Recently, while reviewing books for use in our world history series, one of my colleagues asked the members of the department how we use the textbook in our classes. It is a good question that has already elicited some interesting responses.

For me, the textbook advances the course objective of demonstrating a clear factual and conceptual understanding of the historical period. By reading, students do get the framework of history that an introductory course must provide. I would, therefore, assign the chapters and give quizzes over them. However, I believe it is fair to say that I have not generally used the textbook adequately.

Assessing the textbook typically meant providing true/false, multiple choice, and other types of questions that could be easily tested in a BlackBoard quiz. Primarily, I wanted to ensure that students actually read the book; not that they were engaged with it.

This semester, discussions concerning whether or not instructors should abandon textbooks and the use of Wikipedia caused me to re-evaluate the role the textbook plays in my classroom. I also discussed appropriate assessments with my students.

Then, while writing the midterm exam I had one of those mental breakthroughs when I wrote a question asking “In which way does this 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company exemplify cultural imperialism?” Unlike two other questions that also required students to analyze images, the answer to this question could not be found in the textbook. Instead, students had to be engaged with the material and apply what they were learning.

After constructing the midterm, I began to think of other ways to better engage students with the textbook. One idea is to modify an assignment I use to teach basic research techniques. Currently, I show a film and ask students to come up with a list of questions about it. We then break into teams to find answers to some of the student generated questions.

Instead of using a film for this purpose, I could assign teams to teach sections of the textbook. The job of the team would be to find quality Internet sites, peer reviewed articles, books, and primary source materials to dig deeper into some aspect of concepts covered in the textbook.

Another possibility occurred to me this morning as I was reading “1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus,” which appears as Chapter 2 in James E. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. I could ask students to analyze various sections of the textbook to determine what has been left out or what ideology is being promoted.

Requiring students to read the textbook in order to get an historical framework is a fine activity because it allowed me to concentrate classroom time on active learning activities that focus on the development of critical thinking skills. While such an approach represented my best work in January 2007, my dedication to continuous improvement means that it is time to better incorporate the textbook into my classroom.

When Fall semester begins next August, the role of the textbook will be more prominent to better support my students’ ability to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to be good historians.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD