HIST 1302 DIL Oral History Guidelines

For the grade of B

In addition to the two course contacts, the student must take all fourteen (14) quizzes, all five (5) exams, and:

earn a total course average of 80% on the 14 quizzes, the 5 exams, and one (1) completed Oral History Report

Failure to take all fourteen (14) Chapter Quizzes and all (5) Unit Exams will result in a F in the course.

NOTE: The highest grade you can earn in the course without a completed Oral History Report is a C.

To complete the B-Level objective, see the Oral History Report page for details on how to:

a.) submit the Respondent for your oral history report;
b.) submit the completed Recorded Interview and Outline (25 points) for your oral history report; and
c.) turn in the completed Final Draft of the oral history report (25 points).

NOTE: You must complete all parts of a oral history report by the deadlines listed in the Course Schedule for the assignment to factor in to your final average and your final grade. You may not earn "partial credit." The points on the outlines and final drafts are not extra credit.

Instead, like the quizzes and exams, the points on oral history report are calculated in the total course average.

See your Course Schedule for the dates by which you must submit: a Respondent, the Recorded Interview and the Outline, and the Final Draft.

REMINDER:

Failure to take all fourteen (14) Chapter Quizzes and all (5) Unit Exams will result in a F in the course.
The highest grade you can earn in the course without a completed Oral History Report is a C.

For the grade of A

In addition to the two course contacts, the student must complete all fourteen (14) quizzes, take all five (5) exams, and:

make a total course average of 90% on the 14 quizzes, the 5 exams, and one completed A-Level Objective:
the Oral History Report.

Failure to take all fourteen (14) Chapter Quizzes and all (5) Unit Exams will result in a F in the course.

NOTE: The highest grade you can earn in the course without a completed Oral History Report is a C.

To complete the A-Level objective see the Oral History Report page for details on how to:

a.) submit the Respondent for your oral history report;
b.) submit the completed Recorded Interview and Outline (25 points) for your oral history report; and
c.) turn in the completed Final Draft of the oral history report (25 points).

Instead, like the quizzes and exams, the points on oral history report are calculated in the total course average.

See your Course Schedule for the dates by which you must submit: a Respondent, the Recorded Interview and the Outline, and the Final Draft.

In addition to the two course contacts, the student must complete all fourteen (14) quizzes, take all five (5) exams, and:

earn a total course average of 80% (20 out of 25 questions) on the 14 quizzes, the 5 exams, and a completed Oral History Report for a B;

earn a total course average of 90% (22.5 out of 25) on the 14 quizzes, 5 exams, and a completed Oral History Report for an A.

REMINDER:

Failure to take all fourteen (14) Chapter Quizzes and all (5) Unit Exams will result in a F in the course.
The highest grade you can earn in the course without a completed Oral History Report is a C.

See your Course Schedule for the dates by which you must submit: a Respondent, the Recorded Interview and the Outline, and the Final Draft.

Walt Whitman referred to the United States as not one nation but a “teeming nation of nations.” With rare exception, everyone in America came from somewhere else, or their family did. Most came by choice; many did not. And while Americans love to celebrate Emma Lazarus's words -- “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” -- new arrivals rarely received a warm welcome. The dynamic and contentious interplay of new peoples engaging those who came before remains one of the mainstays of our history and a process that continues to define our identity as a people. Students will have the opportunity to delve into their own family history as they seek to understand the complex challenges that immigrants over time have faced and still face in the ever changing human landscape that is the United States of America.

The oral history Respondent will be chosen in consultation with the instructor. Respondents can be family members, neighbors, family friends, co-workers, classmates, or someone you have just met. No, your respondent does NOT have to be an immigrant. They must, however, have reached 18 years of age by 1970. That is, they must have been born no later than 1952. Please send me an email with the name and birthdate of your respondent no later than the deadline listed in the Course Schedule.

Students will rely on the suggestions contained in the Sample Questions (See below) to direct the conversation with their respondent. Feel free to range beyond the categories and specific questions listed below, but be sure that you do cover each of the categories that you will need to write about in your final draft. To ensure that you can accurately depict the words and experiences of your respondent, students must record the interview. Use a recording device, e.g., tape recorder, smart phone, Skype, fb, chat, Google Voice, email. Students will be expected to turn in their Recorded Interview with their Outline. See Turning in the Recorded Interview below.

Students are expected to provide appropriate historical context for the events of their respondent's life. To help the reader understand the time and place of the respondent's life, students will use at least three secondary sources.

Students must use scholarly works that investigate an aspect of immigration in the United States that corresponds with the respondent's experiences. Encyclopedias and general information web sites, e.g., The History Channel, Wikipedia, History.com, etc., are not considered scholarly works and will not be accepted as secondary sources. You may use your textbook, Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, vol. 2, as one of your secondary sources.

Students will be expected to turn in their Recorded Interview with their Outline. You must turn in the recording either on tape, or submit the recording on a disc/CD or via e-mail as a file that can played on Windows Media Player or through a link to some supporting software or website like Audacity, Google, iTunes, and so on. Students and are strongly encouraged to make sure that the instructor can retrieve any and all electronic files prior to any and all deadlines. It is the students' responsibility -- and not the instructors -- to ensure the accurate and timely submission of all course materials. Do it early! And give me a call during my electronic office hours if you have any questions about how to submit the interview.

See your Course Schedule for the dates by which you must: select a Respondent, turn in a preliminary Outline, and turn in the Recorded Interview and the Final Draft.

Once students have completed the Interview chosen for the review, the next step is to organize the pertinent information from the Interview and the secondary sources into a detailed Outline. The Outline serves as crucial preparation for writing the Final Draft. Students will use the structure provided on the Outline page to evaluate the details provided in the Interview and the secondary sources so that you can organize the relevant portions into a coherent whole. Students will be expected to include at least five quotes in each of the five evidence paragraphs in the body of the outline. And students will be expected to keep the same number of quotes in the Final Draft that they presented in the Outline documented by endnotes. The details in the Outline will become the basis for the Final Draft, so the time and effort you spend on the Outline will have a direct effect on the likelihood that you will be able to complete an "acceptable" Final Draft.

See the Outline page for details on completing the assignment and then review the Outline format. Copy and paste the Outline format to a Word document. Then, write your sentences, insert all of your quotes from the Respondent and the three secondary sources, update the format, and insert all 25 endnotes and add a bibliography:

See your Course Schedule for the dates by which you must: select a Respondent, turn in a preliminary Outline, and turn in the Recorded Interview and the Final Draft.

The Final Draft must be seven paragraphs in seven pages, no more and no less. Do not include a title page; just put the title and your name at the top of the first page, with appropriate spacing. The endnotes and bibliography do not count in the length.

Use the completed Outline as the template for your Final Draft. Refine your purpose in the thesis, topic, and concluding sentences you wrote for the Outline. Because the Final Draft must be seven paragraphs in seven pages, you likely will not have room to use all of the words in the quotes that you have from the Outline. And students will be expected to keep the same number of sentences with quotes in the Final Draft that they presented in the Outline documented by endnotes. So students will often have to trim the quotes presented in the outline before including them in sentences in the Final Draft. Extract the key information from the quotes you collated for the Outline. Then, weave in selected portions of the quotes into sentences you create. Use the sentences with quotes to serve as the body of your evidence paragraphs. Again, be sure that you keep the same number of sentences with quotes and endnotes from the Outline in the Final Draft. Please see use the ACC Library link below to Turabian for details on:

The Final Draft must demonstrate the student's ability to write clearly, use good grammar and punctuation, analyze the material in a concise manner, and offer thoughts on the period, themes, and the person in question. Students completing the Final Draft will also be asked to give some comparison of what they learned from their Respondent with the material contained in the secondary sources and in Give Me Liberty! as appropriate.

There are a few important things to consider when you write the Final Draft. To begin with you must:

When you write your findings, DO NOT ASSUME that you can leave out critical information because you know that I am familiar with the time period.
Instead, you must tell me the:

so that I will clearly understand your interviewee’s life, your analysis of their experiences, and your reaction to the interview as a whole.

One of your tasks in this assignment is to show that you can digest an entire interview of a person’s life, and then distill it down to its essence. You simply do not have the space to repeat everything. So, do not waste time and effort trying to rewrite their life history.

Each paragraph in the Final Draft should be at least thirteen (13), but NOT more than seventeen (17), lines long -- NOT sentences, but lines on the page. Each paragraph is a mini-paper. Make the first sentence of each paragraph an introduction to that paragraph. Tell your reader what to expect in the paragraph. This is called the topic sentence. Summarize your point at the end of the paragraph, like the conclusion of a paper. In between, give lots of evidence to prove your point.

Begin each paragraph in the Final Draft with a dynamic topic sentence that tells the reader who did what and why it matters. History is first and foremost about people, so your review will evaluate a life history that recounts some aspect of life in America. When you tell your reader what you are going to talk about, you describe the 'what.' When you tell your reader who did what and then explain 'why' it matters, now you analyze. So be sure to start your paragraph with a topic sentence that explains who did what and why.

Make your sentences active. Fill your review with verbs that move the reader along from point to point. Writing that relies on the verb "to be" -- is, was, are, etc. -- quickly becomes repetitious and will NOT convince your reader. If you cannot eliminate the verb "to be" entirely, come very close. Again, explain who did what and why they did it. Make sure that each sentence has an historical actor performing some action for some reason; tell me who did what and why.

Students will be expected to keep the same number of sentences with quotes in the Final Draft that they presented in the Outline documented by endnotes.

Quotes help spice up a paper by giving the reader the flavor of the interview. So, include quotations where appropriate to illustrate your points. Using quotes helps to establish your understanding of the key themes, events, person, etc., in your interview. Hence, the use of quotes constitutes a substantial portion of your Final Draft grade. Use the quotes from the outline as the basis for your evidence, argument, and overall purpose. Use your words to present the selected portions of quotes in order to bring your respondent's experiences to life. And students will be expected to keep the same number of sentences with quotes in the Final Draft that they presented in the Outline documented by endnotes.

ALL ASSIGNMENTS -- OUTLINE AND FINAL DRAFT -- MUST CONFORM TO THE FORMAT SPECIFICATIONS BELOW. ANY OUTLINE OR FINAL DRAFT THAT DOES NOT CONFORM TO THE FORMAT SPECIFICATIONS BELOW will lose Points:

The above particulars are designed to ensure that all students complete works of similar length.

ALL ASSIGNMENTS -- OUTLINE AND FINAL DRAFT -- MUST CONFORM TO THE DOCUMENTATION SPECIFICATIONS BELOW. ANY OUTLINE OR FINAL DRAFT THAT DOES NOT CONFORM TO THE DOCUMENTATION SPECIFICATIONS BELOW WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

The documentation requirements for the completed Outline and Final Draft are:

To ensure that you give credit where credit is due, please refer to the source from which you extracted information with an endnote and a bibliography using the appropriate formatting (see above). For the correct style, start with Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). The ACC Library has a an excellent link to Turabian. You can also use the The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Both the Chicago Manual of Style and the Turabian guides can be found at the ACC Library.

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If you have a recording of the interview, then be sure to include the timestamp, the time on the recording where the quote begins and ends.

When you have the interview in consecutive notes with a different timestamp, then do:

First, if you recorded the interview with a phone, or Skype, or chat, or fb, then change Tape recording to:

Next, punctuate the interview in the notes and the biblio. like any other note or biblio. citation, i.e., commas to separate elements in the notes; periods to separate elements in the bibliography.

Finally, use a first-line indent in the notes and a hanging indent in the bibliography.
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The ACC Librarians have put together a remarkable page with all kinds of details and examples for you to follow. And, a link for asking questions! Check out Turabian. Please use the appropriate formatting -- including margins, font size and type, and spacing (see above).

Recognize that an Outline rife with misspellings and format, documentation, and grammatical errors will not be considered acceptable. Any Outline that does not conform to the format requirements above will NOT be accepted. If you submit your Outline before the deadline date in the Course Schedule and it is graded "NOT ACCEPTED" you may revise it and resubmit it prior to the deadline date. Outlines submitted more than one day after the deadline listed in the Course Schedule will NOT be accepted.

ALL ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE NO LATER THAN 11:59 PM ON THE DEADLINE LISTED IN THE COURSE SCHEDULE;

STUDENTS WHO DO NOT SELECT A RESPONDENT BY THE DEADLINE LISTED IN THE COURSE SCHEDULE WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO SUBMIT A FINAL DRAFT;

ANY OUTLINE THAT IS SUBMITTED MORE THAN ONE DAY AFTER THE THE DEADLINE LISTED IN THE COURSE SCHEDULE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED;

STUDENTS WHO TURN IN AN OUTLINE THAT IS "NOT ACCEPTED" WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO SUBMIT A FINAL DRAFT.

STUDENTS WHO DO NOT TURN IN AN OUTLINE WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO SUBMIT A FINAL DRAFT.

ANY FINAL DRAFT THAT IS NOT SUBMITTED BY 11:59 PM ON THE DEADLINE LISTED IN THE COURSE SCHEDULE WILL RECEIVE 70% MAXIMUM CREDIT;

ANY FINAL DRAFT SUBMITTED MORE THAN ONE DAY AFTER THE DEADLINE LISTED IN THE COURSE SCHEDULE OR AFTER THE SEMESTER ENDS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

Students may submit the Respondent choice, the Outline, the Recorded Interview, and the Final Draft via e-mail as a Word OR PDF attachment by 11:59 pm on the deadline listed in the Course Schedule.

See your Course Schedule for the dates by which you must: select a Respondent, turn in a preliminary Outline, and turn in the Recorded Interview, and submit the Final Draft.