I often do not expect students to learn the material I am teaching on any given day; not because of some fundamental fault with students but because doing so is sound pedagogy.

On the first day of one of my Spring semester classes, I taught:

• the issue of worldview as it relates to individuals and cultures
• the need to set events and artifacts in their socio-historical and socio-cultural contexts
• the requirement to recognize author bias; both in our own work and the work of others
• the definition of historical artifacts and that without artifacts there is no history
• the importance for close reading of text and strategies for facilitating close reading
• the N=1 problem when only a single source is used
• the rationale for citing access date for Internet citations
• the elements of basic communication theory and how they apply to historical analysis
• the need to know publication/creation date and provenience of artifacts
• the importance of using evidence carefully and checking the evidence of our sources
• the necessity of recognizing historical myths
• the value of making connections between historical periods
• the consequence of words, terms, and concepts changing over time

When teaching this material, my goal was to introduce important concepts that we will develop throughout the semester; not to have students actually learn it. Learning takes time and repeated application of key concepts.

If I were to have given a quiz on the second day of class, students might have been able to properly label the parts of the basic communication diagram I presented. Even if a student earned a 100% on such a quiz, memorization of a diagram does not equate to the ability to apply concepts of author, audience, and purpose to an historical artifact while also considering the issues of coding and decoding the message.

Because I take a seemingly casual approach to course structure, students do not always appreciate that there is a strong pedagogical framework on which the course is built. Nor does their previous training prepare them to make the types of connections that are so important in academic discourse. I am not being critical of students who “only” bring an introductory skill set to an introductory course. I know that I did not have the skill sets I am helping students develop when I entered my first college courses.

During the past year, I have been developing strategies to help students make the connections between day to day class activities and long term learning as well as to assist them in appreciating the types of groundwork we are laying for future learning.

Last semester, the course competencies became an explicit focus in my history courses. For one of the first assignments, I asked students to complete a course competencies worksheet on which they recorded how the homework allowed them to begin meeting those competencies. Throughout the semester, we returned again and again to the course competencies and, at the end of the semester, I asked students to submit a course competencies worksheet with their final reflections. This semester, I am requiring students to keep a running tally of how they are meeting course competencies—as well as core abilities—throughout the semester.

To further help students, I am being more explicit on identifying concepts as I introduce them. In the past, I would have known that I had introduced the concepts listed above, but I would not have spelled out the details to students. This semester, I have adopted a new strategy.

During the first day of class, I kept a running list of the historical concepts that had been introduced. At the end of class, I said, “Today we covered [read list].” I think students were impressed. I then included the list in the class notes I sent to students. This process gave students a better ability to see that we were not simply having a random discuss. Purposeful learning was taking place.

As I mentioned above, I taught basic communication theory on the first day of class. Even though I didn’t expect my students to learn the material on the day I presented it, the concept is one that I know. As our students change, we need to adapt how we present our message to them. In the not so distant past, there was no need to explicitly teach the groundwork as it was being laid. Today’s students benefit from such a teaching strategy.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD