To Think On Paper: Using Writing Assignments in the World History Survey

Abstract

AFTER SEVEN YEARS of teaching United States history survey courses, my department chair offered me the opportunity to teach Introduction to the Modem World. Some of my colleagues immediately began providing unsolicited warnings regarding the difficulty of engaging students in history and the impossibility of covering 500 years of the whole world in sixteen weeks. However, I mustered up my courage and took on the task. I must admit that since that time not a semester has begun when I was confident my students would learn everything that I wanted them to know about the world, but the history survey has become perhaps my favorite to teach. I found that one of the most effective means in facilitating my transition was to adapt writing assignments that I had used in United States history for the history course. Extending the parameters in subject matter proved fulfilling for me, as it gave me a chance to broaden my own perspective and it set the stage for broadening those of my students. I had designed assignments in American history requiring students to examine primary sources, books, websites and periodicals in an effort to have them recognize various materials and sources that were valuable to historians and history scholars. I now saw an important opportunity to see them tackle the by using these tools.