Sample Course: Medieval Civilizations Survey

Table of Contents

Guiding principles

Pedagogy

    My pedagogical goals for all introductory surveys is to introduce students to three fundamental skills of the historical trade: critical reading of primary and secondary sources (text, image and artifact); contextualizing evidence from primary sources in a larger, complex historical narrative created by secondary sources and textbooks; understanding how the larger historical narrative develops by making and presenting small arguments about historical processes in traditional (written) and non-traditional forms (e.g., debates, poster sessions, trading cards, )

Content Goals

    The narrative of European exceptionalism that begins with the Roman period can often be countered by expanding the Medieval world to demonstrate the cross-Mediterranean interaction between North Africa, Arabia, Persia, Kievan Rus, and Europe. I expand the normative French/German/English narrative of medieval history to focus on the cultural interplay between medieval Mediterranean urban centers (Byzantium, Ctesiphon, Medina, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cordoba in addition to Rome, Paris and London) in order to demonstrate the importance of cultural interplay in political, economic and social developments in the Mediterranen between 250 and 1492 C.E. I supplemented Barbara Rosenwein’s A Short History of the Middle Ages with primary source material translated from Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, old French, German, Italian and Old English in order to emphasize the problem of translations in historical reading as well as to decenter traditional European narratives.

Brief Self-Assessment of Course

    Broadly speaking, I am happy with the course content and structure. The in-class assignments functioned very well in motivating students to engage with the content. Additionally, the assignment structure functioned largely as I wanted it to and resulted in a 5% average increase from the first assignment to the last assignment. I did struggle with motivating students to continue to read and participate as a result of the truncated nature of a summer schedule (75 minutes, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks). Finally, my own ability to adapt and change in response to student concerns and behaviors was significantly constrained by the short, fast-paced nature of a summer course. Had I taught this course in a standard semester-length format, I would have changed the evidence-matrix step of my assignment process in week three to accommodate student dislike of that particular step. Despite that one change, however, the course served students well, and they learned both the shape and form of the medieval Mediterranean as well as gaining a good foundation in historical argumentation skills.

Syllabus

Course Activities & Assignments

Assignments

    Assignment descriptions & guiding principles

    The assignment schedule for this course is available here in exactly the same form as it was presented to students: http://www.kalanicraig.com/teachingportfolio/samplecourse/assignments/.

    Students are asked to select a general topic–political, social, economic, cultural, educational, religious–and direct their reading of historical evidence, and the historical inquiries that they use to write their paper, toward that topic for the entire semester.

    However, if the only document available to grade is a traditional history paper, it can be difficult to tell where the student does or does not have mastery of historical argumentation. A student can potentially get lost at each of these stages. If the only document available to grade is a traditional history paper, it can be difficult to tell where the student does or does not have mastery of historical argumentation. Two steps of my 5-step assignment process, in particular, are useful in helping students systematically analyze sources and evidence.

    • Step 1, The 5Ps: Describing a primary source by applying the 5Ps — What are the 5Ps? | Student worksheet | Grading Rubric

    • Step 3, Evidence Questions (EQ): Learning to ask the right detailed historical questions–and to answer those questions–by tying individual pieces of evidence to secondary sources and contextual information — Grading Rubric

    Even accounting for students whose grades dropped because of reduced participation as the summer course went on, the class averaged a 5.5% increase in their assignment grades over the entire semester. Additionally, the entire class averaged a 2% increase in the most complex assignment step, moving from outline form to paper form, suggesting that the process of writing out and handing in each step did result in increased mastery of historical argumentation skills necessary at each stage, despite not having produced traditional history papers for each assignment.

    I also weighted assignments less heavily at the beginning of the semester, when students were still learning to apply critical thinking skills in service of historical arguments. My goal was to allow students to experiment with newly learned skills at the beginning of the semester without penalizing them for failing to instantly master the skills I was asking them to learn.

    Student examples

    The zip file below includes all elements of assignments 1 through 6, in MS Word format, from the same student. This student demonstrated significant improvement over the course of the semester as a direct result of the structured assignments that focused on each step in the historical argumentation process.

In-class Argumentation Activities

    My in-class exercises are designed to support the historical argumentation structure above. These three in-class exercises are each designed to support one of the argumentation steps above, and they each build on the previous in-class exercise.

    Understand an argument: Reading secondary sources

    This in-class exercise takes place just before assignment 2 is due and is designed to demonstrate how experienced historians construct arguments so students can model their thinking on examples from the discipline. Understand an argument

    Construct an argument: Write a thesis statements

    This in-class exercise takes place just before assignment 3 is due and is designed to be the reverse of the first exercise. Students often have difficulty reversing their questions and creating answers from the questions they have asked, so this exercise walks them through the specific requirements of a historical question and helps them create a thesis statement that responds to all of the elements of the historical question. Construct an argument

    Present an argument: Introductory paragraphs and transitions

    This in-class exercise takes place just before assignment 4 is due and addresses the importance of appropriate contextualization in an introductory paragraph and in transition sentences. The first directs students away from too-broad introductions and pushes them toward the development of an introductory paragraph that is interesting and helpful to both a specialist and a reader unfamiliar with their subject matter. The second helps students understand the importance of the order in which they present their evidence and how to tie different pieces of evidence to a main thesis statement. Present an argument

Student Evaluations

    For reference, students are asked to rank teaching on a scale from 0 (disagree) – 4 (agree), and most instructors receive scores between 2.7 and 3.3 at Indiana University.

    In general, student evaluations of me and the class were quite positive across the board. My average evaluation score on the official BEST form was a 3.51 excluding questions that did not apply (e.g., “The exams cover important aspects of this course” because I did not give exams).

    A copy of the official BEST evaluations is available here: Medieval civilizations survey evaluations (XLSX)