Putting Tuning into Practice

The traditional 100-level history surveys are built upon a certain set of assumptions: that students entering college had acquired basic learning skills; that they possess at least some broad content knowledge in US and western history; and that, based on those first two assumptions, the best way to provide minimal historical grounding for all students (especially non-majors) was to draw a big broad narrative over large swaths of time and space. After careful reflection upon our shared experience and our assessment data, the history program at SNHU’s main campus concluded that these assumptions are not necessarily valid anymore. We discovered that students generally come to college without the requisite skills or the base knowledge needed for the traditional survey to be an effective and useful starting point of academic inquiry. Indeed, the absence of core skills and knowledge render the survey a very difficult place to start a college career, as those courses move through much detail quickly. We thus began the process of rethinking our intro-level courses, which was directly informed by some of the outcomes and practices promulgated by the Tuning Project: what should students be able to know and do by the end of an intro-level history course? After much reflection and planning, we used our work on the Tuning Project to craft an introduction to history course that scaffolds academic skill as a common component across all sections, with the specific historical content, as chosen by the instructor, draped over that framework. Our work quickly became the basis for a new foundational humanities requirement in the university’s General Education Program.