Research topics
I hoped that our work would lead the students to improve their
ability to conceptualize research topics. Many students were
thinking about their MA thesis topics when they came to the class,
and they didn't yet have a clue as to what those topics
would be. Other students who knew what they wanted to do on their
dissertation developed skills that they could use for their research,
such as looking at visual data. Almost all students remarked
on this area; I don't think they are necessarily getting
training in it in any other venue.
Amount of writing
The course had too much writing over a relatively short period
of time for some of the students to handle. When we reached a point
about two-thirds of the way through the semester, the other courses
students were enrolled in became more involved and had increased
demands, a situation that impacted the student writing for our
course. “The Global City” asked them to complete six
papers, of different lengths, but all requiring some research.
Next time I plan to make the writing a little less intense. However,
by doing six papers, I saw improvement in the students' skills.
Because of that growth, I would only give up one assignment.
Oral
presentations
I need to rethink how to structure oral presentations. We probably
spent too much time on them. We often went over the time limit
for individual presentations, and I think that happened because
the students got so excited about their material. It never occurred
to me to not have everyone do an oral presentation on each unit;
instead, as the students suggested, I could divide the class in
half, and have one group do oral presentations for one project,
and the other half for a different project. Some early projects
had oral presentations only, and it doesn't have to happen
that way. I'd like everyone to do two, not four, oral presentations.
I have other ways to assess participation without all four presentations.
Coverage
I hope that the skill acquisition and perspective shifting was
a useful part of the course that helped to open the students' minds.
I believe that they did gain from this new methodology and that
they weren't closed to what I threw out. I suspect other
seminar courses are more focused on topic coverage and having the
students become real familiar with those readings. That wasn't
the key part of this course, but we did do enough coverage to drive
the subject matter. These readings provided some options for research
methods and topics.
Impact on teaching
An undergraduate course that I taught on urban sociology led to
this course; primarily, I brought its ideas back to history. Now
there are ways in which this course will be used, such as pieces
and texts, in a new undergraduate history course on Sin City that
I am scheduled to teach next fall. What I did in this semester's
course will be applicable in the Sin City course as I will stress
comparative analysis across at least 100 years, probably beginning
in the late 19th century. The undergraduate history course presents
a broad history, but we will make use of universal methods, some
out of this course. In particular, I will require one or two books
used in this seminar and draw on some of the other readings for
lecture material.
I'll wait a year before I reteach “The Global City.” I almost never teach a graduate course back to back, and I think it's good to let the graduate course percolate. I'm still not sure of the audience; I suppose it would be a different course with history majors. I may need to teach it every other year.
