How to Do the 3 Posts in Discussion Topic 1-2: Introduction to Primaries, Evidence, and Concepts for History

Caution: Notice That This Work Is Worth 80 Regular Points and 40 Extra Credit Points. 1

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Content and Your Following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence. 1

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Review of the Papers of 2 Other Students. 1

Reminder of the Extra Credit—40 Points—If You Follow All 5 Good Habits for Evidence with this First Assignment. 1

What Do You Read with Care Before You Write? And What Is a Powerful Tip?. 1

What Do You Do for This Topic? – The 3 Posts That Are Worth a Total of 80 Points. 1

Requirements for Teaching the Best Truth You Can Understand and Using Sources That Help You Catch On. 1

Requirements for Reading, Length, and Language in Your Original Posting (the Posting discussed in # 1). 1

Corrected and Easier Way Added - Requirements for Citation for Your Original Posting (the Posting discussed in # 1). 1

If You Want to Know Why We Use These Shortened Citations. 1

Brain Trick for Quoting and Avoiding Quotation Humiliation. 1

 

Caution: Notice That This Work Is Worth 80 Regular Points and 40 Extra Credit Points

I’ve added this Caution because I had a student who said he “wished he had known about the points.” The instructions did say the points and your Plan that you submit with Getting Started says the points, but my guess is he just assumed and I don’t want that to happen to others.

For that many points, this is not an opinion paper or about your feelings. It is to help you learn history and to meet the course objectives for a history course, but the skills you use to do it are like the skills you would use for a job. Practice these skills and they will protect you and work for you in many situations.

Also don’t misinterpret because this is done with the Discussion tool and therefore you just state opinions. With government classes that I know about, the Discussion tool is used for postings that must have citations and verifiable evidence. We use Blackboard‘s Discussion tool for reasons similar to government classes, but we are also using it because it lets students do something equivalent to a group peer review for accuracy of content and of evidence.

Do these things to help you make all 120 points:

1.       Notice the due dates in the Course Schedule for the paper you post and then the reviews you do of the historical content of 2 other students’ papers.

2.       Look below at the instructions and the rubric for your paper and the rubric for your reviews.

3.       Participate in the Collaboration for Topic 1-1. Earn some points and share some of the work in finding the meaning of Concepts needed to understand the Primary. (FYI: It is temporarily a partial list of words for these primaries. The full list for Unit 1 will come after you post on all the concepts you need for the primary.)

4.       Read the primaries and the textbooks and to do the Tip about putting things in order so you understand who did what to whom.

5.       If you don’t know what to do or if you have any questions

·         Either talk to me if you think it is a private issue

·         Or post in Course Questions if you think many would have the question

I’m glad to help each of you.

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Content and Your Following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence

Click here for more on the rubric and how to use it as a grader or as someone graded. You can also look at the link immediately under Evidence Quiz 1 in Evidence Requirements.

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Review of the Papers of 2 Other Students

Click here for the rubric used to measure the 2 reviews.

You review 2 (and only 2) papers posted by other students on:

·         Content (historical content as measured by what is supported by a specific page in our textbook or in resources provided by the instructor)

·         Evidence (use of evidence as measured by the 5 Good Habits for Evidence)

Caution: This rubric also says that you need to participate from the beginning. If your 1st post is in the last two days, your points will be lower.

Reminder of the Extra Credit—40 Points—If You Follow All 5 Good Habits for Evidence with this First Assignment

If you follow all of the 5 Good Habits for Evidence with this 1st assignment, you get 40 extra credit points. Why this extra credit? The sooner you figure out that a history class is about verifiable evidence from a reliable source (and not your—or my—opinions), the sooner you will be successful.

What Do You Read with Care Before You Write? And What Is a Powerful Tip?

You read not only the primaries, but you also read with care pages 581 and 584 and look at the top of 585 of the Essentials textbook.

Powerful Tip: to understand what happened, use both the primaries and the textbook pages to place in order who did what to whom.

What Do You Do for This Topic? – The 3 Posts That Are Worth a Total of 80 Points

You post 3 times:

1.       You post a thread and the subject line shows what you write about:
Subject line: Your Name – Answering 4 Key Questions
Those 4 questions are
1) What is Governor Altgeld’s responsibility and his judgement on the situation?
2) What is the situation of the workers and people in Pullman, Illinois?
3) What does Pullman argue?
4) How does it all turn out? (Not covered in the letters but in the textbook.)
Requirements: There are specific requirements in the following headings.
Point value:
@ 20 points for content and @ 20 points for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence.
What Determines These Points? This rubric. I will email my graded rubric to you for your original post and then I will enter that grade at My Grades after you reply to my graded rubric.

2.       You read the others’ posts and chose the 1st post you want to review for content and for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence. 
The subject line shows what your job is and how you are to treat each other in this public place of discussion:
Subject line: Your Name – My Feedback to Help Your Content and Evidence

Requirements: 

a)      Click Reply with a quote. Insert your feedback at the spot where you want to give feedback. Use a blank line and then an opening square bracket—the [—and then your feedback and then a closing square bracket—the ]—and then another blank line.

Example: If your colleague in the class cited page 580 for a statement, but you found that on 584, you could write just below the citation for page 580
[Page should be 584.]

Example: If you think your colleague wrote something incorrectly, you must provide evidence that anyone can check by citing from a specific page of a primary or the textbook.

[Re your statement that Debs was an anarchist, page 585 says he became a socialist.]

b)      Review thoroughly but choose quickly because the maximum number of countable replies to one person’s post is 3.

Point value: for each of the 2 reviews @ 10 points for your knowledge of content and @ 10 points for your observing whether the other person correctly followed all 5 Good Habits for Evidence.
What Determines These Points? This rubric.  I will enter the reviews in this overall Blackboard Discussion rubric on your 2 replies. For each review, you examine the historical content and the use of the 5 Good Habits for Evidence.
Tip: it helps a lot if you print the other student’s work and compare it side by side with the printed pages cited from the primaries and from the textbook. You will see problems that way.

 

3.       You read the others’ posts and chose the 2nd post you want to review for content and for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence.
See #2 for the same subject line, requirements, points, and grading.

 

Requirements for Teaching the Best Truth You Can Understand and Using Sources That Help You Catch On

Tips: Read the primaries aloud as though you were those people. Then think about how it would feel to say these things and to hear them. Don’t get suckered—notice the difference between Pullman and Altgeld about the rents and what the textbook says about them. Use a) the primary itself, b) the listed pages from Chapter 16 of the Essentials text that covers what actually turns out, and c) Collaboration postings of concepts that help you avoid fantasies and assumptions about words.

Requirements for Reading, Length, and Language in Your Original Posting (the Posting discussed in # 1)

Reading

In the primaries for Chapter 16, the statement from Pullman, the letter from the citizens of Pullman, and the letters written by Altgelt.

In the textbook, 581 and 584 and look at the top of 585

Length

330 words maximum – Less is better.

Format

Just do simple text. You can put a blank line between paragraphs.

Punctuation

Make sure it is accurate, especially if you are quoting something. Keep it simple by using this Brain Trick (goes to the bottom of this webpage).

General clarity

Read and plan carefully, being sure to record the exact page numbers as you work.

Type in a word processor and run spell and grammar checking.

Print it and proof it. (To proof = to compare side by side paper and source to be sure page numbers and facts and names and quotations and everything is correct.)

 

Corrected and Easier Way Added - Requirements for Citation for Your Original Posting (the Posting discussed in # 1)

Do not use lengthy citation statements within parentheses () as is done with MLA. You are trying to teach history accurately to someone like yourself. You are not collecting research and quoting from it. You all have the same sources and so you do not want to get a lot of words get between you and your fellow students. Do these things for this writing assignment:

What You Want to Cite

Example of How You Would Cite

If the fact is from George Pullman’s Response to Striking Workers

Corrected:

If your fact is from page 1 of Pullman’s 3-page response (received by Altgeld on 8/21/1894), then immediately after your fact you’d write: (Pullman, p. 1)

If the fact is from the collection of letters, it depends on the letter

Corrected:

If your fact is from THE STARVING CITIZENS OF PULLMAN to Governor Altgeld on page 1, then immediately after your fact you’d write:  (CITIZENS, p. 1)

If your fact is from page 1 of the letter from the governor on 8/19/1994 to Pullman, then immediately after your fact you’d write:  (Altgeld 1st letter, p. 1)

If your fact is from page1 of the letter from the governor on 8/21/1994 to Pullman before Pullman sends his response, then immediately after your fact you’d write:  (Altgeld 2nd letter, p. 1)

If your fact is from the governor on 8/21/1994 to Pullman after Pullman sends his response and you are using the 1st page, then immediately after your fact you’d write:  (Altgeld 3rd letter, p. 1)

 

Added: Easier way to cite these 4 letters in this 4-page file:

Use the same phrases above:

·         CITIZENS

·         Altgeld, 1st letter

·         Altgeld, 2nd  letter

·         Altgeld, 3rd letter

But use the page number of the primary PDF.

Example: If your fact is from the governor on 8/21/1994 to Pullman after Pullman sends his response and you are using the 1st page, then immediately after your fact you’d write:  (Altgeld 3rd letter, p. 3 of the PDF)

If the fact is from the textbook, the Essentials edition

If your fact is from page 581 of the textbook, then immediately after your fact you’d write: (Essentials, p. 581)

 

If You Want to Know Why We Use These Shortened Citations

The reasons are:

1.       All of your written assignments are brief. If you used traditional MLA citation which is written inline (within your lines of text), you would use up your word count much faster.

2.       History’s standard, the Chicago Manual of Style, provides rigorous citation, but not inline. Instead, it uses endnotes[i] or footnotes[1]–examples provided below—to provide citation.

In other words, citation is there but it is not in the way of communication of the history. The citation is not written within your lines of text because of how historians write about history.

·         They are helping people understand the past.

·         That is your job as well. Why? When you try to help someone understand history, you start to understand it yourself. If you want to understand something, try to teach it. (If you want to know more, click here for why trying to teach someone like yourself is the goal of writing.)

3.       In this class, you may place your citation in either endnotes or inline, but we make that citation as unobtrusive as possible.

 

Brain Trick for Quoting and Avoiding Quotation Humiliation

Click here for additional tips.

The rules for showing what you have taken out (…) of the author’s words or put in ([ ]) are complex and for most of us they are not worth learning.

 

This brain trick lets you be accurate but avoid learning those rules:

  1. Choose 3 to 6 words to quote and change nothing (not an ing or an ed, not a comma, nothing) between the first and the last word.

  2. Put abefore the first word and a after the last word.

  3. Place those words with the “ ”within your sentence.

 

  1. If something sounds awkward about your sentences, then change your own words—the only words you have a right to change.

 

  1. Look at all of the words in the source. Be sure the meaning of the source remains in your quotation.

 

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2016

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2016

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/

 

 



[1] This is an example of a footnote. It appears at the bottom of the page.



[i] This is an example of an endnote. It appears after the last word in the document.