| General Information |
| Professor: |
Andrew McMichael |
| Course: |
HIST 541 |
| Course Title: |
American Revolution/early Republic (online) |
| Student Grade: |
A |
| Post Date: |
4:52:39 PM 12/20/2009 |
| Overall Rating: |
Good  |
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| Exam Information |
| Exam Content: |
 Multiple Choice
Matching
True/False
Fill in the Blank
 Essay
Problem Solving
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| Mandatory Final: |
Yes |
| Cumulative Final: |
No |
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| Other Information |
| Textbook Required: |
Yes |
| Extra Credit Available: |
No |
| Attendance Required: |
Yes |
| Quantity of Notes: |
Few/None |
| Difficulty: |
Moderate |
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| Additional Comments |
This was an online graduate course for the American Revolution/Early Republic. If you like writing short essays then this is the class for you because there are no exams.
The breakdown for the class is 50% for a final term paper that you do near the end of the semester, 29% is based on discussion board postings, and 21% is based on short essays that you do over the course of the semester.
Since this is a graduate class you can expect to do a ton of reading. You have to read six books in the class and you MUST keep yourself disciplined to read them and about ten journal articles that are assigned over the course of the semester.
You can see the class as being broken down into 2 week periods. On the first week you have to post responses to discussion board questions and you have to post at least an initial response in 2 days and at least 2 responses to other people's posts. McMichael expects you to use the readings and cite these in your responses so put effort into it. The second week will see McMichael post a reaction essay where you will have to answer a question based on the readings. This is to be 4-6 pages double spaced and have about 30 footnotes where you cite the readings (and any outside ones you have done on the subject).
I would definitely suggest gradually working on your term paper throughout the semester because it can sneak up on you quickly with all the other work you have to do in this class. The term paper has to be 15-20 pages, double spaced, and make an original argument. It also has to be based on primary sources so the trick is to find something that there is primary source material for, but the library has some nice volumes of writings from George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson so there are resources there that can help you. McMichael is also helpful as far as providing suggestions and helping with research. He responds to e-mails quickly.
The class also meets in Second Life at midterm. This is an online virtual community and WKU has its own island. This replaces one of your required online discussion board postings for the week and is pretty fun. You just have to download the software and be prepared for it.
Overall, the class is fine if you have time to do the readings and stay on top of things. My only gripe is that many of our essay assignments were ungraded near the last week of the semester so some were unsure about where their grades stood. I find that McMichael isn't a tough grader as long as you follow directions and put forth the effort so if your interested in this time period this is a pretty good class to take.
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