button class. In a college setting, learning depends on your effort rather than my effort. If you don't learn, that is a reflection on you, not me.