Finals week

May 9 – May 13

Pressbooks chapter: 9 May, 11:59PM
  • Load up your Pressbooks chapter to our book; you can use this guide for tips and tricks
    • You may have to log in using “Admin” with the username and password sent to you on April 20.
  • Add the footnotes using the FN button and at the very end of your chapter add a bibliography (list of works consulted, in alphabetical order of the author’s surname).
    • We use Chicago Notes and Bibliography Style
    • Note that Chicago uses different sequence of information for the notes and the bibliography. The “Copy to clipboard” function in Zotero allows you to differentiate
  • Add links to other students’ chapters and/or website content
  • Email me that your chapter is “done, done, done” so I know you’re done!
Final reflection: 9 May, 11:59PM
WHAT
  • 500-750 words
  • thinking about the course as a whole (look back through the course materials or the course schedule), and using examples that are not only about your big project, (you want to demonstrate breadth and depth of learning),
  • Pick two of the following prompts to engage with:
    • What do you think is the most important thing you learned about Korean history, and why do you think so? Why do you think more people ought to know about this?
    • This course carries a DE/HDGE General Academic Requirement. Do you think you earned it? Why (not)? To help you answer that question, here’s the description from the Course Catalog: “HDGE courses across the curriculum aim to broaden and deepen students’ understanding of human difference and to develop the intellectual and civic skills students require for participation in an increasingly diverse and interconnected world.”
    • reflect on your learning process during the course of the semester. How have you grown as a historian? How have your research skills and historical insights changed in the past few months? How do you think differently about your engagement with the past in general, or with Korea’s history more specifically? What will you take with you to future courses, about handling sources, dealing with multiple perspectives, about project management,…?
    • imagine you are interviewed five years from now for your dream job (which likely has nothing to do with Korean history!); the interviewer sees on your transcript you took “HST259: Korean History”, and they ask: “Oh, what did you learn in that course?” What is your answer? Why?
HOW

Submit as a Google Doc shared with suggesting/commenting access for Dr. D, or a blog post in category HST259 if you prefer.

WHY

The end of the semester is a good time to stop and reflect on how far you’ve come, but also on how you can use the knowledge you gathered here (about yourself and about the topic) and apply it outside the confines of this course.

Final conversation: 9 May – 12 May

Make sure you have your chapter finished and reflection done, and emailed me that everything is ready for review 24 hours before your final check-in.

Make an appointment with me for your final check-in. The final grade for the course is based on your honest, realistic assessment of your effort, growth and achievements during this semester. Please use the appointments page. (20mins slots)

Prepare for the conversation with the following prompts. Be sure to have concrete examples on hand as evidence for your claims; these examples should go beyond the narrow specialization of your chapter’s research! We may not touch on all of these questions, these are to get you thinking about how you can demonstrate what you learned and why you deserve the grade you claim.

  • Look through your third reflection and all your work done this term, and your previous two reflections.
  • Think about the component “Thoughtful participation in the Learning Commons“: were you a good colleague to your fellow students? How did you make a difference?
  • What have you learned about yourself as a historian, as a student? What surprised you?
  • What will you do differently next semester/in future semester, or what did you learn this semester that you will apply to courses next semester? (this can be about history, about being a member of a classroom community, about professionalism, etc.)
  • Was there anything you learned but did not get a chance to demonstrate in an assignment?

At the end, I will ask what you think your final grade for the course as a whole should be. This is not just based on how well you did in your project, but also on how you have engaged with feedback, how you have learned to engage with historical materials throughout the semester, and how you were “present” in class and in the course (in the widest sense of the word: as a community member and contributor).

The grades for the class are as follows, with + and – available for some extra nuance:

  • A= strong
  • B= satisfactory
  • C= weak
  • D= very weak
  • F= unsatisfactory

I reserve the right to make adjustments if you shoot for an unrealistically high or low grade.

Well done!

You got through another semester at Muhlenberg!! Well done! Time for a well-deserved break! I hope you have a great summer, with all you need and desire.

I hope you enjoyed the birds, the course, learning about Korean history, figuring out how to create your own website, and how to manage a larger project like researching and writing a chapter in a book. Keep in touch with your future adventures!

Time for a well-deserved break! © Carl Bovis