How the Different Learning Styles Helped Me
Reading Logs
- The reading logs we did in class sort of forced me to keep pace with the course, and considering I’m a avid procrastinator, I appreciate this
- Since I was keeping up with the reading in this course I was able to converse more with my group in seminars, and therefore contribute more to the group assignments
- Writing the reading logs also helped me get used to Chicago Style citations a lot faster than I would have been able to do on my own, and as an English major who is used to MLA style and was stressing about this part of learning history, I am thankful
Research Assignments (Preparation Assignments)
- I’m glad one of the assignments in this course was a Document Analysis, because it helped bring my attention to Harmon’s Journal, my primary source for my paper and the provider of its main focus, that being how Indigenous women who married fur traders were viewed in the early 1800s
- Our second assignment, the Research Paper Outline, was helpful in the sense that it reanalyse my thesis statement and review my sources, and provided much needed feed back on both since I’ve never really done this before
E-portfolio vs. Final Exam
- The e-portfolio is less time consuming than studying for a final, especially when I have three other exams to study for that all take place within three days
- The e-portfolio is a better representation of what I learned in class as it allows me to express what I learned about the subjects instead of measuring how good I am at cramming my notes into my head, which I immediately forget after the examination
- The e-portfolio makes me reanalyse my own work in this course, so I am able to spot the mistakes in my early work and look for them in future assignments
“History is Written By the Victors”: Why I Believe This
What I take from this quote is that there is two sides to every story, and whichever side has the best means to write about their viewpoint, in the end has a better chance of being remembered. This is why textual evidence, from any time period, must be analysed within a group of other sources, whether this source is a primary document or an article written by well known historian, it is all biased to some extent.
Confessions of a HIST 1120-01 Student
- I should have investigated more thoroughly on why my reading logs would not go through moodle
- I should have checked my e-mails once a day for this, and other, courses
- I could have done more thorough reading logs after we were allowed to do point form, it might have helped my e-portfolio a bit
- I probably should have asked more questions in the e-portfolio seminars considering my struggle with a few of the pages early on
- I thought we had a final exam in this course up until November 10-ish, and wasted a lot of time studying that could have been spent on my Research Paper
- I didn’t think I was going to learn anything useful in this course going in, and I was wrong