Over the past few years I have been gradually flipping this course by putting a few mini-lectures (one for each 2-3 week module) online.聽In addition, students are reading and commenting on most of the assigned readings through an extension to the Learning Management System (LMS).聽This extension, called Perusall, tracks student comments on the assigned readings and assigns a grade, based on criteria that I publish in the LMS.聽Students can view their scores, and improve their comments as their time permits.
These practices have allowed me to focus more time in the classroom on the interpretation of the primary source readings.聽The interpretation of primary sources is not a simple matter.聽It requires fairly advanced literacy in addition to some familiarity with the context around the sources.聽Therefore, I often review the assigned readings in class, after students have had a chance to review and comment on them online.聽Although the overview videos that I provide give some context for the interpretation of Perusall readings, I frequently provide more of that context in class with some lecturing.聽Eventually I might expand the number of overview videos to provide more context, but my first step would be to review them in order to improve their effectiveness rather than increase the number.
With this flipped classroom, class time typically consists of some lecture and quite a bit of discussion focused on the readings. The discussions tend to concentrate on the course goals and module objectives.聽For example, I ask about the historical context surrounding the production of Aristophanes鈥� plays or Tacitus鈥� writings in order to encourage them to read a historical text with attention to the conditions that inspired the authors to produce those texts.聽We discuss the authors鈥� purposes, biases, and perspectives in order to uncover defining features of the cultures that they lived in.
A significant variation in this approach occurs when I teach the course with recitation sections.聽This approach means that much of the discussion, which I had used to break up lectures, is more concentrated in the recitation sections led by TAs.聽Therefore, in the course鈥檚 iteration with recitations, my contact time with students is limited to two 50-minute lecture classes per week.聽Although I still ask a few questions, often combined with clicker questions, my involvement in the discussions is more limited when we have recitations because students discuss the readings primarily in the recitation sections.聽Nevertheless, I include clicker questions and a few discussion questions during my lectures.聽These interludes last only 3-5 minutes before the lecture commences again.聽I try to have at least two and no more than five of these interludes in a 50-minute class.
I have been collecting data through a service (called VIP) provided by ASSETT, which monitors more precisely what I am doing with students.聽Three times per semester they have a trained observer come into my class.聽The observers note every two minutes what I am doing according to a series of rubrics that they have.聽They also record students鈥� actions or responses.聽I hope to collect this data over several semesters and compare it to work in other courses in related fields.聽I also hope to examine any significant changes in my behavior and student responses as they relate to my activities in class.
I have found that flipping a class is an ongoing process that requires continuous tweaking.聽In the Spring of 2019, for example, I was able to revert to the more flipped version of the course that did not have recitation sections.聽In that class I spent more class time with students examining the texts.聽I found this work to be more enjoyable than simply lecturing.聽My impression is that it is also more enjoyable for many of the students because they have an opportunity to express their understanding of the texts.聽However, I have not found that so far it corresponds to an increase in student attendance or success.聽Consequently, I am still focusing on how to increase attendance and success.
The progression of activities or assignments that students have outside of class in any particular module is as follows: low-stakes video-quiz, Perusall readings/assignments, module quiz, and periodically a paper (for 2 out of the six modules).聽I will describe each of these outside-of-class activities in more detail.
Each of the six modules in the course starts with a video-quiz.聽These video-quizzes consist of 4-5 questions and one or two reflective pauses inserted into a screencast video that lasts approximately 5-7 minutes.聽The students are allowed to take these video-quizzes as many times as they want.聽I count their last score.聽Most, but not all, students receive 100% on these simple quizzes that reinforce main points covered in each module.聽Collectively, the six video-quizzes count for 1/30th聽of the course grade.聽Their primary purpose is to provide essential background information (historical context) necessary to interpret complicated and obscure texts.聽However, a secondary purpose is to give students a sense of support and fairness by providing an assignment that they can easily do well on.
I encourage students to focus their reading and studying on the primary sources assigned in the class.聽These primary sources are from the historical epoch that we are covering in each module.聽For example, for the Ancient Near East, we read parts of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Genesis 4: Cain and Abel) and part of the聽Epic of Gilgamesh.聽Although I recommend a textbook to provide historical context and material needed to analyze the primary sources, the great majority of the questions that I ask on quizzes, papers, and on the final exam deal directly with the primary source readings.聽The objectives related to this approach reflect the History Department's聽learning objectives, originally defined in the Fall of 2018 and more recently refined.聽Essentially, the essence of these objectives is to encourage students to reconstruct the thoughts, values, and beliefs of the authors of these ancient writings in order to consider how various influences (social structure, political organization, religious beliefs) manifested in their writings.
Previously I assigned online discussions embedded in the LMS in order to encourage students to develop their thoughts related to the primary source readings.聽I have replaced those assignments with Perusall readings, which allow students more direct contact with the text when they are interpreting and discussing it.聽In addition, in semesters when I have Teaching Assistants working in recitations, the students engage in more detailed discussions of the sources in their recitation sections.聽When I teach the class without recitations, I embed those discussions directly into the lecture time.
In each module I provide a study guide that contains many of the questions that we cover for that module.聽These questions typically involve some interpretation.聽They are often 鈥渨hy鈥� or sometimes 鈥渉ow鈥� questions.聽The purpose is to encourage students to interpret small parts of the readings based on their understanding of the historical conditions surrounding the document鈥檚 production.聽We address these questions in the in-class discussions.聽These discussions also involve key terms included on the module study guide.聽Those key terms will appear on the final exam.聽In a sense the module study guides provide a dispersed approach to studying for the final exam, which includes a subset of the study guide questions.
Following the overview video-quiz, the Perusall readings, and the in-class discussions, I assign a short (20 questions in 20 minutes) online quiz of multiple-choice questions.聽The purpose of the quiz is to help students push the main points related to the material into longer term memory by practicing recall, as described in Peter C. Brown鈥檚聽Make it Stick.聽I provide students with study guides for all the module quizzes on the first day of class.聽On the quiz day, which is always the same day of the week for all of the modules, I then pull questions out of a larger test-bank of about 30 questions.聽This approach helps to minimize the possibility of cheating as does the time constraint: the students have 20 minutes to answer 20 questions, thereby reducing the time available for looking up answers.聽I tell them that the purpose of the quiz is to help them prepare for the final.聽That point is validated by the fact that I cull questions from the module study guides and place them on the final exam study guide.聽I drop their two lowest quiz scores; I count their four best scores out of 6, one for each module in the course.聽These quizzes differ from the video-quizzes in that they can only take them one time, and they each count for 1/30th聽of the grade, with the total of all these module quizzes counting for 13.333% of the course grade.聽The average grade on these quizzes tends to be between 75 and 80.聽If it is lower, as sometimes happens, I curve the quiz to a 75 median score.聽Finally, as the semester progresses, I reintroduce questions from previous quizzes so that students are encouraged to review the study guides from previous modules before taking the quiz.
The papers are the most influential part of a student鈥檚 grade.聽They are due at the end of the second and fourth modules.聽Currently I assign two 750-word papers in a semester.聽I encourage students to write in clear, concise prose by highlighting the development of concise writing skills as聽one of the course鈥檚 primary learning objectives; I reinforce the connection to that objective in the listing of course assignments.聽Both papers that I assign in the course are to be 750 words, maximum.聽I highly encourage students to take advantage of the writing center, which they can do either on campus or online.聽I provide these students with a聽grading rubric聽and a link to the聽History Department paper writing guidelines.聽I weight the first paper much lower than the second paper so that students have an opportunity to adjust their writing to this objective.聽Typically the first paper is worth 13.33% and the second paper is worth 23.33% of the course grade.
I evaluate student performance on these paper assignments according to three criteria, outlined in the rubric: 1) command of the assigned material, 2) structure of their thoughts, and 3) writing mechanics.聽In the command of the material, I insist that they use the assigned readings to answer the prompt in the paper.聽I explain that the reason for this approach is so that we all use the same evidence.聽I provide a few copies of the assigned readings on reserve at the Norlin Library Circulation desk so that students do not have to buy the books; however, several of the books are also available used for under $10.聽As far as the structure of their essay goes, I ask for a thesis statement, a title, topic sentences for each paragraph, the use of the introduction to provide historical context for the thesis, and a conclusion that addresses the historical implications of the thesis.聽I encourage students to take an outline of their thoughts on the essay to the Writing Center in order to obtain expert help with structuring their thoughts.聽Finally, I evaluate the papers according to a variety of smaller items that I call 鈥渨riting mechanics:鈥� grammar, punctuation, spelling, correct possessives, page numbers, proper citations, etc鈥β營 explain that the appearance of their paper as a professionally crafted piece of work reflects the care and attention that they have invested in the completion of the assignment.
In the first few weeks of the class I assign a series of short, online readings embedded into Perusall.聽Some of these readings are very short so that students who add into the course late can still catch up.聽The purpose of these readings is to demonstrate to students that historical sources require interpretation, and more specifically interpretation that refers directly to the evidence.聽The sources do not speak for themselves.聽Their meaning and significance require the application of knowledge about the historical context surrounding their composition and dissemination.聽In addition, many texts provide a commentary on a larger issue.聽For example, the story of Cain and Abel is partially about justice, both retributive and restorative.聽This point is not necessarily intuitive to many students, and we explore how the texts often had meaning beyond the superficial or narrative levels.
In the second, third, and fourth modules, the students read more extended works: plays by Aristophanes, two works by Tacitus (Agricola听补苍诲听Germania), and聽Beowulf.听叠别肠补耻蝉别听Beowulf聽is the most complicated of these works, I also assign two interpretive essays along with that reading.聽All of these more extended readings have fairly complete introductions to them.聽I emphasize the importance of reading those introductions, and they figure prominently in the module study guide, in-class discussions, and quiz.聽In the fifth module, I revert back to the shorter online readings so that the students can catch their breath before we begin with the longest and most difficult text to interpret: Boccaccio鈥檚聽Decameron.聽I do not assign the entire work; instead I assign a fairly complete introduction in addition to a selection of stories translated by Wayne Rebhorn.
Bloom's taxonomy
In the course assignment document that I provide, I connect each assignment to the course learning objectives, which reinforce History鈥檚 departmental learning objectives.聽Because my colleagues have collectively arrived at these learning objectives and because I use a well-regarded paradigm for learning (Bloom鈥檚 taxonomy) for arranging the assignments within each module, I expect the assignments to be reasonably effective in promoting student learning, although room for improvement always exists.聽In addition, by asking students to review the study guide from two previous modules as they prepare for their module review quizzes, I am encouraging the movement of knowledge into longer term memory.聽This requirement to review material from previous study guides is a fairly new addition to the course.聽My initial impression is the review of previous modules in the quizzes is improving the final exam scores.聽I look forward to establishing an objective measure of that impression.
Because this is an introductory level course, I assume that students have not taken any previous history classes at the university level.聽Clearly, this point is not uniformly true, but my assumption going into the course is that they have been subjected to the kind of learning that requires them to memorize material from a textbook and to take a test.聽Because I have read several books that have questioned the utility of that approach, I try to deemphasize the memorization and recall and instead emphasize the interpretation and application of knowledge in this class by assigning frequent discussions and essays.
One example of this approach is to ask a question that has no right answer.聽For example, I will ask if Aristophanes鈥櫬�Lysistrata聽demonstrated feminist sympathies on the part of the playwright.聽There are at least two sides to this question, and students often pick one or the other in their initial response.聽Sometimes I will merely ask them for specific evidence that supports their point.聽However, frequently I will ask them for the evidence that supports the contrary view.聽The purpose here is to have them develop some mental agility, to see a topic from two equally valid points of view.聽It is also useful for them to ground their arguments/explanations on evidence contained in the assigned readings.聽By encouraging them to base their opinions on evidence rather than on feelings, I am preparing them to become more thoughtful about their examination of a number of complicated issues related to class, gender, and ethnicity.聽These issues will continue to confront them not only at the university but also throughout their lives.
On a slightly less ambitious scale, I am also preparing those students who choose to become History majors to interpret primary sources.聽This learning objective is pronounced in the departmental learning objectives and culminates in the research paper that all history major are required to write in their senior seminar.聽By encouraging students to address the complexity and the context that are involved in the interpretation of historical documents, I hope to prepare them for not only more advanced classes but also for life itself.聽These skills build a more advanced type of literacy that can help in a variety of professions.聽In addition, these exercises often involve viewing a topic from multiple perspectives, a skill that can be useful in business, academia, and our personal lives.
Back (Background)聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 Next (Student Work)