Virtual Field Trips; or Teaching the American Civil War from Across the Pond
This spring, American Crises, a second-year module that explored US history from 1775 to 1968, ran for the first time. Structuring the course proved extremely difficult. Although I had been warned by friends, colleagues and my own common sense that I could not possibly cover 193 years of social, political, military, economic, and cultural history in twelve lectures and twelve seminars, I darn sure tried. My experience has led me to revise several aspects of module, but one that will remain is the inclusion of unassessed group presentations. Presentations are a strange pedagogical creature....
Read MoreEvidence-based Scripts; or, How to survive a ‘Beals Exam’
I am a very demanding lecturer. I typically write very long, very blunt feedback to my students in the hope that it will shock them into a more rigorous research and writing regime. This methodology served me quite well when I began teaching, as I primarily worked with first-year undergraduates. These fresh-faced, wholly impressionable students were usually very accepting of this well-meant criticism, evidenced by their marked improvement in subsequent assessments. When I began to teach second- and third-year students, however, my honest appraisals were less well received. Those I had...
Read MoreMapping Implicit Processes; or, Is This Source Okay?
Students love the Google Convenience Store. Most people do. Even those who question Google's dubious privacy policies and monopolistic tendencies often turn to it (even if they do not always admit to it). Of course, there is nothing inherently un-scholarly about digital scholarship. Indeed, digitisation of primary material and scholarly comment is expanding and deepening our understanding of the world though the free dissemination of human knowledge. But while this low barrier to entry makes universal education tantalisingly plausible, it also greatly concerns educators. Although...
Read MoreI Will Judge You by Your Spelling, Punctuation and Capitalization
As I complete another round of marking, I cannot help but wonder to myself: When did it become acceptable not to care about the font, colour, size and overall appearance of your writing? As any regular visitor to the Socratic Dilemma will know, I am no stranger to the occasional typographical faux pas, but I each year I grow increasingly concerned about the lack of care, or perhaps interest, my students have in the presentation of their written work. I have already written at length about a lack of consistency in student citations, but what I refer to now is something far more fundamental,...
Read MoreKeep Your Arms and Legs Inside the Lecture at All Times
Approximately 72 hours before my first lecture of my new American Crises module, I decided to abandon the twelve PowerPoint presentations I had already created in favour of an experiment with Prezi, a flash-based presentation platform. After composing and delivering eight lectures, I am ready to offer my initial thoughts. What's the Difference? Unlike PowerPoint, which is composed of a series of rectangular slides, a Prezi is, in essence, one large slide that the presenter can move around, zooming in and out, panning left and right, as necessary. Because of this, Prezis have a much greater...
Read MoreReversing Engineering Assessment Criteria; or, That’s what you meant by critically analyse!
Last month, I attempted to better understand my students by reverse engineering their essays. It was a surprisingly popular piece. During a feedback session, one of my students, quite out of the blue, informed me that I was 'absolutely right about conclusions' and that they had always had difficulty understanding their true purpose. Although a number of students have, in the past, commented upon my blog, either online or in person, this was something new. The student had not mentioned they had been reading my blog. They simply turned to me, in the midst of our conversation, and referred...
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