This is a message for my MW sections of HST 102. Monday only section peeps can ignore this.
One last poke before I stop bugging you all. Please print off and bring to class on Wednesday the How to Analyze a Source worksheet that is located on your course syllabus page (under the course schedule listing for 7 Sept). You can also follow the direct link here:
Let me know if you have any questions.
Presumably you have stumbled on over here after seeing the linking information in Blackboard. Welcome to the Devenney Teaching Hub. All of your course materials (such as the syllabus, handouts, study guides, discussion questions, and the like) that you’ll need to be successful in my HST 203 course this summer can be found here. During the term, I will be posting most of my announcements to you through this blog, while you can find the course materials by exploring the navigation buttons above. The only material that will still be available on Blackboard will be the GradeBook, for obvious FERPA reasons.
These blog posts are the initial primers for understanding how this is all going to work, so you should take a little time to look them over:
If you have any initial questions, please post a comment below, use the Anonymous Student Comment Form, hit me up on Twitter, or email me at your leisure.
We will be going over all this in greater detail when we meet in MAK A-2-151 for our first day of class, so don’t worry if some of this seems unclear.
In my MWF section, we were unable to complete our discussion of the European Empire Comparison Chart before the schedule forced us to move on to other topics. In light of that, and because I feel nice, I have posted a completed version of the chart for your edification. Let me know if you have any questions about this.
My colleague, Prof. Craig Benjamin has a set of helpful suggestions he provides his students in his syllabi for how to lead successful group discussions. I have excerpted these suggestions below for you to consider as you prepare your own discussion facilitations in my courses.
Don’t just read out a paper – present your information in smaller chunks and schedule questions and activities in between
Prepare the questions you want to ask or the activities you want people to do before class – make it clear what you want your classmates to do
Encourage participation – try and get every one involved (use polling, direct questions etc)
Try to be flexible – sometimes it’s better to let the discussion flow, even if it takes you away from your schedule. But try and keep discussions on the subject
Presenting different or conflicting views – sometimes discussion gets a good kick along if you play devil’s advocate, or present an opposing view to the group
Request responses, then wait for them – don’t pose a question and then answer it yourself; wait for someone to answer. Rephrase if necessary
Be accepting of listeners and the shy – some people learn best by listening to discussions, while others might be shy and find it difficult to speak up. Try not to put people on the spot, or embarrass them
After a couple of weeks, I think it is fairly clear to students in my classes that I can’t stand the use of passive voice sentence construction in writing. It is wordy diction that goes in circles and makes prose less clear (why do you think politicians use passive voice when owning up to their mistakes? “Mistakes were made” vs. “I made a mistake,” which is more direct?), but it is also a hard concept to explain without a more solid background in English grammar. On the Lectures/Resources page, I have a handout entitled Using Active Voice that you should all be reading before you turn in any written work to me. Hopefully, this can help you figure out what passive voice is and how to avoid it.
That said, tonight I stumbled across a blog post on College Misery that is the perfect example of why you should avoid passive voice. Here’s the title: “This article is written in passive voice by me so that the horror of the over-use of passive voice can be demonstrated by me to our students.” Here’s an excerpt:
Some positive feedback was received by me for a comment that was posted by me in December in which it was demonstrated how passive voice can be over-used. The idea was then had by me that a whole article could be written in which the passive voice would be demonstrated. Perhaps if a whole lot of passive voice sentences were read by students in one short article which was written by a professor, the true horror of what is meant when so much passive voice is used would be realized by them.
Go read the whole post. That is exactly why you should not write in excessive passive voice. Carry on.
Presumably you have stumbled on over here after seeing the linking information in Blackboard. Welcome to the Devenney Teaching Hub. All of your course materials (like the syllabus), handouts, study guides, discussion questions, and the like that you’ll need to be successful in my HST 101 or HST 386 courses at GVSU or my HST 112 course at CMU can be found here. During the term, I will be posting most of my announcements to you through this blog, while you can find the course materials by exploring the navigation buttons above. The only material that will still be available on Blackboard will be the GradeBook, for obvious FERPA reasons.
These blog posts are the initial primers for understanding how this is all going to work, so you should take a little time to look them over:
If you have any initial questions, please post a comment below, use the Anonymous Student Comment Form, hit me up on Twitter, or email me at your leisure.
I’m posting this a bit ahead of when you need it, but during Week 8 (specifically 20-22 October) there is an important reading listed that is not in your textbook. It is a selection from S.A.M. Adshead’s China in World History (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), specifically I want you to read pgs 4-21, as we will be working with this selection all through class then.
You can find the book on course reserve through GVSU’s Ares Course Reserve system or you can use the Google Books embed below:
I’m not going to make a habit out of this, but I thought for the first couple I should remind you that this stuff is there once I put it there…so…I have posted the outline for Topic #2 on the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, which we will go over on Monday. It is on the Lectures/Resources page, as usual, which you can find in the navigation bar above.
