Sample Assessments
Podcasts
As a final assessment, students in both my lower- and upper-division courses have created their own historical "podcasts." Students produced audio files which demonstrated their skills in research, organization, and communication in a creative format.
United States History
In my US History survey courses, I assigned episodes of Nate DiMeo's historical podcast, The Memory Palace throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, students created their own narrative podcasts based on a person, event, or ideology of their choice from the time period covered in the class.
One student from my US History survey course at San Diego Mesa College created a historical narrative based on two extreme weather events which occurred during the War of 1812.
A student from my US History course at San Diego Miramar College conducted primary source research and an oral history of his father to create a narrative about conscription of non-citizens in the Vietnam War.
Another Miramar student in my US History course used Fae Myenne Ng’s account of her father’s participation in the INS Chinese Confession Program and other primary source research to create this narrative.
Native American History
In my upper-division course on Native American History at UC San Diego, students worked in pairs to discuss, critique, and analyze one of three digital humanities resources. They chose from the Minnesota Historical Society's digital exhibit on the US-Dakota War of 1862; the Newberry Library's virtual exhibition, "Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country: 200 Years of American History;" and the Plains Indian Ledger Art digital database.
Two students discussed the way the US-Dakota War of 1862 is remembered by both Dakota and white Minnesotans. They chose to analyze the Minnesota Historical Society's online exhibit on the war and Waziyatawin's "Minnesota's Sesquicentennials and Dakota People: Remembering and Oppression and Invoking Resistance," in Re-Collecting Black Hawk: Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest, ed. Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015): 237-247.
I-Search Paper
To introduce students to primary source research, I have assigned brief "I-Search Papers" in my US History survey courses. Students developed a research question of their choice, and found two primary sources to help answer their question. In their papers, students wrote about why they were interested in the particular topic, how they found their sources, and then analyzed the sources in order to answer their research questions.
Because I-Search papers are written in the first person, the assignment provided me with a window into students' thoughts (and frustrations) about the research process itself. As an instructor, I have noticed how students, especially those unfamiliar with history writing, often consult encyclopedia-type sources as support for thesis-based essays. In this assignment, I explicitly told students to include in the narrative of their search if they had consulted Wikipedia, Britannica, History.com, or another type of secondary resource. However, because students were looking for primary sources, they could not stop their research at that point.
As a whole, students were quite successful in their pursuit of primary resources. For example, a student who was a veteran wanted to learn more about the psychological effects of war on Civil War soldiers and found two sets of letters written by young Union soldiers. Another student utilized two pamphlets published by Angelina Grimke to assess how the abolitionist movement reached American women.
The grid for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women group’s social media component of their History and Policy Project, UC San Diego, Spring 2019.
History and Policy Project
One of my goals as an instructor is to get students to think deeply about how history has impacted contemporary American life and society. In my Spring 2019 Native American History course, students worked in groups on a History and Policy Project, based on the National History Center’s History and Policy Education Program. Students chose from a list of contemporary issues facing Native people, such as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Native students in higher education, economic development, environmental activism and land rights, and cultural appropriation. After conducting research through an I-Search Paper, students put together presentations which put their contemporary issue in historical context.
Additionally, they developed sample social media campaigns to raise awareness about their particular research topic. Examples of the social media campaigns for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and economic development on reservations are linked here.