Course Syllabus
Syllabus: Course Title
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Course Description
This course is a survey of European history from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (1517) to the present. Its goal is not only to familiarize you with a set of facts, but also to introduce you to the discipline of history: that is, the various ways historians think with facts. Our effort to accomplish this goal has three parts:
- Lectures that focus on specific stories, highlight key themes, and model the ways historians analyze evidence and events;
- Primary source documents; and
- Readings in the textbook that provide you with a solid grounding in the basic factual narrative.
If you follow the process week by week, watching or listening to the lectures, reviewing the textbook, taking the Content Quizzes, reading the primary source documents, taking the Document Quizzes, and so on, you’ll end the term with a solid command of both the facts of European history from 1517 to the present, and of the basic analytical techniques historians use.
- Course Name: HIST 202, Western Civilization II
- Department: History
- Current Semester and Year: Spring 2024
- Credit Hours: 3.0
- Course Prerequisites: none
- Course Meeting Time: xxxx
- Course Format: online, asynchronous
Instructor Information
Instructor: John Monroe
Email: jmonroe@iastate.edu
Phone: 515-294-6642
Office location: Ross 641
Student hours: MW 1:00-3:00, or by appointment
You can contact your instructor in the following ways: email, phone, in-person office visit.
General announcements will be posted via Canvas announcements. Properly configure your Notification Settings in Canvas to receive notifications.
Course Objectives (COs)
Upon completing this course, students will be able to do the following:
CO 1: Identify key historical events, cultural developments, and ideas in European history from the Protestant Reformation to the present.
CO 2: Identify plausible cause-and-effect connections among events in a chronological sequence.
CO 3: Differentiate political, cultural-intellectual, and socioeconomic processes of change over time.
CO 4: Analyze past events as interconnected products of those simultaneous processes of change.
CO 5: Interpret texts and other material from the past as historical evidence.
CO 6: Assess the persuasiveness of the evidence used to support historical arguments.
Course Materials
List any required and optional materials, such as books, instructional guides, websites, simulations, interactive games, mass media publications, peer reviewed journals.
Follow a specific reference style guide, such as APA, MLA or Chicago. At minimum, reference the author or owner name, date of publication, title, and the URL or source, such as publisher.
Required materials
- "Immediate Access" e-Textbook: Hunt, Lynn, et al., The Making of the West, Peoples and Cultures, Volume 2. (New York: Bedford-St. Martin's).
- Pdf scans of primary source documents for each week, available under the "Read and Outline" section of each module.
- Outlines for each lecture, available for download on the module page as pdfs.
- Video lectures, also available as podcasts.
- Powerpoint decks for each lecture.
Background on materials
Readings
The two types of texts in this course serve complementary functions. The Making of the West is an e-textbook written by a group of historians under the direction of the main author, Lynn Hunt. The purpose of the book is to give you a grounding in the basic facts and themes of European history from 1500 to the present. Since it is written by scholars drawing on evidence they and others have gathered in their research, it is what historians call a secondary source. The second, shorter readings are 2-4 page excerpts of various key texts – government documents, political speeches, works of philosophy, letters, newspaper articles, etc. – that were written during the period covered in the relevant chapter. Historians call materials of this type primary sources. They are what we use as evidence when determining what happened in the past and making arguments about why it happened.
Lectures and Lecture Outlines
Each module also includes recorded lectures: one introduction in module 0; two in modules 3 and 5; four in modules 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7. These lectures are available in two different forms: as video files that can be viewed on canvas, and as audio files downloadable as mp3s (the audio files just have a break in the middle, but are not divided into two separate files). You are free to pick whichever format works best for your learning style. In addition, for each lecture there is a two-page outline in pdf form, available under the "Read" section of the relevant module. These outlines are meant to serve you as an aid for notetaking and test review. For best results, print them out and look at them in hard copy as you watch the lecture video!
Learning Activities
Explain how the learning activities provide opportunities for practice, interaction and achievement of the listed learning objectives.
To successfully complete this course, you will do the following:
- Watch all the module's lecture videos, taking notes on the outlines as you do so.
- Read the assigned textbook chapters each week.
- Read the assigned primary source documents each week.
- Take the relevant reading quizzes after reading the primary source documents.
- Take the chronology and categorization quiz to test your understanding.
- Study for the module's content quizzes.
- Take the content quizzes to conclude your work on the module.
Assessment & Grading
Assessments
List all course assessments. Provide specific and descriptive criteria to be used for evaluating student work and explain their connection to the course grading policy.Explain what kind of feedback students can expect after each assessment.
Chronology and Categorization Quizzes – Each module will include one 20-point multi-attempt "Chronology and Categorization Quiz." These are assessments designed to help reinforce your learning. One of the most common pitfalls for students in a class like this is a phenomenon cognitive scientists call "the illusion of comprehension." We've all experienced it: that feeling you have, while listening to a confidently-delivered presentation, that you're following with no problem and have gotten it down cold on the first listen. Then you take the quiz and discover that you didn't actually absorb as much as you thought. Cognitive scientists have discovered that the simple experience of listening can cause us to be swept along, making us think we're following even as we're missing key points. There are some very effective ways to counteract this: the first is to take written notes while attending lecture or watching lectures on video; and the second, with video lectures, is to pause occasionally to review and make sure you fully understand what has just been said. I encourage you to do both of those things in this class. The Chronology and Categorization Quizzes give you an additional opportunity to slow yourself down and seriously test your comprehension before moving on to "higher stakes" assignments.
Weekly Content Quizzes – By midnight on Friday of each week, you will be expected to complete a timed, selected-response quiz on the material covered in that week’s lectures and textbook chapters. The quiz will involve a mix of conventional multiple-choice, multiple-answer multiple choice, true/false, matching, and ordering questions. These quizzes will not be cumulative: each quiz will focus entirely on the relevant week’s material. You are free to use any notes you like when you take these quizzes. I’d suggest having print-outs of the pdf outlines, ideally supplemented by notes you’ve taken on them while watching/listening to the lectures. It will also help to make a time-line of the material covered in the week’s lectures, so you can see how things fit together chronologically at a glance. Do note that the quizzes are timed: usually 30 minutes, 25 minutes for the shorter module 3 and 5 quizzes. That means you probably
won’t have time to look up the answer to every question “from scratch” as the clock is running. A more effective strategy would be to prepare a set of notes in advance, read them over carefully, and then start the clock to take the test.
Primary Source Quizzes – Each week, there will be one 20-point timed selected-response quiz assigned for each of the assigned primary source documents. These quizzes will also be due by midnight on Friday of each week. They are meant to build your skills as a “historical reader” – that is, as somebody who knows how to interpret a text as a product of the time, place, and other circumstances in which it was written (historians call this its “context”). To prepare for these quizzes, you will want to read the relevant document carefully in advance, ideally from a hard-copy printout that you can highlight or underline. Since the purpose of these reading quizzes is skill-building, I have designed them to give you two attempts. Whichever of the two scores is higher will be the one that goes toward your grade. My hope with this is that you’ll learn from the experience of seeing your wrong answers and having the opportunity to correct them.
Midterm Quizzes – At two key junctures in the course, week 3 and week 5, there will be timed cumulative midterm quizzes worth 50 points each. You will have 30 minutes to complete each of these quizzes, and they will also be due by Friday midnight on the week in which they are assigned. The purpose of these quizzes is to give you a chance to assemble the material covered over the previous weeks into a bigger picture. Each midterm will only cover what has happened since the previous one, so midterm 1 will cover weeks 1-3, and midterm 2 will cover weeks 4-5. The questions in these midterms will involve putting events in chronological sequence (ordering), connecting terms with definitions or ideas with names (matching), and assigning concepts, people, or events to proper categories (categorization). These tests are also open-note, so to prepare for them, I recommend putting together a cumulative timeline of events, which you can consult alongside your printouts of the lecture outlines and any other notes you might have taken. To help with the “timelining” process, I’ve put together two review sheets, one for the week 3 exam and one for the week 5 exam. These are available under the “read and outline” headings of their respective weeks. If you can define all the terms on those review sheets and understand how they relate to one another chronologically and in terms of cause-and-effect, you should be in a good position to do well on the midterms!
Final Exam – By midnight on Thursday of final exam week, you will be expected to take our final exam, a 120-point test covering the whole span of our course. It will include a mixture of questions like those in the Content Quizzes and those on the Cumulative Midterms – so there will be some specific multiple-choice material as well as ordering, matching, and categorization. Once again it will be open-note, so you are free to use whatever materials strike you as potentially most useful. You will have one hour and thirty minutes to complete the exam.
Grade Distribution
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You can accumulate points by participating in the following way:
| Participation area | Total Points |
|---|---|
| Chronology and Categorization Quizzes | 140 |
| Weekly Content Quizzes | 310 |
| Primary Source Quizzes | 280 |
| Cumulative Midterm Quizzes | 100 |
| Final Exam | 120 |
| Total Points Possible | 950 |
Grading Scheme
Grading scheme: The table below shows the Canvas default grading scheme. This is a Canvas sample grading schema, and not an institutional grading schema. Make sure the grading schema you describe in your syllabus matches your grading schema in the course-specific settings.
The following grading standards will be used in this class:
| Grade | Range |
|---|---|
| A | 93% to 100% |
| A- | 90% to < 93% |
| B+ | 87% to < 90% |
| B | 83% to < 87% |
| B- | 80% to < 83% |
| C+ | 77% to < 80% |
| C | 73% to < 77% |
| C- | 70% to < 73% |
| D+ | 67% to < 70% |
| D | 63% to < 67% |
| D- | 60% to < 63% |
| F | 0% to < 60% |
Course Policies
Below are sample policies. They may not fitting your course, so please change accordingly.
Weekly Due-Dates
I have structured the class with ongoing weekly due-dates in order to make sure everyone goes through the material at a sustainable pace. My goal is to create the conditions to help you do as well as you possibly can by keeping you from getting overwhelmed. That said, I understand that life is complicated, and that it could therefore be a burden to have a string of due-dates one after another during the week. Weekly Friday deadlines are my way to strike a compromise here, giving you some flexibility but also keeping things moving along. Therefore, insofar as you can, I’d suggest not allowing all your tests to pile up on Friday: try taking the Content Quiz first, maybe Wednesday or Thursday; then read through the week’s documents and take the Primary Source Quizzes, maybe Thursday or Friday; then (if assigned that week) take the Midterm Quiz on Friday.
Late Penalties and Make-up Options
If you end up missing a deadline for whatever reason, or know there is one coming up you’ll have to miss, contact me as soon as possible to schedule a make-up or give you an extension. The purpose of the deadlines is to keep you on track, but again I understand that life can get in the way sometimes.
Cheating and Plagiarism
Please review information under Academic Misconduct.
Student Responsibilities
Students will be expected to keep up with the course calendar, viewing or listening to each week’s lectures, doing each week’s primary source and textbook reading, and taking quizzes before the weekly deadline. Students will also be expected to prepare for each quiz, using their own notes, the course materials, and the study guides provided on Canvas.
How to Make the Most of this Class
Pace Yourself – This course moves fast. We will be covering 500 years of history in seven weeks! If you are going to absorb the material successfully enough to do well on the exams and meet the learning objectives, you need to allow it some time to sink in. If you pace yourself steadily, rather than attempting to cram everything at the last minute, you’ll find that this class becomes much more rewarding.
Study for the Exams – The exams are multiple-choice and open-note. That said, you will not want to come into a quiz without having thoroughly reviewed all the relevant course material beforehand! The time-windows are too short to allow you to look up the answer to every question, and therefore having a good grasp of the material being covered will help you as you work through the quiz questions.
Use the Study Guides – To help you review, I’ve created study guides for each Midterm Quiz. These take the form of lists of key terms – names of people, events, ideas, and socio-economic developments – extracted from the textbook and lectures. If you have a good understanding of what each of the terms on the sheet refers to and how the various terms connect with one another, you’ll be in a good position to do well on the exams. My goal, here, is to give you a framework to help distinguish the important facts from the less important ones – a skill that experienced students of history generally have, but that those exploring the discipline at the college level for the first time might not. The study guides are to help you master this ability.
Pay close attention to the primary source documents – While a good command of names and dates is important to any chronological understanding of the past, history is about much more than that: it is above all a discipline based on the interpretation of documentary evidence. Historians read texts not just for what they say on the surface, but also as products of particular moments in time. We always ask: who was writing? When? For what audience? Under what circumstances? For what purpose? Having the answers to those questions lets us understand texts in a new way. We can identify when someone is giving a biased account and the agenda that bias serves, for example, or what a text tells us about the assumptions people had about the world when the document was written. This sort of information is what gives historians the foundation for their understanding of processes of change over time. It is also the raw material that historians use to support their arguments. That’s why we read the primary source documents, and why I have created those document quizzes!
Visit Student Hours – I’ll be available in person on Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:00 to 3:00 -- or pretty much anytime by appointment -- to discuss the course material. If you have questions, or just want to shoot the breeze about what we’ve covered during the week, feel free to either just show up on Monday or contact me and arrange a time! Talking through things is one of the most effective ways to learn them, in my experience.
And, finally:
Enjoy the Stories! As I hope you’ll discover over during this semester, the tools historians use to understand processes of change over time are powerful. They give us a clearer sense of the present by allowing us to see exactly how we got here, and they even help us begin extrapolating what might happen in the future. Those big intellectual things aren’t all history has to offer, though. It is also jam packed with stories of people and events that, for me anyway, are plenty fascinating all on their own. In the lectures, one of my goals is to tell some of those stories in ways that show why I find history so darned interesting – and I hope by the end of the course, you’ll have begun to share some of my enthusiasm!
Required ISU Syllabus Statement
Free Expression
Iowa State University supports and upholds the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech and the principle of academic freedom in order to foster a learning environment where open inquiry and the vigorous debate of a diversity of ideas are encouraged. Students will not be penalized for the content or viewpoints of their speech as long as student expression in a class context is germane to the subject matter of the class and conveyed in an appropriate manner.
Recommended ISU Syllabus Statements
Academic Dishonesty
The class will follow Iowa State University’s policy on academic misconduct (5.1 in the Student Code of Conduct). Students are responsible for adhering to university policy and the expectations in the course syllabus and on coursework and exams, and for following directions given by faculty, instructors, and Testing Center regulations related to coursework, assessments, and exams. Anyone suspected of academic misconduct will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct in the Dean of Students Office. Information about academic integrity and the value of completing academic work honestly can be found in the Iowa State University Academic Integrity Tutorial.
Accessibility Statement
Iowa State University is committed to advancing equity, access, and inclusion for students with disabilities. Promoting these values entails providing reasonable accommodations where barriers exist to students’ full participation in higher education. Students in need of accommodations or who experience accessibility-related barriers to learning should work with Student Accessibility Services (SAS) to identify resources and support available to them. Staff at SAS collaborate with students and campus partners to coordinate accommodations and to further the academic excellence of students with disabilities. Information about SAS is available online at www.sas.dso.iastate.edu, by email at accessibility@iastate.edu, or by phone at 515-294-7220.
Discrimination and Harassment
Iowa State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Veteran. Inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies may be directed to Office of Equal Opportunity, 3410 Beardshear Hall, 515 Morrill Road, Ames, Iowa 50011, Tel. 515-294-7612, Hotline 515-294-1222, email eooffice@iastate.edu
Mental Health and Wellbeing Resources
Iowa State University is committed to proactively facilitating all students’ well-being. Resources available on the ISU Student Health and Wellness website. (https://www.cyclonehealth.iastate.edu)
Prep Week
This class follows the Iowa State University Prep Week policy as noted in section 10.6.4 of the Faculty Handbook.
Religious Accommodation
Iowa State University welcomes diversity of religious beliefs and practices, recognizing the contributions differing experiences and viewpoints can bring to the community. There may be times when an academic requirement conflicts with religious observances and practices. If that happens, students may request the reasonable accommodation for religious practices. In all cases, you must put your request in writing. The instructor will review the situation in an effort to provide a reasonable accommodation when possible to do so without fundamentally altering a course. For students, you should first discuss the conflict and your requested accommodation with your professor at the earliest possible time. You or your instructor may also seek assistance from the Dean of Students Office at 515-294-1020 or the Office of Equal Opportunity at 515-294-7612.
Contact Information For Academic Issues
If you are experiencing, or have experienced, a problem with any of the above statements, email academicissues@iastate.edu
(Important note to faculty: The email address for contact information is monitored and answered through the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost)
Disclaimer: The information in this syllabus is subject to change in extenuating circumstances. Changes to the course syllabus will be provided in writing and announced via course-wide announcements.
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Course Summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|