14 Weeks for 1700 Years, 14 Weeks for 500 Years—Teaching Western Civilization

In this presentation I will share my experiences on teaching the Western Civ survey courses, with an emphasis on Western Civ Part I, which covers many more years and therefore if an extra challenge. Teaching a survey course is one thing, engaging students and helping students success, especially in a required course and with the Millenials we are now facing is a bit more interesting. 

We all know about how our students need various ways to get engaged and I will share some of my strategies, including audio-visual materials I use, collaborative assignments, web assignments, and the like. 

Given the nature of these courses as History Courses we also need to introduce the students to working with and analyzing primary sources in a meaningful way . I will share my approach on this aspect of the survey course as well as I weave that directly into the course.  Part of the success of this course is also related to collaboration with other staff, such as the library for an Information Literacy session. I will briefly explain how I work with the skillful librarians in preparing the students for a written primary source assignment.

I plan to share my resources with participants in the workshop and hope for an engaging exchange of other methods, strategies, and ideas we may discuss in this session.