Course: HIST 120 World History
Author: Burnett,
Amy
School: University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Department/Program: History
Sub Area/Speciality: History
Year: 2001
Portfolio Objective/Abstract:
Although survey courses generate the largest number of credit-hours in history, they are among the most challenging courses for us to teach, because of both class size and student composition. These classes are taught as large lecture courses, for the most part without accompanying discussion sections, with enrollments ranging from 100 to 150 students (the enrollment limit is determined by classroom size). The university's general education requirements specify that students must take one course in historical studies, and most of them choose one of the courses from our two-semester U.S. history survey, our two-semester western civilization survey, or our one-semester world history course. The students who take these classes are mostly freshmen and sophomores, and during the fall semester a large proportion of them are completely new to university life. Few of the students are history majors. In fact, many of them come from outside the College of Arts and Sciences, and the survey class in history is one of the few courses in the humanities that they will take during their college years. Most of them enter the classroom believing that history is merely the memorization of names and dates, and they are either scared of taking history because they can't memorize things easily, or they believe it is boring and irrelevant to their lives. I teach three history courses at the survey level: Western Civilization to 1715, the History of Christianity, and a one-semester World History course. These three classes offer particular challenges in that they cover very long periods of time, present material that is usually unfamiliar to the students, and in the case of World History, describe cultures that are completely unknown to them. As I have thought about my own teaching and the audience for these survey classes over the last several years, my approach to these courses has changed radically. Increasingly I have moved away from presentation of data and focused instead on critical thinking skills. I want to help the students make explicit comparisons and contrasts between developments that occur in different historical contexts and see larger patterns in the disparate events that are usually thought of as "history." These skills will be of more use to the students in the long run than the ability to recite names and dates. I hope they come to realize that knowledge of the past adds depth and richness to their appreciation of culture, whether their own or that of others, and gives them a key to understanding the world in which they live. In my survey courses I am still experimenting with how best to achieve these larger goals, and each semester I find myself trying new approaches to develop the students' interest in history and their ability to learn and to think about what they have learned. Despite the differences in content between the survey courses I teach, my general goals of teaching students to see historical development and improving their critical thinking skills are common to all my survey courses. For this reason I can apply what I learn from teaching one survey course to the other two courses. As a result, my teaching at the survey course continues to evolve each semester. This course portfolio presents a snapshot of my World History course as I taught it during the spring of 2000. There were eighty students enrolled in the course (History 120). An additional seventeen students took the course for honors credit (History 120H).
Type of Portfolio: Benchmark
Evidence of Student Learning in the Portfolio: Examples of Student Work
Size of Class: over 100
Type of Student: Major and Non-Majors
Level of Course: first-year
Type of Course: General Education
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