INSTRUCTOR’S RESOURCE MANUAL Peter Porter
AMERICAN STORIES A History of the United States SECOND EDITION H.W. A. Brands University of Texas
T.H.H. Breen Northwestern University
R. Hal Williams Southern Methodist University
Ariela J. Gross University of Southern California
Introduction to Brands, Breen, Williams, and Gross American Stories 2e MyHistoryLab Instructor’s Manual Welcome to American Stories 2e MyHistoryLab Instructor’s Manual. This guide is designed to provide several things: • • • • •
an overview of how to utilize the American Stories text with MyHistoryLab a syllabus demonstrating how to integrate MyHistoryLab with a U.S. survey course callouts to MyHistoryLab content in the chapter summaries a listing of relevant material from MyHistoryLab possible ideas on how to utilize MyHistoryLab in the classroom to further critical thinking skills
Prof. Brands and his colleagues state clearly that one simple purpose motivated them in the design of their text: “to enhance the accessibility of American history and thereby increase students’ chances of success.” MyHistoryLab can be a critical component in helping to increase students’ chances of success. Its resources provide methods for teachers to assess and enhance their teaching, while at the same time offering tools students can use to improve research, critical thinking, and comprehension skills.
• Closer Look tours walk students through a variety of key primary sources in detail, helping them to uncover their meaning and understand their context.
• A History Bookshelf enables students to read, download, or print up to 100 of the most commonly assigned history works like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Homer’s The Iliad , and Machiavelli’s The Prince.
• Complete audio of the entire book is included to suit the varied learning styles of today’s students. • The Pearson eText lets students access their textbook anytime, anywhere, and any way they want–including listening online or downloading to iPad.
• A personalized study plan for each student arranges content from less complex thinking–like remembering and understanding–to more complex critical thinking–like applying and analyzing. This layered approach promotes better
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critical thinking skills and helps students succeed in the course and beyond.
• Assessment tied to videos, applications, and chapter enables both instructors and students to track progress and get immediate feedback. With results feeding into a powerful gradebook, the assessment program helps instructors identify student challenges early–and find the best resources with which to help students.
• An assignment calendar allows instructors to assign graded activities, with specific deadlines, and measure student progress. • Class Prep collects the very best class presentation resources in one convenient online destination, so instructors can keep students engaged throughout every class. MyHistoryLab comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and an eye on the future. • Pearson supports instructors with workshops, training, and assistance from Pearson Faculty Advisors–so you get the help you need to make MyHistoryLab work for your course.
• Pearson gathers feedback from instructors and students during the development of content and the feature enhancement of each release–to ensure that our products meet your needs.
An Overview of Assets: MyHistoryLab is a fully comprehensive website with the needs of students and teachers in mind. The program consists of the following components: •
Assignment Calendar
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Study Plan & Assignments
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eText and Chapter Audio
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Closer Looks
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Multimedia Library
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Student Resources
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Student Grades
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Communication
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Instructor’s Resources
Assignment Calendar Section allows you to completely lay out assignments from your course syllabus or outline and plan out your semester/quarter/year. Assignments once created can be selected to show on student calendar. Tools help instructor for planning and student for keeping track of deadlines. Study Plan & Assignments Contains several tools helpful for student planning including Learning Objectives, Study Plan, Exam, Media, Quick Reviews, and Summary subsections. •
Learning Objectives – Objectives provided in text for each chapter.
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Study Plan – A personalized study plan for each student, arranges content from less complex thinking–like remembering and understanding–to more complex critical thinking–like applying and analyzing. This layered approach promotes better critical-thinking skills and helps students succeed in the course and beyond
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Exam - An exam provided by Pearson, timed, scored, and sent to instructor, informs students of which questions they answered incorrectly.
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Media - Contains two tabs – Media Links and Media Assignment. Media Links provides three areas for study: Review the Timeline, which lists dates accompanied with significant events or people; if student selects marker, it then provides brief explanation. Study the Flashcards enables the student to study key terms in flashcard form. Read the text allows student to go into eText and begin to read and study chapter. Media Assignment contains chapter resources and provides six (6) categories: Audio folder provides an audio recording of a song, recital, or lecture with assignment. Closer Look folder uses visual images to provide a deeper explanation to a concept. The visual may be an image, map, chart, or graph and is accompanied by a Critical Thinking Question. Document folder has documents available with questions for use as assignments or classroom tools. Exploring America examines a topic and goes in greater depth providing readings and visuals combined in an assignment to help students see a connection between an idea and history. The questions that follow the assignment may be clicked on and answered online for easy grading and sent to the instructor. Images are provided for students to examine ranging from drawings to paintings to cartoons and to photographs. Some questions are provided and answered online, again for easier grading. Map folder provides a series of maps ranging from outline maps to interactive maps. An exercise accompanies the map, which the student completes and emails to the instructor. Exercises can be short answer or multiple choice.
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Quick Reviews – Provides a tab for each section in the chapter. Within each section is a series of questions provided for the students to check on their comprehension of the chapter. Each question has a time limit and is designed to be sent to the teacher via email.
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Chapter Summary – provides the chapter summary examining the chapter and helping the student examine each section and its main themes.
eText and Chapter Audio The eText is a complete copy of the textbook online. It offers instructors the chance to highlight important sections for themselves and their students. Teachers can allow access to highlighted sections or keep it closed for their personal use only. Students, through their own password, can highlight the text as they see fit. They can make notes and bookmark pages and, just like professors, they can allow those to be seen or be hidden. Each chapter may also be downloaded to your Apple iPod/iPad with the Pearson eText app. This enables student or teacher to have access to chapters at any time. Closer Looks Provides access to all the Closer Look exercises from each chapter. Multimedia Library Here, ten kinds of resources are gathered for student and instructor use. They include Documents, Images, Audio, Video, Closer Looks, Exploring America, Learning Activity, Pearson Profile, Interactive Maps, and Maps. As an instructor this may perhaps be the most valuable section. The old expression of not wanting to “reinvent the wheel” applies here. The time teachers might spend looking for resources can be put to other uses by utilizing this section. Many of the documents include prompting or comprehension questions to help students with the reading of these primary sources and/or to be used as assignments to measure student success. The Images include some of the more famous images in American history as well as new and unique images to spark student curiosity. Like the documents, most have questions to go with them to help further student understanding and/or be used to measure student success. Both the audio and video sections provide unique
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additional perspectives to help students push for greater understanding and succeed in comprehending the material. The audio clips include songs, speeches, and readings that take the student to the moment in time they are from and give a feel for the time they were performed, drawing the student into a better understanding of the period. Many of the video clips are segments recorded with leading historians providing a more in-depth examination of an issue, usually through an individual or an event to help give greater clarity to a period or movement in history. They include a brief quiz to check for understanding by students and/or instructors. Some of the later chapters in the text have clips showing speeches, political ads, and even short documentary clips. Some of the newer resources Pearson provides in this section combine several of the other media assets with tools for instructors to measure progress, comprehension, and even critical thinking skills. Many of these tools will engage the students more fully in the process of learning and many will find them helpful in retaining knowledge and developing a greater understanding of topics developed in and out of the classroom. The interaction and engagement are what make these new sections so invaluable.
Student Resources Here MyHistoryLab has provided another way to find the activities included in the program as well as several new activities not in other sections. • MyHistoryLibrary - Hundreds of primary source documents and featuring the History Bookshelf, which contains 100 of the most commonly assigned readings in American history. • History Toolkit – a section providing links to tutorials on analyzing primary sources, several online resources, and a handbook on how to succeed in the environment of a history course. • Tutorial: How to Analyze Primary Sources – a section listed in the History Toolkit, here it stands by itself. It teaches students to use the provided activities to learn how to analyze various types of sources and to become historian themselves. The section sources include Primary and Secondary Sources, Primary Source Documents, Visual Sources, and Maps. Each section focuses on helping the student better understand how to utilize the type of source and gain from it what historians gain in their own studies of history. • MySearchLab – Here Pearson’s MySearchLab™ offers extensive help on the research process and four databases of credible and reliable sources so students can quickly and efficiently do their research. • Writing Resources – this area connects to Pearson’s main site and is provided for all Pearson texts. It includes sections on Avoiding Plagiarism, History Writing, Starting the Research Process, Finding Reliable Research Sources, Writing and Grammar Resources, and Style Guidelines for History. Student Grades Keeps track of your student’s progress in the course. All auto-graded activities are recorded for your student here and in your Instructor Gradebook. Your Instructor Gradebook shows Chapters with Content in first column, student names and IDs in second, and student work from MyHistoryLab in final column—a complete gradebook tool for any instructor. Communication This section provides communication tools for your students and for you. They can communicate with each other and you, while you can reach out to them. It is divided into three parts: • Discussion – a blog-like tool that allows you and your students to discuss and share ideas by creating discussion topics or adding responses. • Chat & ClassLive – A collaborative online classroom where instructors and students can share a whiteboard, software applications, text, images, and videos. You or your students can begin sessions, leaving and returning at any time. Anyone in the class can join a discussion in progress. • Email – Students and instructors can send email to each other from this section. Instructor Resources Pearson pulls together several tools into one convenient location for instructors to use. It is divided into two main parts: Grades & Reporting Tools and Instructor Resources. Within each section are several folders for teachers to access.
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