Central to Learning and Teaching in the School of History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham is critical enquiry, debate and self-motivation, summed up by the term Enquiry Based Learning.
What does this mean for you?
Enquiry-based learning describes an environment in which learning is driven by the shared enquiry of students and tutors. Depending upon the level and the discipline, it can encompass problem-based learning, evidence-based learning, small scale investigations, field work, projects and research.
Enquiry-based learning places you at the centre of your own learning process so that you learn through involvement and ownership and not simply by being a passive recipient of information thrown at you. You will spend time developing comprehension and note-taking skills. History is a subtle and complex subject and the literature you need to master can be demanding and complex. To ‘get’ it, you need plenty of thinking time. Reading, thinking and analysing for yourself are the most important parts of your degree experience. This approach will enable you to take control of your own learning as you progress through your degree. Moreover, it will encourage you to acquire essential skills that are highly valued by employers: creativity, independence, team-working, goal-setting and problem-solving.
The overall approach we adopt is one of more heavily weighted contact hours in Year 1, but tapering off over years 2 and 3, as you begin to acquire greater confidence in discussion and writing. We are strongly committed to small-group seminar teaching, particularly in the final two years of your degree: you will find that most of your teaching happens not in large, anonymous lectures but in smaller groups of students where you can actively participate in discussion and have the benefit of personal contact with academic staff. In your final year, you will also have individual tuition to help you work on your dissertation. As you progress through the syllabus, you are offered an increasingly wide range of particular subject choices.
Year 1 is highly directed – much of it lies in helping you to acquire a general overview of the medieval, early modern and near contemporary past. The ‘Practising History’ module introduces you to the key skills needed to study History at degree level and enables you to study select historical episodes. All this will help you make more informed decisions about subject choices in Years 2 and 3. These topics are increasingly specialised and enable you to get to grips with them in real depth. During your first year you will undergo a formal ?transition? review to see how you are getting on and offer you help for any particular areas where you need support.
In Year 2, in each term, you have a choice of around 15 Options to study. You will start doing preparatory work for your final-year dissertation, selecting a topic, assessing its feasibility and engaging in preliminary discussions with potential supervisors. The module History in Theory and Practice, provides an overview of the evolution of history writing and an introduction to key issues confronting historians to-day: you will find this helps you reflect on your own historical research. A notable feature of Year 2 is Group Research: about a dozen specialised historical topics for you to research, not, however, as individuals, but on a collective basis. You are divided into groups of 5-6 students, to work as a team, and to produce at the end, both individual essays and a group presentation on what you have researched. The capacity to work as part of a team, to know what it is like to have to accommodate yourself to the way others work, is a valuable asset for future employment.
In Year 3, there are some 20 Special Subjects for you to choose from, ranging from the early medieval period almost up to the present day, and covering a wide range of British, European and non-European areas. You approach the particular subject not only through reading but also by intensive study of original documents. In addition, there are around a further 14 Final Year Options to choose from in each of the autumn and spring terms. The real centre-piece of the Final Year, however, for most students is their dissertation – a piece of extended writing on a subject of your choice and which requires significant use of archival and other primary source materials. You will have done extensive preparatory work for this in Year 2. In Year 3, you will have a calibrated set of one-to-one consultation sessions with an academic supervisor, who will comment and advise on your drafts. This will be real academic writing and the results are often impressive.
Support
Personal Tutor
From the outset, you will be assigned your own Personal Tutor who will get to know you as you progress through your studies, providing academic and welfare advice, encouraging you and offering assistance in any areas you may feel you need extra support to make the most of your potential and your time here at Birmingham. Your Personal Tutor is assigned to you at the start of your course and will usually remain with you until graduation, helping in supporting your academic progress, developing transferable skills and helping with welfare issues. All academic staff will also provide 'Office Hours' each week in term time, during which you are free to contact and discuss any issues you wish with the tutor involved.
Student Mentor and Buddy Scheme
Within the College our enthusiastic current students act as mentors to our new students. This will provide new students with a friendly face to help you settle in.
Academic Writing Advisory Service
The Academic Writing Advisory Service (AWAS) will provide you with individual support from an academic writing advisor and postgraduate subject-specialist writing tutors. You'll receive guidance on writing essays and dissertations at University-level which can be quite different from your previous experiences of writing. Support is given in a variety of ways, such as small-group workshops, online activities and feedback through email and tutorials.
Learning settings
Lectures explore a particular text, topic or context, often involving brief factual descriptions and outlining major questions and interpretations. Their main purpose is to challenge and stimulate, encouraging you to come to your own conclusions based on further reading and seminar debates.
Small-group seminars run alongside the lecture course, addressing any individual problems you may have and allowing you to consolidate lecture material. Options and special subjects in years two and three are also taught in small seminar groups. When you attend seminars we expect you to deliver short papers and presentations, and to contribute to the sessions through argument and questioning. We want you to develop the confidence to put your own point of view across in complex situations and not to be afraid of challenging the views of others. It's an essential part of History: once you stop arguing about the subject, it becomes dead.
Group research is one of the main features of your second year, with around a dozen specialised historical topics for you to research on a collective basis. Divided into groups of five to six students, you?ll work as a team to produce individual essays and a group presentation on your research findings. The capacity to work as part of a team, and to know what it is like to have to accommodate yourself to the way others work, is a valuable asset for future employment.
One-to-one tutorials become increasingly important as you progress through your course. This is particularly the case in your final year, when a major part of your programme will be a dissertation on a topic of your choice. Tutorials enable you to discuss your research with your project supervisor in depth.
Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is an excellent tool for supporting our academic courses, allowing you to share thoughts on assignments with other students via the discussion group facilities, and even submit your work electronically.
Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) means that learning is driven by the shared enquiry of students and tutors and it's central to our approach. EBL places you, the student, at the centre of your own degree: you learn through involvement and ownership, not simply by being a passive recipient of information thrown at you. It can encompass problem-based learning, evidence-based learning, small scale investigations, field work, projects and research. We believe that this is the best way of learning while you're at Birmingham as it's very effective in enabling you to acquire the key skills and attributes that are valued by employers: creative and independent thinking, self-motivation, self-organisation, team-working, goal-setting and problem-solving.
Studying at degree-level is likely to be very different from your previous experience of learning and teaching; you will be expected to think, discuss and engage critically with the subject and find things out for yourself. We will enable you to make the change to this new style of learning, and the way that you are assessed during your studies will help you develop the essential skills you need to make a success of your time here at Birmingham.
During your first year you will take part in formal 'transition' review with your personal tutor to see how you are getting on and if there are particular areas where you need support.
Each module is assessed independently and many contain some components of continuous assessment, which usually account for around one-third of the marks. Assessment methods used include end-of-year examinations, written assignments, oral presentations, and the Final-Year dissertation. We use a wide variety of assessments because that, we believe, is the best way to judge fairly what you have to offer.
We place strong emphasis on providing prompt and informative feedback on all pieces of work that you submit during your studies. At the beginning of each module, you will be given information on how and when you will be assessed for that particular programme of study. You will receive feedback on each assessment within four weeks, highlighting the positives of your work as well as any areas that need more attention, so that you can learn from and build on what you have done. Feedback comes mainly in written form on pieces of assessment, as class feedback sessions and in one-on-one discussions with your tutors.