Undergraduate Course: The Historian's Toolkit (HIST08032)

Course Outline
School	School of History, Classics and Archaeology	College	College of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	20	ECTS Credits	10
Summary	This course is the first-year training course for History students. It provides students with the 'toolkit' of the historical profession. By teaching students the skills needed at university, in an interactive and relevant way, this course facilitates the transition from secondary school to university while providing a clear break from high school teaching. It also provides a foundation for the three first-year History core courses, and is the first of two further Skills courses, in second and third year.
Course description	The Historian's Toolkit takes students through all the steps of the historical research process, from becoming familiar with history at university, understanding a course handbook (incl methods of assessment and bibliography), preparing for tutorials and lectures, getting ready for assessments, using the library, reading and taking notes, to structuring an essay and constructing an argument, following the appropriate referencing and bibliographic conventions and getting an assignment ready for submission. A large part of the course is dedicated to working with historical evidence, both primary and secondary, and including non-written sources. By building up historical skills, through interactive lectures, ALGs [Autonomous Learning Groups] and tutorials, The Historian's Toolkit trains students to think and work like a historian, and builds their confidence. The course is fully integrated into the first-year curriculum: it runs parallel to Medieval Worlds and prepares students for the coursework and assignments due in that course; in second semester, The Early Modern World and The Making of the Modern World will refer to the training received in The Historian's Toolkit, in their assessment, marking and ILOs. It is also the foundation for all second year courses, and is followed up by a new historiography course in Year 2, a further skills course(s) in Year 3 and the dissertation in Year 4.

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2017/18, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: 400
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10, Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1, Formative Assessment Hours 1, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 162 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 90 %, Practical Exam 10 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	Tasks ALGs - Pass/Fail Weekly 500-word tutorial submission - 10% Tutorial participation - 10% Annotated research plan plus 1,000 word reflection - 80%
Feedback	The course uses on-going feed-forward and peer-learning as part of the studentsż training. As part of this process tutorial submissions are discussed in each class thus providing oral feedback on the work. In addition, all students will have one individual meeting with their tutor as feedforward for their annotated research plan and reflective essay, and written feedback will be provided on that final assessment at the end of the course.
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: develop and sustain historical arguments in a variety of literary forms, formulating appropriate questions and utilising evidence interrogate, read, analyse and reflect critically and contextually upon contemporary texts and other primary sources, including visual and material sources, and secondary evidence, including historical writings and the interpretations of historians appreciate the complexity of reconstructing the past, and the problematic and varied nature of historical evidence gather and deploy evidence and data to find, retrieve, sort and data to find, retrieve, sort and exchange new information design, research, and present a sustained and independently conceived piece of historical writing