Study Guide
About This Guide
I teach four online courses: History of Western Civilization, Crusades, Late Middle Ages, and the Reformation. Rather than make a study guide for each, I have created a single resource for all.
For the most part, the information here applies equally to all four courses. In a few places, there are different guidelines for the Western Civilization course than the other three. The first is a lower division course, the others are upper division. In Western Civ, for example, students write essays, but in the upper division courses they write term papers. Where a distinction needs to be made, I will indicate that in the text. Where I make no indication, you can assume that section applies to all my students.
Organization of the Study Guide
All my classes have a discussion portion, a writing portion, reading requirements, and all involve some element of historical research. So I have divided the Study Guide into those corresponding sections.
It is my very strong advice that you read all the pages here carefully and thoroughly. This Study Guide is a part of the Syllabus of each of my courses, so I expect that each student will be familiar with its guidelines and recommendations.
It's a lot to read, so you should budget your time. Ideal would be to have the whole Study Guide read in the first week, but if you can't manage that, at least read the links in order from top down. Especially important: don't be tempted to wait to read the guidelines on writing and research until the last minute. There's advice there that will help you from the very beginning of working on your writing assignments.
And, finally, if you have any questions about this Study Guide, please don't hesitate to ask, either in the online Discussion, or directly to me via email.