What Lies Beyond the Bubble? Trying Out One of the Stanford History Education Group's New History Assessments
Trying out a “Beyond the Bubble” assessment in a social studies methods classroom revealed that the assessment worked much better than any multiple choice item while retaining great ease in marking. However, as discussion of the item showed, the rubrics for the item apply the “sourcing” heuristic so literally that it loses some power. Specifically, any answer from the 19th century is automatically wrong since students are asked to think about a 20th century poster and play. Yet the authors of the play about John Brown, writing in 1930, were indeed thinking about John Brown. Answers that methods students gave that combined an item from the 19th and 20th century demonstrated considerable historical thinking.