Major Comparison – the Instructions

What Is a Comparison and What Citation Is Required? – Same Except for the Tip on Points

Reminder about Evidence and Citation and Its Use in Your Comparison

What Do You Prepare and Submit to Turnitin in Blackboard? – Same

Reminder about Evidence and Citation and Its Use in Both Parts of Your Comparison

Where Can You See the Rubric for Grading Your Comparison? - Same

What Are Your Possible Topics to Compare? - New

Reminder about the Requirements with Each of These Topics– New

What Is the Folder of Primaries For and How Do You Cite Primaries? - Same

How Many Primaries and Where Are They Located? – Two (2) Required Primaries

Where Can You Find the File You Download to Use in Writing and Later Upload to Turnitin? - Same

Where Can You Find the Instructions for Using Turnitin in Blackboard and the Turnitin Assignment Itself? – Same

Background about the Texas Standard for Personal Responsibility and Your Assignment - Same

 

Reminders:

-       The Content link, including the exact pages to read for each Comparison Topic, is below this link.

-       Because some of you may need all instructions and some may only need instructions that are different from the prior comparison, each heading ends with the word:
- Same if has the same information as in prior Comparison
- New if it is new information or is information specific to this Comparison

 

What Is a Comparison and What Citation Is Required?Same Except for the Tip on Points

Sometimes it is clearest start with what a comparison is not. A comparison in this class is:

·         Not a paraphrase of each sentence of a page of the required readings and not even a summary of that page

·         Not a formal English paper with specific requirements for number of quotations and your personal interpretation of those quotations

·         Not a comparison of the sets of pages of the required readings

 

This is a history class and the goal to help you learn history. One of the hardest things for students to understand about history is that it what was true at the beginning of a time period can be amazingly different at the end of it—sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. History changes! If it didn’t, humans could never have a consequence on the present and future. What makes history change is something worth noticing if you want to survive your present and, perhaps what is more important, if you want to try to maintain what is good in your present.

 

What is a comparison in this class? It is:

1.     Focusing on one of the listed possible Comparison Topics so you can observe how history changed over the time period on a specific issue or a specific group of people

2.     Using the exact pages of the required readings from our textbook and—with some comparisons—from primaries provided in the course

3.     Reading those exact pages FOR evidence (As the Good Habits for Evidence link shows, that means such things as no assumptions, no misreading, no embellishing, and no cherry-picking of atypical facts.)

4.     Examining the evidence so you figure out how history changed

5.     Deciding from that evidence what two or three things you would teach others if you were trying to help them understand how history changed on this issue or for this group in this time

6.     Writing WITH evidence one (1) page and using endnotes to cite following a very simple version of the Chicago Manual of Style, the standard used for the discipline of history. Disciplines vary, but history requires citations for both:

·         A quotation

·         A fact - You may not make statements of fact without a citation to a specific page from the required pages. (Don’t assume your version of common knowledge matches the textbook.)


In this course, when using a quotation or a fact, your endnote state a specific page from the required textbook (or primaries). For example, if you cite page 42 from our textbook for a fact, your endnote is simple: Ayers, p. 42.

 

Reminder about Evidence and Citation and Its Use in Your Comparison

In the Good Habits for Evidence link, you can find out how to reduce the number of those endnotes (Habit 3) while still clearly showing your evidence. The required citation method is the Chicago Manual of Style, the standard used for disciplines such as history. For how to cite using a simple version of the Chicago Manual of Style, use the example from the A paper provided here and from several locations within the Good Habits for Evidence, including its checklist. The Good Habits for Evidence checklist also provides a brief description of how to do an endnote with Microsoft Word.

 

Tip:  If you are concerned about writing a comparison, consider this approach with this 60-point assignment:

·         Write two summaries that are factually accurate. The “C” column of the Good Habits for Evidence rubric shows this qualifies for a C (70%).

·         Be sure you follow all of the 5 Good Habits for Evidence (no marks in the “D” and “F” columns of the rubric). This qualifies for 30 points on this Comparison.

 

42 For writing 2 factually accurate summaries – 60 points X .7 (C) = 42 if the lowest C and 47.9 if the highest

30 For following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence

72

 

What Do You Prepare and Submit to Turnitin in Blackboard? – Same

The files differ for the Comparisons. For this Comparison, you must use the file provided in this folder as a template for what must be in your file from the heading area to the font and including any additional requirements (such as the 2nd part of this Comparison).

 

You do not submit a 5 Ws chart for this Comparison. You may want to do it for yourself by following the method and looking at the example of a 5Ws chart provided with the Introductory Comparison.

 

For the Major Comparison, you prepare in the provided two parts:

·         The 1st part is your 1-page comparison on the comparison topic you chose.

·         The 2nd part is your under ˝-page examination of how the history you covered in the comparison reveals how “to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision making,” a phrase from the Texas Standard for Personal Responsibility.
Tip: This may seem difficult unless you ask yourself what made history change from those two broad time periods and how much did individuals’ actions have to do with those changes. Sometimes things work well and sometimes they don’t and frequently human action or inaction makes that difference.

Reminder about Evidence and Citation and Its Use in Both Parts of Your Comparison

The required citation method is the Chicago Manual of Style, the standard used for disciplines such as history. For more about these requirements, see above.

 

In this Comparison you use citation in both the 1st part and the 2nd part of your Comparison

Where Can You See the Rubric for Grading Your Comparison? - Same

You can find the rubric and how it is used for grading in the Good Habits for Evidence or in this direct link to the explanation of the rubric.

What Are Your Possible Topics to Compare? - New

Reminder about the Requirements with Each of These Topics– New

 

You do 1 of the 2 choices exactly as written. In each these 2 choices for Comparison Topics, make sure you meet the listed requirements above.

 

  1. Compare these three periods on one or two issues of interest to you:

Tips about Content:

·         Make sure you remember that what happened after 1901 was new for labor. See the Reminder about Backgrounds from Unit 1.

·         The word laborer in this question refers to people who work for wages from an employer—in other words, not farmers or tenant farmers or sharecroppers.

·         Congress also passed laws to protect business and farmers throughout this time, but do not cover those.

 

If you believe there is enough information to cover an equivalent Comparison Topic to the one above about business or farmers, email me your planned pages and primaries. Be sure to get my OK before starting to write and to give me enough time—36 hours—to reply before you start to write. I’ll only say No if I think you don’t have enough information available.

Aid to Help You Copy the Exact Comparison Topic in the File: When you copy the exact Comparison Topic into the file for the Major Comparison, you can copy this version without bullets:

 

Compare these three periods on one or two issues of interest to you: consumerism in the 1900s to 1920, consumerism just before the Great Depression, and the laws that Congress created to protect laborers’ hours and wages in the New Deal. Particularly in the Great Depression, what did laborers themselves do to solve the problems they faced?

 

  1. Compare three periods on one or two issues of interest to you: African Americans from about 1887 to 1901, from 1901 to about 1933, and in the New Deal. In these periods, focus on what African Americans themselves did to solve the problems they faced.

Tip: You may cover African Americans in the South from 1890 to 1901 and then use information from North or South in the two later periods.

What Is the Folder of Primaries For and How Do You Cite Primaries? - Same

The folder of primaries lets you read the words of people living during the era you are examining

 

If you use a primary, you can cite by using the last words of the title of the link. For example, if you used the first page of this link:

1895: B.T. Washington  (1895: Washington), then your citation is

1895: Washington, p. 1

 

If there is no page number in the document or no section number in the document, you can click on File and the Print Preview to get an estimate of the page that you need to cite.

 

If there is no page number in the document or no section number in the document, you can click on File and the Print Preview to get an estimate of the page you want to cite.

How Many Primaries and Where Are They Located? – Two (2) Required Primaries

You use a minimum of 2 primaries. If applicable to the issues you are interested, you may use the Constitution. The other primaries for the 2 possible Comparison Topics are in two separate folders:

·         Other Primary Sources for Comparison Topic 1

·         Other Primary Sources for Comparison Topic 2

Where Can You Find the File You Download to Use in Writing and Later Upload to Turnitin? - Same

In this folder, the last item is the file you download so you know such things as the margins, font, and heading for your comparison, and the parts required for this comparison.

Where Can You Find the Instructions for Using Turnitin in Blackboard and the Turnitin Assignment Itself? – Same

As shown in the Course Schedule, you use a separate folder for:

·         Planning a Comparison, such as Comparison: Planning Your Introductory Comparison

·         Submitting a Comparison, such as Comparison: Beginning to Submit Your Introductory Comparison
Tips about submitting:
- The Course Schedule tells you the day that Turnitin opens (at 12:00 am) and the day it closes (at 11:59 pm).
- You can—and should—submit your initial drafts to Turnitin assignment when it opens so you get feedback.
- Submit your final submission a minimum of one hour before Turnitin closes.

 

The Submitting folder includes Turnitin’s instructions for uploading your file. You can:

1.     Submit your Comparison early to Turnitin so you can have Turnitin’s feedback:

·         on language use

·         on originality (plagiarism or “half-copy” plagiarism if you have not used quotation marks correctly with another’s words)

2.     Correct your work before the final submission date

 

In general, the Turnitin assignment for one Comparison closes and on the next day the folders for the next Comparison open. Although the Submitting folder opens, its Turnitin assignment does not open until the date in the Course Schedule.

Background about the Texas Standard for Personal Responsibility and Your Assignment - Same

The Texas Standard for Personal Responsibility asks you—to quote the Texas standard—“to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision making.” I am not just using the standard because it's a standard (although that is an honorable reason), but because it is my experience with history.

 

History teaches the consequences of actions (and inaction). It teaches how things work. If we read reliable sources and we read to figure out what the sources actually say, then we will know much more about how things work in the world and be better to protect ourselves, our families and our nation and to preserve those that are essential to the general welfare of all of us.

 

We don't have to live through every vile event in the world to learn how to try to protect our families from vile events. We can examine with care what happened to others and what others caused and see what makes (or didn't make) an ethical decision (or a vile series of events).

 

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2015

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2015

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/