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
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. 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.
Successfully completing this class requires your engagement on three fronts: participation, preparation, and demonstration. Each class and submission has a separate page listing reading and activities for each class period. Class uses a dual-track grading system, which track a student chooses is their own decision. See the syllabus file for the complete dual-track grading scheme. All class materials and assignments are available in Canvas, but for either track Canvas should be looked at only to confirm completion, not to track progress toward a midterm or final grade. Model your options and check your grade by downloading and completing the grade-modeling spreadsheet available on Files > Important class stuff. Points completed in class activities are additive and must be earned by the student, penalties for errors are not subtracted from an arbitrary 100%.
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. This class offers students a dual-track grading option and class grades emerge from your effort in a type of contract grading—basically, students choose what sort of effort they are willing to expend. All classroom assessment focuses on what you choose to do outside of class. It doesn't matter to me which you choose.
Consistent-effort track
The Consistent-effort track qualifies students for final grades up to a B+ and no higher. Optional activities are not counted against a student in grading but will count for them in grading. Consistent effort involves lower effort but higher risk. Fewer ways to earn your points means that less can be missed or overlooked if conflicts come up outside class; for instance, if you miss more than a couple of classes you'll have to do optional activities or noticeably better on later exams. Students must watch for and complete optional work on their own.
Students complete all the class facets named below:
Attendance--required daily 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--required weekly 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--required 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).
Writing--required No student should take a history class without completing at least one substantive writing exercise. Students choose and write historically informed comparative essay of 3000-3500 words, submitting both a draft and revision, from the list of Engagements writing prompts described below.
External-learning (EL) options--optional. These submission opportunities open one at a time, and only briefly in the class schedule. Submissions must be made during availability and cannot be made up. Individual assignments in Canvas.
Exit tickets--optional. Short experience and reflection responses. Submission options in worth few points but quick and easy to do. Open only briefly, do not recur, and may not be submitted late or made up. Separate assignments in Canvas.
Flashpoints--optional. Practical college-level skills activities. Submission options in worth few points but quick and easy to do. Also open briefly, do not recur, and may not be submitted late or made up. Separate assignments in Canvas.
Highest grade attainable: B+
High-effort track
Consistent-Effort track requirements (above)--required
Consistent-Effort track optiona (above)--optional
Engagements--required periodically In place of the writing component mentioned in the Consistent-Effort track, complete seven of eight reflection and writing essays scattered through the term, each about 1500 words. 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.” Each submission must carry a college-paper heading and the submitter's name to be credited; all seven essays must be submitted to complete the track; submitting fewer than all seven will not count as extra credit toward any grade (but won't hurt you, either). Only students who complete 7 of the 8 Engagement themes are eligible to receive a final grade of A or A- (though completing them is not a guarantee of either grade; any other grade is possible). Students who don’t complete all seven Engagements revert to the Consistent-Effort track. Only essays with proper college-paper headings are accepted for a grade. Students are required to have their work reviewed by Writing Center staff ahead of submission. Essays employing any form of generative AI technology, such as ChatGPT, are unacceptable for grading. These have due dates but do not lock.
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.