Proofs of Learning

This is a menu of possibilities for your portfolio assessment, and you can also propose other ways to demonstrate your learning. Your final submission will be about 2000-3500 words and show your engagement with a variety of topics and readings from across the course. If you are aiming for a passing mark, your portfolio may be on the shorter end of that range. If you are aiming for a distinction, you may end up submitting closer to the upper end of that range. In either case, your submission will show what you have learned from a majority of the units of the course. You will receive feedback as you construct your portfolio to help make sure it shows what you have learned!

The main source for feedback on your draft portfolio components is your course tutor. Find out more in tutorial and/or by email.

Your main way of demonstrating your learning is by accurately discussing ideas encountered in your learning and supporting those discussions with correct citations to the textbooks and/or other items from the resource list. Depending on your learning goals and target mark, your citations may be focused on a smaller or greater number of sources from the course, and you can see further guidance for particular component formats below. The portfolio submission is meant to be flexible, so there is a lot of room to customize your submission to show your learning in a way that is meaningful to you. Do, however, please discuss your approach with your course tutor or Dr Barany if you plan to depart substantially from the formats and starting points described here.

We expect that most portfolio submissions will include a number of short responses that show your engagement with specific units or ideas from the course. Your short responses should come from a variety of course units; most will focus on a single unit each, and you should generally not submit more than one short response for a given unit.

A short response should:

• Be about 200-300 words (including citations but not including your bibliography).
• Demonstrate that you have engaged with the course by discussing (with citations!) ideas from lectures, a textbook, and/or resource list readings.
• If you are aiming for a ‘pass’ mark your citations may be mainly from lectures/textbooks or a single item of interest from the resource list for a unit of interest.
• If you are aiming for a ‘distinction’ mark you should show your more thorough engagement with items from the resource list and an effort to connect them to each other and to ideas from the lectures/textbooks.
• Be carefully written and proof-read, with correct spelling and grammar and complete citations including specific pages from sources where applicable.
• Cite every source you use, whether or not it is from the course, but be based primarily in sources from the course so that you can demonstrate your understanding of these.

You are encouraged to use the “proofs” prompts from the respective units as a starting point. Remember that the core purpose is to show your understanding of the course, so focus on discussing lectures and readings, even if you are not directly answering the question in the end. (If you focus too much on the question itself and try to answer it off the top of your head or using web searches and other resources not associated with the course, you will not have a very effective response for the purpose of the assessment.)

Here are some other prompts you may use for short responses beyond those in the “proofs” for each unit. If you would like to explore another question or a variation on the proofs or the below questions, you are encouraged to discuss you plan with your course tutor.

• Pick two or more sources from the resource list that discuss the same subject or topic or idea from different perspectives. Compare and contrast these sources in view of the unit theme. Where do they agree and disagree, and how can you explain the agreement/disagreement, and what is the significance of the agreement/disagreement?
• Take a specific period and context (e.g. the French Enlightenment or Late Ming China) mentioned in a lecture for this unit or in a relevant portion of the textbook or resource list item, and use the textbooks and resource list to characterise this period and context in view of the weekly unit. What are the relevant years and locations for this periodization and context, and why? What are the significant features of “cosmos” or “abstractions” or “collections” (etc.) in this time and place? The goal for this response prompt is to deepen and support your understanding of ideas introduced in general terms in lectures (etc.), so be sure to ground your response in citations to course materials.

Here is an example from a fictional version of this course. You might wish to share examples or ideas with each other on the course florilegium.

We have recently deemphasized essay writing, which used to be the main kind of assessment for this course. This is because we think exploring the course subject matter is a higher priority than teaching and learning how to write a particular kind of essay that is used in undergraduate assessment in history and social sciences, and it was unfair to students from degree programmes that did not use this kind of assessment to demand that they learn it just for this course. If you are in a degree that involves this kind of essay writing, however, or if you would like to develop and practise this skill, essays can definitely be a fruitful way to explore the history of science and demonstrate what you have learned!

An essay in this course should:

• Demonstrate your understanding (for ‘pass’) or mastery (for ‘distinction’) of ideas and concepts connecting multiple units of the course. Generally you should refer to materials (lectures, textbooks, and/or resource list items) related to at least three different units of the course. As we have seen in the lectures, there are lots of connections between the units, so use these connections as a guide!
• Be between 1000 and 1500 words, not including the bibliography. If you would like to attempt a longer essay, please discuss in advance with Dr Barany to make sure you will be able to cover the additional ground a longer essay would need to cover.
• Be carefully written and proof-read, with correct spelling and grammar and complete citations including specific pages from sources where applicable.
• Cite every source you use, whether or not it is from the course, but be based primarily in sources from the course so that you can demonstrate your understanding of these.

You may choose any subject that lets you show your understanding of multiple units of the course. The priority is less to answer a question than to demonstrate how you have engaged with lectures, textbooks, and resource list readings from the course. You are not expected to develop an original argument, and it is best to use the space of the essay to explain what is known about a topic (or compare and contrast related views of that topic) without worrying about creating your own perspective. A clear and insightful account of the essential ideas, evidence, and arguments of a well chosen list of sources counts for more than a new interpretation of the topic.

For this kind of essay length and goal, a compare/contrast approach is often effective. For this, pick two related historical contexts or concepts and identify how they relate to each other and how they differ, using sources from the course materials to explain these comparisons and contrasts. A special case of this approach is an essay on periodization: pick two adjacent periods and explain and justify the relevant years and contexts for both, then identify an aspect of continuity (something that stayed more or less consistent across the two periods) and of discontinuity (something that marks a significant break between the two, identifying them as separate periods).

If you are aiming for a ‘pass’ mark, you may submit an excerpt of your reading journal as part of your portfolio for assessment. (For a ‘distinction’ mark, a reading journal alone is unlikely to demonstrate the breadth or depth of engagement with course materials expected.)

Your reading journal excerpts should:

• Cover 2-3 readings. If the source is an entire book, the journal entry can be from a relevant chapter or selection of chapters.
• Include the full and correct citation for each source.
• Identify the major subjects and evidence considered in the source, including summaries or paraphrases of some key claims or examples.
• Include a short summary (around 100-150 words per source) of the key ideas and arguments of the source as a whole. Remember the distinction from the “How to Use a Text” exercise between summary and paraphrase.

You will probably need to spend some time editing your initial reading journal excerpts to make them ready for submission as a proof of learning.

A site or object analysis is a chance to show your understanding of ideas and materials from one or more course units through a close look at a specific site or object connected with the history of science. Remember that the emphasis for your analysis should be on the connections you make to the lectures, textbooks, and resource list readings. Simply finding out about an object or site with any available reference sources does not fulfil the brief, as it will not demonstrate your engagement with and understanding of the course. Be sure to identify relevant course materials to discuss before you get too far into writing. You may use the websites discussed in unit 3, including the Curious Edinburgh and the National Museum of Scotland websites, as a starting point.

A site or object analysis should:

• Be about 200-500 words in length. A longer analysis should connect to multiple course units and a wider range of reference sources.
• Clearly identify the site or object, its significant features, and its relevance to the history of science.

Meet the other criteria listed for a Short Response.

For a ‘pass’ mark, a site or object analysis can use the site or object as an occasion to reflect on relevant concepts and course materials of interest. For a ‘distinction’ mark, a site or object analysis should engage with the site or object as a site or object, making meaningful use of its specific physical or situated features in the discussion. There are examples of such studies in the “Collections” section of the resource list.

A historical source analysis is a chance to show your understanding of ideas and materials from one or more course units through a close look at a specific historical text connected with the history of science. Remember that the emphasis for your analysis should be on the connections you make to the lectures, textbooks, and resource list readings. Simply finding out about a source with any available reference sources does not fulfil the brief, as it will not demonstrate your engagement with and understanding of the course. Be sure to identify relevant course materials to discuss before you get too far into writing. There are some online gateways to primary historical sources in the “Archives and Sources” section of the resource list and some specific potential sources in the “Primary Sources” section of the resource list that you may use as a starting point.

A historical source analysis should:

• Be about 200-300 words in length.
• Clearly identify (to the extent known) the source’s author, audiences, and relevant historical contexts. Most sources will be accessed in some indirect way, as a scan or a translation or a reprint or something else, and you may reflect on the implications of your way of accessing the source on what you can interpret about it directly.
• Meet the other criteria listed for a Short Response.

For a ‘pass’ mark, a historical source analysis can use the source as an occasion to reflect on relevant concepts and course materials of interest. For a ‘distinction’ mark, the analysis should engage with the source as a text, making meaningful use of its specific form, words, and contexts in the discussion.

We hope this course helps you develop perspectives that are relevant to your experience in your degree and out in the world. A current event or topical issue discussion can identify and explore an example of such a connection. As with all portfolio components, remember that the purpose is still to show your understanding of the course materials, including accurately paraphrasing or summarising them and properly citing them.

A current event or topical issue discussion should:

• Identify a current event or topical issue (e.g. from your degree subject) related to something you have learned about in this course.
• Briefly introduce the event or issue, with 1-2 citations to a news article or reference source.
• Explicitly connect the event or issue to one or more concepts or historical precedents or comparisons from the course in a way that (i) shows your understanding of the course, and (ii) shows how what you have learned from the course relates to or offers a new perspective on the event or issue.
• Meet the other Short Response criteria for length, citations, proof-reading, etc.

For a ‘pass’ mark the discussion may be at the level of comparisons, parallels, or broad thematic connections. For a ‘distinction’ you should demonstrate more precisely what it means to apply the specific methods and perspectives of history of science to the event or issue, drawing on a wider or deeper set of course materials.