History dep

riley123

I've heard the history dep here is pretty awful, is that actually true. Oh and what's the cricket club like?

Reply 1

sydneybridge

Please define 'awful'?

And who have you heard this from?

University of Bristol

Bristol

Reply 2

Inazuma

Also awful as in subject or teaching or course itself?

I know a fair few doing history and while I've never interrogated them, none have ever said they hate it let alone dislike it. Not sure who you heard that from but not correct.

Reply 3

304820

It depends what you mean. The department is good in terms of the research it produces. It is good in terms of the undergraduates it admits. But in terms of contact hours you might as well burn your tuition fees.

Reply 4

sydneybridge

Original post by 304820

But in terms of contact hours you might as well burn your tuition fees.

New undergrads are always amazed a the number of hours they actually get taught - not just at Bristol, at all Universities.

They often think that Uni is like school - but bigger. It isnt, its a totally different way of learning and here you get to do FAR more on your own. And if you dont 'get' this, it doesnt mean that the teaching is 'awful', it means that you havnt actually worked out what reading for a history degree involves. Yes, it involves reading, not sitting in a classroom being talked at. And btw, your tuition fees pay for all the other stuff you take for granted - like buildings, IT provision, Well stocked libraries, lecture halls, classrooms, furniture, cleaners, coffee shops, a health service, Open Days, admissions staff, a careers service, sports facilities, transport, subsidised accommodation, the helpful admin staff who answer all your questions, and all the other things you assume are just 'provided'.

As part of the students handbook (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/history/migrated/documents/handbook.pdf) you will find an explanation of the ratioanle behind 'contact hours' (pp. 18-19) which includes these important observations :

As we make clear to prospective students during the admissions process, the most distinctive part ofour teaching in the department, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, is that we seek totrain our students to be active rather than passive historians. We trust that our students do not wish merely to be told what happened, or even why it happened. They do not want to spend half or even two-thirds of their week in huge lecture theatres being talked at. They want to investigate themselves what happened in the past, and why; and they want to communicate and discuss their findings and their ideas with others in small group seminars and in their written work.

A university is emphatically not like a supermarket, where you pick your degree off a shelf because you've paid for it; it is more like a gym or a health club, where training and facilities are provided but where it is your responsibility to make the best use of them. If you skip all the preparatory reading for class, or try to get by with only the minimum amount of reading, or question-spot for exams rather than developing a proper understanding of the subject, or fail to engage in discussion and debate,you will very likely be intellectually flabby and unfit at the end. The more you put into preparation for classes and tutorials, therefore, the more you will get out of your undergraduate studies.

So, if you want to be spoonfed by 'teachers', endlessly talked at with no opportunity to question, and provided with weekly photocopied notes and text extract, and be told what to think, then go to a less demanding University. If you want a degree that you have worked for, and where you have developed skills of independent enquiry and analysis, then Bristol will be proud to have you.

History dep

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