Editing User:Riegler/test (section)

==Activities==
Below is a list of the activities I used in the first two weeks of the course to create an environment in which appropriate elements of building  a history paper was modeled, practiced, and assessed in an organic fashion. When appropriate, I have added links to course materials that were actually used in the process and indicated which of three Decoding functions was being addressed. But the real impact lies less in any single activity, but rather in the cumulative impact of them in creating an organic learning experience.
* Week 1 mini lecture: Goal = reading selectively and dealing with material that is unfamiliar. 
**I read a passage from the main reading assignment for the week and systematically demonstrated how I would isolate the elements that were relevant to this course (Modeling) --
*Week 1 online modeling presentation: Goal = reading selectively and dealing with material that is unfamiliar. 
** On the course website students were presented with a different passage from the readings and given pointers on how to identify material that was relevant to their work for the week. (Modeling) [[:File:readbanq 1.pdf|Reading ''The Banquet Years'' -- 1]]
*Week 1 & 2: Goal = 1) helping students to recognize that history is about presenting and offering evidence to support interpretations;  2) showing students how to connect interpretations with specific evidence 
**Mini lectures were presented in the form of competing interpretations of the issues at hand, and relevant background information was introduced as evidence supporting one interpretation or another. (Modeling and Practice) [[Modeling the Writing of a History Paper]]

* The second week’s online assignment presented students with two interpretations of the relationship between Avant Garde culture and bourgeois capitalist society. The students chose one of these, selected four bits of relevant evidence, and then explained how this example made the interpretation that they had chosen more credible. (The structure of the assignment required them to find evidence in two different sections of the assigned readings, on the course website, and from one of the lectures — thus, also also modeling the integration of multiple sources, and an incentive to do the readings and follow the lectures.) ([[An Online Assignment on Writing a History Paper|Week 2 Assignment]])
* Week 2 Team Exercise #2 Students viewed [[wikipedia:René_Clair|René Clair]]’s short film, Entr’acte and then considered how individual elements in the film might provide support for an interpretation of modernism that they had encountered in the readings.  ([[:File:Wk2B Team Exercise EntrActe.pdf|Wk2B Team Exercise]])
*In between these activities there were whole-class discussions in which teams reported out and the basic pattern of focusing on evidence and interpretations was reinforced once again.