In this section, Prof. McCants shares two strategies for ensuring that students learn from each other and other historians during the course.
Facilitating Productive Classroom Discussions
One tip I have for other educators hoping to facilitate good classroom discussions is to have students write something in advance—even if it’s just a rambling reflection in the middle of the night! This really helps get the conversation going, because everyone comes into the classroom already invested in some critique, question, complaint or outright rant. From there, I find almost no difficulty getting students to participate.
Making Use of Guest Speakers
History is such a diverse discipline (a big tent, I like to say). I think graduate students are at a disadvantage if they hear from only one historian. I want the new graduate students to know a range of my colleagues so they can be exposed to different topic areas, periods of study, methodologies, etc. I try to invite 5 or 6 of them to the class over the course of the term, allowing them to suggest the readings they find most relevant or interesting for the kind of history they will highlight.
The problem can be that this gives the class a more disjointed feel than it would otherwise have with just one instructor, and sometimes individual teaching styles do not mesh as well as one would hope. However, the benefits of exposure outweigh the risks of inconsistency.