Intercollegiate Sports in America, 1900-2017
 

Spring 2017

Monday 4pm and online

Requirements and Grades

Requirements

This course requires students to read, write, and discuss. This course is unusual in that we have no tests, we have no specific set of facts, names, or dates that everyone must know. Instead, we have a series of topics, readings, and a variety of methods for discussing what we know and learn. I provide a perspective on college athletics in class based on my own experience and reading. You provide your perspectives as well, based on your experiences and on the required and other readings for the class. You and I post comments to our discussion forums that demonstrate that we have have read, learned, and experienced college sports. You will show that you have thought about the issues and can contribute to our discussion.

While there are many different ways to approach college sports and many valid opinions that may not always coincide, logic, information, and data should inform our judgments and explanations. The best comments use the readings and other information explicitly to make the case or to provide illustrations. In many ways this course is similar to a history colloquium where we read, write, and discuss. As you will see below, the grade in this course is a reflection of your constant involvement with the topics identified for each week. The grade shows that you were involved every week, that you wrote interesting and thoughtful posts to your discussion forum; posts that engaged a issue relevant to the week's topics, used the readings explicitly, and contributed information, analysis, and insight.

History is a discipline of reading, writing, and discussion. Committed to the disciplined discussion of past events and their significance, historians accumulate, analyze, write about, and discuss information with their colleagues. In this class we do all of this. We participate in discussion and follow the class reading online through Moodle.

Grades

Class attendance counts 30% and the forum discussion participation and quality count 70%.

© 2017