Resources for Students

Contents

This page provides links to guides and resources I have prepared and/or assembled for students at Nagoya University.

Please familiarize yourself with the contents, as at least some of the materials and resources on this page will be used in every class you take with me.

Also, feel free to offer suggestions to make the page easier to navigate, to improve the materials on it, etc.


Syllabi, Class Materials, etc.

Files are stored on NUSS (Nagoya University Storage Service) or Dropbox unless otherwise indicated.

Note All final projects are always due on the last day of class unless otherwise specified.

I can and will grant extensions under some circumstances, but understand that this just means more time to suffer. Finish your paper, project, etc., and get on with your life. An extension should not be needed if you plan your time well and get working early.


Google Forms (General)

Student Profile Questionnaire

  • Please fill this out at the beginning of every semester.

Midterm Course Evaluation

  • Optional, but please fill this out for all classes after the seventh or eighth week of each semester.

Final Course Evaluation

  • Please fill this out for all classes at the end of each semester.


Guides

Précis Guides

  • Instructions on how to write a précis, including examples and templates.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

  • Widely used hierarchy of educational/learning objectives.

  • An excellent visual summary from www.teachthought.com can be found here, and a taxonomy of related verbs can be found here.

Additional Guides

  • Guides for topics including but not limited to critical reading, leading discussion, analyzing primary sources, and writing papers (including citation).

Templates

  • MA/BA thesis templates and seminar paper templates. I have created Word and Pages templates for JACS MA thesis submission. They can also be adapted for an undergraduate thesis or even a seminar paper. The Word template is also listed on the JACS Documents page (below). The advantage of the templates is that they are preformatted with all of the sections you might need in the proper order, including an autogenerated, autoformatted table of contents and list of figures, etc. They are, however, overkill for most projects, the MA notwithstanding. And even for an MA thesis, you should use the template as a guideline and tool rather than as an ultimatum. If it's useful, use it. If not, don't. But at least take a peek to see what we expect and in what order.


Citation Managers

You need a citation manager.

Now you: I need a citation manager.

One more time, with gusto: I need a citation manager.

And you need one now. Do not pass Go, do not collect ¥200. Now. And forever. Or at the very least, early and often.

What is a citation manager (or reference manager)? Basically, a citation manager is software that helps you automatically cite correctly and consistently over multiple papers and in any citation format. It does the heavy lifting of correctly formatting all your citations and list of cited sources.

The University of Minnesota library has this helpful and more detailed explanation:

Citation managers are software packages used to create personalized databases of citation information and notes. They allow you to:

    • import and organize citation information from article indexes and other sources

    • save pdfs and other documents

    • format citations for your papers and bibliographies using APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, and many other styles

    • include your own notes

Getting started is relatively easy, but does require some effort. That effort pays off in huge time and stress savings down the line. In a writing-intensive program like ours, you could easily save hundreds of hours over your career. The more you spend, the more you save -- only for real. Wouldn't you rather use that time to play Animal Crossing or watch K-Pop and cat videos, take food selfies and overshare political memes or your current music playlist?

There are many citation managers out there. Here's a quick comparison of the four most popular. Because Nagoya has a site license for Mendeley and Zotero is free and open-source (and because our own Prof. Frank Bennett is one of the devs), we prefer these two. The basic functions and interface are close enough that if you can use one, you can use the other.

Here are links to two YouTube tutorial playlists to get you started. Familiarizing yourself with either or both of these citation managers early in your college career will make your life a lot easier, especially since we require a citation manager for your thesis (both undergraduate and graduate). Don't do by hand what a computer can easily do automatically -- citations, in this case.

I've prepared a more detailed guide for JACS students here, with the help of Prof. Iwata.


Library Resources Off-Campus Access Guide

Since, as of May 2020, we're all off campus for the foreseeable future, here's info on off-campus library access for electronic journals, etc.

EZ Proxy is more reliable in my experience because it always makes you login. So go with this as your first choice. However, you may have to use the two in concert. Here's why. When you click the EZ Proxy link, you will be presented with a long list of possible resources. If you know in advance that the article, etc., you're looking for is on JSTOR, for example, just click JSTOR and you'll be logged in to JSTOR with all the permissions of on-campus access.

Let's use this article as an example:

  • Tsutsui, William M. “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan.” Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 294–311.

Search your article title, etc., as usual, and voila:

This assumes that you know your source is available on JSTOR, though. What if it isn't? Or you don't know? In that case, the electronic journals link can give you that info -- and sometimes you'll be able to access the source directly from there. Let's address the second point first: if you're already logged in to the Nagoya system (CAS), you should be able to get directly to the source from electronic journals. If not, you're probably out of luck. That's why I'm calling this the less preferable method. OK, back to the first point, i.e., getting the info you need to use EZ Proxy. When you search for the journal Environmental History, you'll get a screen like this. If you want to try your luck with accessing directly, input the citation info here. But mostly, this step tells you that the journal is available via JSTOR, Oxford, and ProQuest. Now go back to EZ Proxy and choose one of those resources to actually get the source most reliably.

There is another way to get off-campus access, and that's the university VPN.

  • I don't know about Windows, but if you're a Mac user you'll have to install F5Access.

  • Also, 1) you have to use your Nagoya email, 2) the reply from the system sometimes takes seconds, and sometimes hours. Once you're logged in, it works fine, but it can be a pain to get started.


JACS Stuff

JACS Documents

  • Program-wide documents (some overlap w/ above)

  • AY2019 Handbook (Fall 2019, Spring 2020)

  • New for AY2019: I have created an Excel planner to help my advisees and other JACS students make sure they're getting the right number of the right credits despite our byzantine curriculum. It's not necessarily self-evident how to use this spreadsheet properly, so feel free to ask me for help if you're interested.

    • 2019.09 JACS Credit Planner (v1.3).xlsx (updated October 10, 2019)

    • The latest version removes the percentage bar for progress to third-year status because I couldn't fix the error I discovered. Hopefully I will add that back in to future versions.

  • Please note especially the following:


Group Work

I often ask students to work in groups both in and outside classes. The following documents sketch out my feelings about the benefits and pitfalls of group work, and best practices for overcoming the latter and enjoying the former:

Group Work (Harvard) / Guide to Group Work (UNSW)

  • See especially "Managing the process" and "Teamwork checklist"

Use the form below to provide feedback on your group members' contributions to a project.

Group Work Peer Evaluation

  • Don't forget to list the class number, since this form collects answers for all classes in the same dataset.


Diversity and Inclusion

I make a conscious and concerted effort to make my classes inclusive of all students by understanding and welcoming student diversity, including physical, cognitive, academic, social, emotional, religious, etc., differences.

Diversity is a fact, inclusion is a behavior. Inclusion happens at multiple levels, including but not limited to curriculum, in-class content and format, and evaluation. I make a concerted effort to be inclusive at least in these three aspects of class planning and implementation, but I also know that this is a learning process and that I can do better. Please feel free to approach me with ideas about how I can improve.

Also, please let me know as early as possible if you would like or require any special accommodation; my priority is the success of all students both individually and collectively, so I will work with you to the extent practicable within the current environment of higher education in Japan.


Request a Meeting

  • You can book an appointment during my online office hours using this link. If you object to using Zoom due to privacy issues, etc., please let me know and I will schedule a meeting with Jitsi. That requires you to download the app, but it's free and open source (i.e. transparent about privacy and security practices).