A few minutes ago, I finished preparing the midterm for my undergraduate history of education class, and I am looking forward to reading student responses.<\/p>\n
For this semester, I decided to write a midterm that was entirely focused on historical documents in the form of primary-source identification items. The task for each item requires that students identify the item, place it in time (reasonably close), provide a little bit of close reading, and then explain at least two dimensions of broader historical significance. At the beginning of the semester, I was hoping that having this structure would encourage students to focus on the primary sources, and I think it is working reasonably well. But we will all see for certain after class tomorrow. <\/p>\n
I am also shoving the midterm as close to the beginning of the semester as I can (this is our sixth week), so students have at least two key grades before the drop deadline. <\/p>\n
I think next week I will ask students what they’ve thought of the pace thus far in the semester. Because of a number of events this month, my sense of time is all messed up, and I have no solid feel for student perceptions. My rational guess based on prior experience is that students might feel a little rushed now but might appreciate the midterm timing later in October, as other assignments begin to pile up. But that’s why I need to ask; it’s a guess and not firm knowledge. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few minutes ago, I finished preparing the midterm for my undergraduate history of education class, and I am looking forward to reading student responses. For this semester, I decided to write a midterm that was entirely focused on historical documents in the form of primary-source identification items. The task for each item requires that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-rQ","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}