Project Narrative
Foundations of Western Culture II
Jason Nice
Humanistic Studies (History)
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
Teaching Scholars I
Project Narrative
Assessing Learning Outcomes:
Midway through my first semester at UW-GB, I noticed a serious discrepancy between learning
outcomes and the assessment of learning outcomes. Basically, although I thought that most
students achieved their learning outcomes, I found myself unable to assess my students’ actual
level of comprehension. Each year, between 300 and 400 UW-GB undergraduates will take my
course Foundations of Western Culture II, and thus I want to ensure that these students
understand and achieve the learning outcomes of the course. Traditionally, Foundations of
Western Culture (or Western Civ. elsewhere) is examined upon the basis of memorization knowing the significance of certain FACTS: people (Luther, Napoleon, Churchill); places
(Wittenberg, Waterloo, Westminster); and dates (1517, 1789, 1945). Multiple-choice questions
can usually determine a student’s knowledge of FACTS, and this type of examination is very
appealing in large classrooms. Unfortunately, this type of examination contradicts both my
research and teaching philosophy. Also, it does not assess the primary learning outcomes of the
class: enhancing my students’ critical reading and writing skills through close textual analysis.
Knowledge of FACTS is important, but it is a secondary learning outcome. I encourage my
students to challenge tidy textbook interpretations, and encounter the ‘messiness’ of the past by
considering the writings of several authors at different points in history. My teaching
philosophy places a large importance upon primary sources, and I expect my students to finish
the class “with a basic framework for understanding the world situation today, and ... the tools to
make reasoned arguments based upon critical source interpretation.”i
The perceived ‘problem’:
My syllabus did attempt to assess the principle learning outcomes (through participation grades
for D2L discussions and an essay), but these assessments only accounted for 30% of the final
grade. The other 70% consisted of a variety of FACT-based examinations (quizzes, midterm,
final). This was disproportional to my learning outcomes, and it felt wrong. I needed to find a
way to examine my students’ critical aptitude and textual analysis while keeping in mind the
practical limitations of large class sizes.
The supposed ‘solution’:
It seemed painfully obvious. I needed to write better exams for my students. Here is an example
of a factual multiple-choice question from the midterm exam, which I believed failed to assess
the learning outcomes of the course:
9. Of these early 16th century rulers, pick out the correct match of ruler and country:
A) Francis I--France
B) Suleiman the Magnificent--England
C) Henry VIII--the Holy Roman Empire and Spain
D) Charles V--Ottoman Empire
Project Narrative
Foundations of Western Culture II
This question bothers me, because it does not examine my students’ understanding of
Renaissance politics and how it relates to today’s world (a topic discussed in class). Instead, it
merely tests chronology and the royal houses of Europe. With this question, among others, in
mind, I set out to write a perfect final exam: I surveyed my students in order to determine how
they felt about the method of examination; I researched exam scripts from around the nation; I
gradually implemented new questions in pop quizzes throughout the term; and I wrote a final
exam script that sought to address my principle learning outcomes. Here is one example from
the final exam, which examined my students’ comprehension of a key text (Primo Levi’s
Survival in Auschwitz) and the underlying connection with the thoughts of another figure
discussed in class, thus requiring students to consider the source in a broader context:
69. Levi’s statement, that “Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one
needs to suffer hunger and cold,” relates to the ideas of what Western thinker?
A) Pavlov
B) Einstein
C) Gandhi
D) Fanon
This question, along with other short-answer questions, seemed to assess the depth and breadth
of my students’ understanding of a key text from the course. How did my students respond to
these “new” questions? On average, their exam score fell by approximately twenty percent, and
my students the following term did not fare much better. How could this have happened? Did
my students really fail to achieve their learning outcomes? What was their problem?
The epiphany: ‘uncoverage’
Last spring, in my darkest hour of despair, I experienced a revelation in the form of an article
that I encountered while preparing for a seminar on SoTL approaches within each Teaching
Scholar’s discipline. As a historian, I looked to the American Historical Association, and
discovered an article by Lendol Calder in the AHA’s professional magazine Perspectives. The
article, “Looking for Learning in the History Survey,” introduced me to the concept of
“uncoverage,” and set me on a new path to understanding my problem. As a Teaching Scholar, I
learned quickly that I needed thick skin to read SoTL literature, but Lendol Calder’s comments
regarding “coverage” and “uncoverage” cut straight to the heart of my inability to assess my
students learning outcomes:
Courses vary from teacher to teacher, but the dominant pedagogical model is “coverage,”
a metaphor suggesting professors in biplanes broadcasting pages of knowledge over acres
and acres of students. But when history is covered, something important gets covered up.
“What is history?” I ask on the first day of class. “History is the story of the past,” writes
a typical student. “Historians gather the facts and ideas that were going on during
important periods of our past and write it down so the future generations can learn from
it.” The naïveté of this response is dismaying—The past has only one story? Historical
inquiry is just gathering the facts and writing them down?—but students who think this
way have drawn a plausible deduction from the way they were taught history. “Covering”
historical knowledge covers up the epistemological linchpins of our discipline. Lectures
can be brilliant and textbooks loaded with features, but they serve novices poorly when
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Foundations of Western Culture II
students are led to believe that history is no different from biology, except for the facts
one is asked to read and remember.ii
As I read this paragraph, over-and-over, I recognized that my students’ apparent failure was
neither the result of their ignorance nor my ineptitude as an exam-writer. Instead, despite my
best effort to “uncover” meaning in primary sources (e.g. Primo Levi), the design of the course
itself had unintentionally presented my students a false impression of history as a linear sequence
of 500 years of facts. This was not my intended learning outcome, but my syllabus practically
predetermined this negative outcome. Here is a list of lectures that I delivered to my students in
Fall 2005 and Spring 2006:
Stories of the West
The West & the East
Machiavelli & the Renaissance State
Renaissance Humanism
Reformations
Religious Conflict & the Great Witch Hunt
Absolutism & the Architecture of Power
Challenges to Absolutism
New Science
Enlightenment
La Révolution
The Napoleon Complex
Commercialization & Industrialization
Socialism & the Social Question
The Revolutions of 1848
Nations & Nationalism
Imperialism
A Crisis of Bourgeois Society
The Great War, 1914-1918: causes
The Great War, 1914-1918: consequences
Modernism and Fascism
World War II
The Holocaust & Modern Memory
The Cold War and De-colonization
The 1960s
Collapse of the Soviet Union
Post Cold-War Europe
The West Today
My students tended to enjoy the lectures, but my determined effort to “cover” 500 years of
history in 28 lectures must have given the impression that “history is no different from biology,
except for the facts one is asked to read and remember.” Thus, although my exam questions
required my students to probe beyond/around/under the FACTS, this assessment did not
correspond to their method of learning history throughout the semester. In short, the design of
the course, along with my need to “cover” history, eclipsed the more important textual analyses
that we accomplished throughout the semester.
Project Narrative
Foundations of Western Culture II
Backward Design
I surveyed the SoTL literature on “uncoverage,” beginning with the work of Grant Wiggins and
Jay McTighe,iii and realized that I needed to overhaul my current course design in order to bridge
the gap between assessment and learning outcomes. I set out to design my course backward:
first identifying my principle learning outcomes and then constructing a syllabus to facilitate
these outcomes.
Basically, the model of “uncoverage” required a syllabus that would allow students to discover
meaning for themselves, and thus achieve my original learning outcome: enhancing my students’
critical reading and writing skills through close textual analysis. I needed to create a syllabus
that would reveal the existence of multiple pasts, and allow them to “uncover” their own
“foundations” of western culture.
Step One: Reading List
The textbook was the first hurdle that I faced in moving from a model of “coverage” to
“uncoverage.” I spent countless hours last year trying to find the “best” textbook, but even the
“best” textbook presented history as an array of FACTS to be memorized. As a rookie professor,
the textbook was a comfortable crutch, intended to fill in any gaps that I didn’t “cover” in class,
and it was a scary prospect to drop the textbook from my reading list. However, despite these
hesitations, I knew that my students could not achieve the learning outcomes of the course by
reading a textbook, and thus I have removed the textbook from my reading list this Fall. In its
place, I have added Mary Lynn Rampola’s A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, which will
provide my students with the tools necessary to understand the past and convey their thoughts in
writing.
Eliminating the textbook brought into sharp relief the timeless balance between breadth of
understanding and depth of understanding. Textbooks certainly provide breadth, and last year
the textbook complimented the depth of understanding provided by five short books written in
each century. I loved teaching these books, but eliminating the textbook created a situation
where the scale was tipped too far in the direction of depth of understanding. In order to relocate
the balance between depth and breadth, I decided to expand the number of authors discussed in
the course from five to fifty, and have my students read short selections from each author rather
than an entire text.
Step 2: Semester Schedule
The schedule of lectures was the next obstacle to overcome in the backward design of my new
course. Across the nation, different professors have experimented with various models of
teaching this class, but I knew that I must retain an essential chronology in order to fulfill the
university expectations of this course. However, rather than scheduling my lectures like chapters
in a textbook, beginning in 1500 and ending in 2006, I decided to arrange my lectures
thematically. The lectures are arranged according to five units: power; money; sex; race;
faith/reason. I will devote three weeks to each theme, and each theme will present information
chronologically from 1500 to 2006. Thus, for example, students will learn about the French
Revolution at five points during the semester, and each time they will focus upon the event from
a different perspective (money, sex, etc.).
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Foundations of Western Culture II
Step 3: Weekly Schedule
Within each week, students will “uncover” the past, while also situating their knowledge within a
framework of information provided by traditional lectures. The class meets three times a week.
Each Monday we will focus exclusively upon the readings, and draw conclusions based upon
close textual analysis. Then, on Wednesday and Friday, I will deliver lectures that use these
readings as a platform to explore other various topics. I will demonstrate how one source can be
read in many different ways, as they hopefully will have already discovered, while also
attempting to synthesize different points of view within a flexible narrative.
Step 4: Assessment
This final step brings my project full-circle. The new course design should complement the
enhanced multiple-choice exam that I created last year, and students will take a version of the
multiple-choice exam. However, the mode of discourse for all historians is writing, and my
student-historians will demonstrate their ability to “uncover” the past by completing several
writing exercises throughout the term. In the first week of class, I will divide the class into small
groups and ask each group to choose a current event that interests them. Then at the end of each
unit, each student will submit a two page essay, answering a broad-based question, such as:
“Since the year 1500, what authors discussed in this class shed the most light upon your chosen
current event? Please include one author from each unit to date.” Students will have a relatively
easy time choosing one author out of fifteen for the first essay, but by the final essay students
will have to act as historians by choosing what authors to include and what authors to exclude.
Or, in the words of Wiggins and McTighe, “students have to do the subject, not just learn its
results.”iv Students will collaborate within small groups by debating the various qualities of each
author in relation to their group’s current event, and they will present their opinions before the
entire class in short presentations throughout the semester.
Conclusion?
I have tried to lay the groundwork for “uncoverage” rather than “coverage,” but questions linger
concerning my balance between breadth and depth. I am excited to implement these changes in
the classroom, and look forward to interpreting the results in December.
i
Jason Nice, “Syllabus,” Foundations of Western Culture II (Spring 2006).
Lendol Calder, “Looking for Learning in the History Survey,” Perspectives (March 2002).
iii
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design (Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998)
iv
Ibid., p. 99.
ii