Title: Seminar Practice and Reflection Portfolio
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 15 · November 30–December 4, 2026: The Contemporary West and the Politics of Memory

THE AMERICAN WEST

Seminar Practice and Reflection Portfolio

ASSIGNMENT

Seminar Practice and Reflection Portfolio

Purpose
Make preparation, contribution, revision, and intellectual growth visible.

Fall 2026 deadline: Friday, December 4, 2026, 11:59 pm Central

Automatic grace period: through Sunday, December 6, 2026, 11:59 pm Central; no permission is needed and no penalty applies. Work is not accepted after the grace period without pre-approval or extenuating circumstances.

Task

Submit a curated set of dated in-class artifacts, evidence of teach-backs, and a final evidence audit explaining how your historical questions and source practices changed. Defend the selection in a short conference.

Submission

File upload.

Criteria for success

1. Dated in-class artifacts and preparation (40)
2. Teach-backs and collaborative reasoning (30)
3. Evidence audit and final conference (30)

AI boundary

No AI for in-class artifacts or the conference. Sentence-level feedback may follow your own artifact selection and draft.

Decision Record

1. State your initial claim or plan before substantial AI assistance.
2. Name the most consequential interpretive choice you made and explain why.
3. Identify one plausible alternative you rejected and the evidence behind that decision.
4. Name evidence that changed, narrowed, or complicated your thinking.
5. State one claim you cannot fully establish with the available evidence.
6. Record AI use: tool, purpose, what you accepted, rejected, and verified—or write ‘No generative AI used.’

Process checklist

- My question or thesis is specific, contestable, and historically situated.
- I identify creator, date, audience, purpose, and collection context for key primary sources.
- I corroborate rather than asking one source to prove more than it can.
- I distinguish evidence from inference and acknowledge uncertainty.
- I cite sources and rights information; media includes captions, alt text, or a transcript.
- If I used generative AI in a permitted way, I include the required process disclosure.

Evaluation

This assignment is evaluated on four levels—Exemplary, Proficient, Developing, and Beginning—across the listed criteria. Ask for clarification before submitting if the purpose, task, or criteria are unclear.