{"id":603,"date":"2025-08-29T03:17:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T03:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/?p=603"},"modified":"2025-08-29T03:17:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T03:17:13","slug":"reflections-on-my-sabbatical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/reflections-on-my-sabbatical\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on my sabbatical"},"content":{"rendered":"

I undertook sabbatical projects during the 2024-2025 school year. My purpose was to complete three courses in project management, study data visualization using the books R for Data Visualization<\/em> and produce five visualizations from my self-study that correspond with sections 1-5 of that book, and produce teaching modules for the Fresh Water Studies project that include assignments, sources, and a template for other faculty to use. <\/p>\n

You can find the module I produced at freshwaterstudies.org<\/a> <\/p>\n

During my sabbatical leave I passed three courses at Metropolitan State University - DSCI 620 Project Management, DSCI 630 Risk in Project Management, and DSCI Leadership in Project Management at Metropolitan State University. <\/p>\n

Applying some of my newly-acquired knowledge from the project management program, I have created five new teaching modules<\/a> that are semester-long projects for students to write research reports. Students will create reports to support the creation of a new historical video game, a historical novel, a disaster preparedness team, or a new clothing and shoe brand. A fifth group will learn about project management to support the four other groups. All students will read a core group of historical texts and learn key digital humanities skills. Students will produce their weekly assignments -- based on history readings and digital humanities tools \u2013 as the stepping stones in their semester-long project to produce a research report based on their case study topics. <\/p>\n

In addition to the five semester-long modules I produced, I also created two other teaching modules, one a single-day in-person lesson on understanding river conflicts in the Indus River region, and another, that uses the Reddit form of an AMA (ask me anything) session as a public history outreach for timely events. <\/p>\n

I produced five graphs from my self-study of the book R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data. The five graphs represent data visualization skills covered in five sections of the text: \u201cWhole Game,\u201d \u201cVisualize,\u201d \u201cTransform,\u201d \u201cImport,\u201d and \u201cProgram.\u201dI used data with a variety of permissions, some of which was student data I collected and did not collect permission to publish from the students, so the graphs are ommitted from this blog but were submitted with my sabbatical report along with the Rcode for the report. <\/p>\n

Activities of Sabbatical that helped Accomplish the Objectives <\/strong><\/p>\n

The courses at MetroState<\/a> were asynchronous, so I worked on my own or with group partners to complete projects for the Project Management and Project Risk Management Course. The Leadership in Project management course was a self-study course using a Project Managment Professional Exam study book and several Harvard Business School case study modules. For the Leadership course I took the quizzes at the end of each chapter multiple times, and recorded my answers. For the the Project Management and Project Risk Management courses I took notes on all the chapters we read, and then applied my learning to projects assigned by the professor. For the Leadership course, I took notes on the chapters in the review book and then used my notes to take the quizzes and exams. <\/p>\n

Producing the teaching modules required sustained reading across many disciplines to find materials related to water history. The public bibliography generated from this reading now has 123 entries, up from around 60 when I began my sabbatical. Attending a virtual conference, Conference to Restore Humanity, helped me think about how to rework my classes around semester-long projects that allow for more revision of assignments. In the past, I dropped the lowest assignments, but that practice does not encourage continuous improvement as strongly as revisions does. As well, the conference helped me understand the limits of open teaching on the web. As a result, I am putting more of my reading and assignments behind a simple password for my students, so they and I can focus on learning and teaching, shielded from potential political haymaking or Ai scrapers. <\/p>\n

Two of the modules resulted from impromptu ideas. The lesson on the Indus River valley resulted from an invitation to guest lecture in Celeste T\u01b0\u1eddng Vy Sharpe\u2019s class. The Reddit AMA modules emerged from my desire to try a different type of public history that is just in time and low stakes learning for Normandale students. All the teaching modules resulted from typical scholarly inquiry, including researching new sources, reading and taking notes on those sources, and the distilling the elements of those sources that would serve student learning into coherent assignments. <\/p>\n

Learning data visualization involved taking notes on the R for Data Science text, and answering sample questions. More usefully, I attempted to pull data from the State of Minnesota's river databases, population data, MinnState employee pay data, student-generate data from surveys, and my own data. Using raw data that needed cleaning and reformatting required innumerous StackExchange inquiries. I learned that common questions on data reformulation result in wrong answers that are now being repopulate on the Ai produced web. For example, one questions about reformatting I had resulted in five websites that all repeated some version of \u201cif you turn \/ into a \\ , the code will work. After learning to avoid certain websites in favor or better moderated ones, I realized the incorrect source of this advice, and how it was was scrapped and then redeployed by click-farm type website. The project management courses took the most time of my sabbatical, but looking up answers to coding issues was likely the second most time-consuming activity of sabbatical. <\/p>\n

The following are lessons I will apply to my teaching resulting from my sabbatical work: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Project management is a valuable skill and the rudiments of the field are skills history students need. <\/p>\n

    Project management is practiced in so many different fields, including history, that I feel compelled to include a bit of it in my courses. One of the challenges students often face is outlining a big task, say a semester-long research paper, and then following steps to complete that ask. My goal is to increase student success by better equiping students with project management ideas, which will aid them in coursework and beyond college. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Data finding, cleaning, and organizing is more than 75% of the work in data science and I should prepare students better for this reality when it comes to historical statistics. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    After studying R for some years, I've concluded the language is not useful for undergraduate history students: it is just too complicated. That said, from my study, I have learned that finding and transforming data, in spreadsheet or database forms, remains a valuable skill. Yet, I often give my students simple data sets, say per capita GDP, that ask them only to interpret the data. From my study of R, I realize I need to design better assignments that mimic the wrangling part of historical data science, not just the interpretation. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    Centering student learning requires I offer more learning options, even though that may mean less deep attention to single topics in history. <\/p>\n

    As I wrestled with the emerging problems from Gen Ai usage by students, and I realized that projects offer a way for students to do iterative work, that is low stakes, and yet attends to the skill development as historians and as future employees. Having abandoned high-stakes testing a decade ago, my preference is for bite-sized formative assessments of learning. Gen Ai complicates that type of bite-sized assessment model. Asking a weighty historical question \u201cWhat sources and historical details should be included in a history simulation game focused on rivers\u201d I hope eliminates the usefulness of Gen Ai, while engaging student\u2019s curiosity. I originally considered offering only a couple case studies, a historical novel and historical video game. Reviewing data from my survey\u2019s indicated that many of my students were business majors, and many \u201cwant to make a difference\u201d so including a disaster recovery and brand building case study will hopefully help me meet those students where they are. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Final Thoughts<\/strong> <\/p>\n

    Most of my sabbatical projects were unfullfilling, and though ultimately useful to my students, were soul-wearing to complete. I wish I had been braver to fight to pursue more dynamic and interesting historical projects, but at the time I submitted my proposal I did not have the time or patience to argue for why the historical discipline needs innovative teaching projects. <\/p>\n

    I did create one project<\/a> on my own that relates memory, death, and food. I call it "Extending the Story" and it takes the form of a recipe sheet you give to someone you know who has lost someone to suddent death. The bereaved shares a recipe the deceased enjoyed, along with a memory of that person, extending the influence of the deceased even though thev have passed. Given more time, I'd investigate the rich history of recipe books as historical memory and mechanism for dealing with grief. <\/p>\n

    A second project I considered is finding professionals with history degrees, interviewing and photographing them, and then producing foamboard posters that read "I am a history major." There are numerous famous history majors - Steve Carell, W.E.B DuBois, Carly Fiorina, Martha Stewart, Sonya Sotomayor, Lauren Hill, Cory Booker - (I have slideshow)<\/a> but I want my students to see success in everday people. For example MPR journalist Cat Richert was a history major. <\/p>\n

    Sometimes the best projects are the ones that are done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I undertook sabbatical projects during the 2024-2025 school year. My purpose was to complete three courses in project management, study data visualization using the books R for Data Visualization and produce five visualizations from my self-study that correspond with sections 1-5 of that book, and produce teaching modules for the Fresh Water Studies project thatContinue reading “Reflections on my sabbatical”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":605,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacknorton.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}