Teaching Millennials '18th century skills'

On Thursday at the Lehrman Summer Institute in Princeton, Gerson Moreno-Riano and I led a seminar entitled “Teaching Today’s Millennial Students ‘18^thCentury Skills.’”  The title for the workshop came from Mark Bauerlein’s Chronicle of Higher Education article from March 2010 entitled “Employers Want 18^thCentury Skills.” In his piece, Bauerlein cites a recent Association of American Colleges and Universities survey which reveals that most employers think today’s college graduates need significantly more instruction in what he calls “18^thcentury skills -- effective communication (both orally and in writing) as well as critical-thinking and analytical-reasoning abilities.

Throughout a lively and wide-ranging discussion, we focused on the unique characteristics of the Millennials and whether or not access to online information and technology has made them smarter or dumber.  We also spoke about how best to instruct millennial students in these “18^thcentury skills.”  Indeed, several Fellows talked about their teaching strategies and some of the specific assignments they use to strengthen students’ communication and reasoning skills.  At the end of the session, I asked participants to consider posting one or two of their assignments.

During the workshop, I discussed an assignment I recently designed for my department’s Historical Methods and Historiography course, which I am teaching this fall.  I will require each student to write an annotated-syllabus for a hypothetical course in their main area of historical interest.  For instance, students can draft a syllabus for a course on “the American Revolution” or “Ancient Rome” or “History of Religion in America." 

The assignment will require students to think in both broad and specific terms.  They will need to impose order on a large body of evidence and think about the most effective ways to present complex historical topics.  Students also need to select the course’s readings, which must include at least 1 monograph, 2 journal articles, and 5-10 primary documents.   And they will need to annotate each selection with a short paragraph explaining why they have selected this work/document and how it adds to the course’s overall theme(s).   Students, moreover, must design course assignments for the semester –such as quizzes, tests, critical book reviews, research papers, etc. – and they will annotate each assignment with another short paragraph explaining the pedagogical reasons for its inclusion. 

Finally, as part of this overall assignment, I want each student to go to the Lehrman American Studies Center website and review the history syllabi available there and select the best one on the basis of its clarity, scope, and innovation.  And, of course, they need to explain to me the reasons for their selection. 

I believe this assignment will require my Millennial students to write clearly and concisely as well as help them develop their analytical reasoning skills.  We’ll see how it works in practice this fall!

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via lehrman.isi.org

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