Year 1: 2017-2018

Goals

During year 1, HTLP focused primarily on developing department-wide consensus on SLOs. A secondary goal was to foster a culture of teaching within the department by engaging the SoTL in History and other research-based resources, as well as by promoting a collegial and collaborative environment for discussing teaching philosophy, goals, and practices.

Methods

Developing Department-wide SLOs ÌýÌý

HTLP project lead Dr. Natalie Mendoza facilitated a department-wide discussion that led to the adoption of an SLO draft (below) in April 2018. Gaining consensus across the department on the SLOs was achieved through the following process:

Fall 2017
In the early fall, Dr. Mendoza collected data on perceived teaching challenges, learning goals, teaching practices, and assessments by conducting one-on-one interviews with tenured/tenure-track faculty and instructors, and through a close reading of said faculty’s most recent course syllabi.

Using the data collected, Dr. Mendoza developed a preliminary list of SLOs organized by what she identified as the discipline-specific skills and concepts faculty taught and had cited, in common, as essential to history majors acquiring historical literacy.

Dr. Mendoza presented the preliminary SLO list during the November department meeting, at which time faculty worked in mixed-field groups (e.g., historians of the US, Asia, Latin America, Europe in one group) to further refine, organize, and categorize the preliminary list.

Spring 2018
In the early spring, Dr. Mendoza developed a first, single draft of SLOs based on the November department meeting, and she facilitated a department-wide discussion on the draft through a telescoping and scaled review process:

  1. The HTLP Working Group exercised its advisory function by reviewing and revising the SLO draft in preparation for a department-wide conversation;
  2. The SLO draft was distributed to the whole department and discussed during the April department meeting, where it was subjected to further review and revision;
  3. The HTLP Working Group met one final time to revise the SLO draft in accordance with feedback solicited during the April department meeting.

Through this review process, the department developed an SLO draft* that reflects the historical literacy the CU-Boulder History Department expects to teach its students: the discipline-specific skills, concepts, habits of mind, and critical thinking processes paramount to becoming proficient in historical thinking in the classroom and beyond.

Fostering a Culture of Teaching Ìý

Creating and fostering a culture of teaching is critical to advancing HTLP curricular goals, such as developing department-wide SLOs, and it is especially important for sustaining the gains made in the project’s two-year duration. Several steps were taken to meet this goal, some of which overlapped with the task of developing SLOs.

HTLP Working Group: In addition to its advisory role, the HTLP Working Group also assumes the role of cultural carrier. During monthly meetings, working group members engage in pedagogy and SoTL in History literature, becoming informed agents of cultural change with the potential for informally sharing, over time, what they have learned about history pedagogy with their colleagues in the department.

Workshop & Discussions: The HTLP Workshop & Discussions meetings are open to the entire department, and help to foster a culture of teaching with focused, hands-on sessions led by expert guests who provide insight from their own research and work in history pedagogy. Visit the Workshop & Discussions section of this website to learn more about our past and upcoming guests.

HTLP Library and Canvas Site: We have developed a short bibliography on history pedagogy and the SoTL in History to further our pedagogical development and enhance our undergraduate curriculum. Members of the department (graduate students, faculty, and visiting faculty) can access much of the literature listed in the bibliography by visiting the credential-protected created specifically for HTLP.

Taken together, these efforts support the development and cultivation of a culture of teaching in a range of ways that permeates throughout the department community.