Download this assignment as a Microsoft Word doc.
About the scrapbook
The digital scrapbook comprises a series of Google doc templates, which you will save in your student folder in Google Drive. It is a place for you to collect materials from the course that you find meaningful, useful, or interesting, as well as to reflect on what you’re learning.
In the scrapbook, you can:
- copy and paste passages or upload images from course materials (carefully cited, of course)
- paraphrase text or otherwise summarize ideas from the course materials (again carefully cited)
- take notes on course materials and class sessions
- begin to formulate your research paper
- reflect on your learning
Why is this scrapbook important?
Assuming you meet the minimum requirements for each chapter, you are welcome (and encouraged!) to use this scrapbook in any way that is meaningful to you in processing the course materials and class sessions.
This scrapbook is a place where you can undertake these important learning tasks:
- Make connections:
- among items in a single chapter
- across chapters
- across course materials
- across courses
- among course materials and current events/cultural phenomena
- Practice critical thinking.
- Raise big questions you wish to answer—and start to answer them with evidence from course materials.
- Identify patterns or discontinuities among people/events/phenomena
- Challenge an author’s or historical figure’s assumptions or premises
- Evaluate competing claims about cause and effect
- Connect what we’re reading in class to your selected theme.
- Analyze images, songs, texts, or artifacts
- Reflect.
- Pause to consider how learning about the past (or a new interpretation of it) makes you feel, especially if that knowledge disrupts your previous understanding or triggers strong emotions for another reason.
- Consider how your ancestors (wherever in the world they may have been, but especially if they were in the U.S.) might have reacted to the events we’re learning about in class.
- Consider how events in the past may connect to your own life experiences—for example, because those events may have influenced the opportunities available to you, or maybe you see similarities between public unrest then and now.
- Prepare for your final project.
- Draft research questions
- Note links or sections of course materials to revisit later
- Copy/paste from the textbook and add your own thoughts/commentary
- Collect links to primary and secondary sources
How to use this scrapbook
Make a copy of the relevant chapter template
Each chapter will have a template that you will copy from this Google Drive folder. To make a copy, follow these instructions.
Completing each chapter template
Each chapter template has several sections. Follow the instructions in each template carefully. In most cases, you’ll find the first section is required, while the second and third sections let you select among a few options.
How will this scrapbook be graded?
Dr. Madsen and Noah will look at your digital scrapbook and provide frequent feedback on portions of it. Twice during the semester, you will write a reflective cover letter in which you evaluate your digital scrapbook and assign yourself a grade.* You’ll receive instructions on what to include in those letters later in the semester.
At the end of the semester, you’ll write a more formal reflection on the process of keeping and using a digital scrapbook. Again, you’ll receive instructions on what to include closer to the reflection’s due date.
*Dr. Madsen and Noah reserve the right to adjust grades to ensure equitable assessment across students in the class.