COURSE COMPACT

As members of this course, we agree to constitute ourselves as a learning community devoted to improving, for each and for all, the qualities of historical and critical thinking needed to produce, individually and collectively, thoughtful and well-informed, historical investigations and present them succinctly and effectively in oral and written forms. To that end we embrace the principles and goals of Participation and Collaboration as set forth below.

· Everyone will attend all classes, team meetings, and required films and will arrive on time. In the event that attendance is prevented by illness or emergency, the person in question will do her best to give advance notice to the instructor or to her team members, depending upon the situation.

· Everyone will do their best to do the assigned reading before coming to class.

· Everyone will participate in each class and show respect and encouragement for the participation of others. Participation may take a variety of forms but successful contributions to class and small group discussions include:

a) listening attentively;

b) raising a question about the topic or issues at hand [this can often clarify a murky point or a misunderstanding];

c) summarizing the ideas of others to confirm understanding;

d) providing reasoning or evidence to support an idea mentioned by you or someone else;

e) suggesting connections between several contributions or previous class or group discussions.

· Everyone agrees to collaborate in several ways:

a) As a member of a Team, to share the responsibility and work involved in producing several team presentations in class. In our work together, we agree to rotate through various roles, including convener, reporter, elaborator, and summarizer[1].

b) As a member of the course, everyone agrees to cooperate with the Instructor, and the Speaking Mentor for the purpose of ironing-out problems and facilitating the intellectual and collective progress of the group

c) If interpersonal problems arise, everyone agrees to work to resolve them in a fair and open manner so that cooperation is quickly re-established.

· Everyone will strive to achieve an improved understanding of history as a method of inquiry, analysis, and interpretation, key aspects of which include an appreciation of historical change and continuity, the differences in outlook and assumptions held by people in the past, and the insights to be gained by trying to understand the way the world looked to the people we’re studying. In short, change, continuity, and empathetic understanding—three fundamental elements of historical thinking that your instructor expects you to grasp and demonstrate.

· More broadly, everyone will work to improve our writing, our oral communication, the precision and clarity of our language, and the skills of reading and research, which include:

a) Using pre-reading techniques of skimming and scanning to locate and understand main points and main arguments, together with examples of supporting evidence before returning to read the entire piece.

b) Defining the topic or problem to investigate;

c) Identifying and collection pertinent information;

d) Breaking down the information into constituent parts and sorting out the relevant from the less relevant;

e) Pulling together the parts that reveal common features or a pattern so as to get the Big Picture;

f) Distilling from a pile of information a meaningful summary of the essentials;

g) Effectively and succinctly communicating the findings in 3-4 minute oral presentations and written work for our web site.

· Everyone will evaluated as follows for the final course grade:

70 percent for individual performance

20 percent for the team’s performance

10 percent for self and peer evaluation (peer evaluations will be done by one’s fellow team members)

Further, we agree to abide by the following ground rules to maximize our collaborative learning:

1. Without exception, all will be treated with courtesy and respect.

2. We shall try to stay focused on one topic before moving on to another.

3. We shall not “hog the microphone” or interrupt each other, except to ask for clarification.

4. We shall express respect and encouragement by listening attentively, building on others’ ideas, appreciating differences in our thinking, and explaining how our ideas—and not our personalities—conflict and differ.

5. We shall not distract others by making gestures or carrying on unrelated side conversations.

6. We shall try to make our interpretations of course materials and our personal judgments clear, specific, and supported with evidence and sound reasoning.

7. We shall do our best to be constructive; if we dislike the readings, we shall not shoot the instructor but explain our reservations or difficulties.

Signed________________________________________________