Let's Talk Topics: Responses Requested!

[smccormack]

Recently two of my classes began research projects. In one, a survey-level US History, I assigned each student a topic randomly. In the other, a 200-level US Women’s History course, I allowed the students to choose a topic of their own interest. For added context: US History I students are studying artwork from the 18th and 19th centuries. I gave each student an image to research and place in historical context using library resources. Students in US Women’s History were allowed to choose any women’s history related topic from 20th-century America – the caveat being that they could not do a traditional biography. A student who wanted to write about Oprah Winfrey, for example, had to narrow down their focus to a period of significance in her life.

My rationale for the varying approaches to choosing research topics stemmed in part from the different levels of courses. In my general US survey classes I have found that when students are allowed to choose their own topic they immediately move towards one they researched in high school. After I randomly distributed the images, for example, two students asked if they could instead study an image they were already familiar with from a previous class. I explained that one of the goals of the project is to study something unfamiliar. Allowing the students to choose an image that they had previously studied would, in my opinion, open up avenues for students to reuse materials from other classes and to fall back upon analysis that they conducted at an earlier point in their academic career. No one in the class, for example, is assigned Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston Massacre because many students in New England study this image in depth during high school.

Allowing students to choose their own topics, however, comes with its own challenges. In my US Women’s History class students were assigned the task of identifying two possible topics for their semester-long research project. Admittedly, it was disappointing how quickly many simply submitted names of famous women as possible topics. I had hoped that the first few weeks of course material had opened students up to thinking more deeply about possible topics. I realized, therefore, that if I want the students to engage in something more than a traditional narrative biography I would have to help them to think more broadly about their choices. The students submitted their two ideas through the journaling tool in our course learning management system, which allowed me to then engage in some back and forth conversation with each student about their potential topic. Ultimately, with a lot of questions and answers, and some suggestions about starting the research and then circling back, each student chose a topic with which they were (seemingly) content.

So, here’s my question to the Macmillan Community: which approach do you find more productive? Have you had positive or negative experiences when assigning research topics? Do you have one method that works well in your classes? Please share in the comments below! 

Looking forward to hearing about faculty experiences and sharing my observations from this semester's research projects in the next blog!