Purpose
I am going to ask you to visit and revisit the Era Problems throughout the course. The aim of this activity, which appears twice in every era, is to keep you connected to the core themes of the course.
The first time you encounter the Era Problems, I ask you to evaluate each of the statements based on what you currently know. The second time they encounter the problems, you will be asked to more thoroughly respond to the questions and also revise and refine your initial understanding of the era’s core concepts.
The emphasis here is for you to focus on concepts rather than formal writing. Additionally, the Problem Notebook, helps both you and me to assess how your thinking is progressing, where you’re gaining mastery, and where you might need additional instruction.
While it may seem that you don’t have enough context to respond to the prompts and questions at the beginning of each era, I place the Problem Notebooks early in the era as an informal baseline assessment to help gauge what you already know about the ideas and concepts of the era. It’s ok not to know much!
This process will also help orient you to the focus of the era, giving you a framework for what concepts and ideas you should pay attention to as you are introduced to new content
The Problem Notebook. For each era in the course, there are a set of Era Problems that you will need to think about for the duration of that era. This is not about formal writing. It’s more about thoughts and ideas and less about perfect grammar and spelling. This course offers many opportunities for formal academic writing—this isn’t meant to be one of them. I still want you to be thoughtful and back up your claims with evidence and reason whenever possible, but I also want this to be a space where you can respond to questions, hypothesize, and ask questions of your own without concern for “good” writing.
