Keep the forms and the quizzes. They were helpful, although the quiz set up was not well done nor easy in terms of the technology of it (how your answers had to be super specific in terms of last names and Capitalization).

In all honesty, I feel like I am taking more home from this course than any other course I have taken at LCC.  The credits I earned in this class have nothing at all to do with my major, I just thought the Civil War would be interesting, and I wasn't wrong.  It was fascinating.  I found myself using google to find out more about some of the bits that were more interesting to me like Andersonville and the Rat's Nest, and I even used Google Earth's street view to put myself near the battlefields to get a bit of a feel for what the soldiers were seeing.

I absolutely appreciated the chance to take the quiz twice in order to get a better grade as some of the questions were incredibly specific, and I feel like this helped greatly with my retention of the subject matter.

Melding facts with different perspectives and personal background stories of the major participants gave me a much better understanding of the Civil War.  

The class was much more interesting than I'd expected. Throughout highschool and even a good while past that, I was thoroughly disinterested in history, but as I grow up I find myself wanting to know more about political history specifically to form more educated opinions and understandings of today's politics and how they were built. It's nice to find that these topics are actually interesting in their own context, and I'm glad these classes are available.
Definitely keep the extra credit opportunities the way they are, those are very helpful to have. 

  I liked how clear all the instructions and expectations were.  I also really liked the focus on the Ken Burns series.  It kept me interested and emotionally connected and made me want to keep learning more.  

I liked the forums, and the episode quiz's provided a very effective way for me to be able to have focus points in the episodes.

The extra credit opportunity's provide an excellent way to help your grade. 

What worked well was the class forums, but I do think your method of grading was a little absurd. I liked comparing the book to kevin burns episodes, and even side videos you had us watch. 

I think that the instructor was great but the amount of work didn't work well for me. The information and subject was very interesting! The most unique part of the course to me was the Ken Burns clips. They were really interesting and helped further my understanding of the subject. I think that you should definitely continue with the film clips. For people who are visual learners or learn better by watching something than reading a textbook this option is great. 

winter term = online classes. Learned a lot, covered the civil war in great detail.

I think that the episodes worked very well with the readings, and made the information easier to retain and more entertaining than just reading.

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The video series was a very insightful way of getting us to learn about the civil war. I definitely think making it the focus of our class was the right move.

I enjoyed how the instructor made us question our sources of information. 

The thing that I liked most about this course was the reading's and videos we watched afterward. I am not excellent at retaining a lot of the information I have read if i am reading multiple chapters at one time. In that case the videos really came in handy when taking the quizzes and helping to get to retain more of that information and as much as I could. I would continue using the same book and same Ken Burns series as I really found those two sources together very useful for myself.

The schedule was difficult for me having something due in the middle of the week, not because I'm a procrastinator but because I take the online class so I have absolute freedom of when I turn my work in. Work, school, family, building a house... everyone is busy I know, but I like freedom of online

The best part about this course was how well organized it was. All the sources you needed were right within the week you were on right along side the quizzes. The thing I would advise you continue doing is the forums comparing different video styles to the Ken Burns videos. These comparisons helped me to learn a little more about how I learn best. 

Always the same schedule which I like.

I enjoyed the ken burn's series

I know that tactics, numorus battles and military personnel are important; however, I felt that this course was too much of a list like look at what happened in the civil war. Maybe not during the fourms, but on tests it seemed to be that way. Also the wording of questions was confusing, often disorganized and very unclear. Not all questions were, but enough to to frustrate me. I've read lots of historical texts in my free time and for class, but the book used  in this course still was one of the most dry,  in addition to uninteresting historical text/commentaries I've read. I do not mean to be mean, but again, this is just my perspective. If history were simply a list of dates and battles then this would be perfect, but it's not, and in spite of the forums the tests felt like they were set up as if students were to remember a list, not events. A paper, or several throughout the term which were not extra credit would be a better idea, in my opinion, and would also give the students a place to recieve direct feedback from the professor. I want to learn about what happened, not just be shoved with enough knowledge to pass the test and seem like I know what happened. 

The only thing I would suggest is to let us take one 3X5 notecard into the midterms and the finals with us.  The amount of information that we are required to retain, on top of all of our other classes and life in general, was way too much and was not a good reflection of what I actually took from the course.  Otherwise, excellent course and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who is interested in American history.

I thought the forum stuff was too heavily weighted against the exams and quizzes.  It was difficult to find responses in which to respond.  My goal in the forum was less about the Civil War and more about hunting other responses for something reasonable to respond to.  And again, to assign 1/3 of my grade to my ability to participate in the forum seemed odd and was the least helpful to me. 

The quizzes were a great idea except I found myself wondering whether of not my answer matched your answer.  For example:  Booth was killed in a barn?  A tobacco barn?  Or a Virginia tobacco barn?  The video said Virginia Tobacco Barn but I was afraid that answer was too long so I went with barn.  There were others that were similar.  In other words, although I was sure of the answer, I still spent hours surfing through videos and listening to the exact wording to try to guess exactly what you were looking for, or which of my correct answers were entered in a way you did not like.

And finally, I though it was lame to have given me a F grade for my picture.  What didn't you like, my face?  Was it because it was a black and white?  I used my high school yearbook picture (I'm 63 years old) and thought it should do the trick.  I get funny looks from students when I take classes or when I'm in the testing lab and prefer not to use my current picture.  And, you didn't have a problem with my picture when I took your History of Vietnam class.

While I did look forward to the Ken Burns documentaries, I think it could be beneficial to maybe have the forums focus more on evaluating events rather than the validity of the documentary. I felt like a lot of the course was based on whether or not sources were reliable and less on conversation that would prepare us for the tests. That topic is relevant, obviously, especially when approaching an event in history with no living survivors, but it felt a bit over done. I think having more conversations about the readings from Battlecry would have been helpful. 
Also, the weekly quiz layout wasn't as effective as it could have been. Unless I'm mistaken (which would be incredibly frustrating) we can see the percentage of our results, but not which questions we got wrong. Notes of feedback from forum posts also would have been nice. 
Whether or not I meet expectations as a student, I do enjoy your courses, so thanks for that. 

  I think the class was well laid out. The only thing I think I would recommend is to allow students to review quizzes and exams at least once,  so we can see what questions we missed and why. It makes studying a lot easier when you know your weaker areas and can focus a bit more study time on them.  

I think this online course is very effective, and interesting already. There may be some way of making it better, though I be dang if I can think of anything to make it better...I lived this course.

My recommendation would to be a little more polite to your students when they ask you questions. Maybe ease up on your grading scale. I worked my tail off for this class, and sadly it doesn't show. 

I would recommend getting a less dense textbook. This one was great, but with the sheer volume it was kind of hard to keep up with if you had multiple classes. This is something I struggled with. I fell behind one week and just couldn't catch up because of my other classes. This isn't an excuse, I should have managed my time better, but I think that maybe a textbook with shorter chapters would be good. That is the only suggestion I have. The rest of the course was really good!

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I think that some weeks the workload was a bit much with a full schedule in mind.  I did fall behind a time or two, but made it back to where I needed to be before each exam which was good.

None

It might be a good idea to have some of the side assignments focus on some of the generals and their warpaths throughout the war. We kinda scratched this a little, but I feel like we could go into it further. Have a week focusing on Sherman and Johnston, then another on Sheridan and Early, so on and so forth. Might be hard to get it to synch up with the documentary, though.

Some of the questions on the weekly quizzes have ambiguous answers for how specific we need to be with wording. 

I would recommend that the forums are based more on the exact readings from the assigned chapters. For myself, I would have gotten more out of it if I was able to directing talk about just what we were reading and watching that week. Opposed to some of the forums being about something off subject from what I had previously read which didn't necessarily help me continue "studying" throughout the assigned week. 

Class ran smooth and profesional

To improve the course I think narrowing down all the information would be helpful. Pages of text and hours of videos were a lot and it was hard to maintain anything that I read or watched because of the sheer volume. Making a power point or having some sort of questionnaire to answer while reading/watching videos to help guide us toward the information you specifically wanted us to take in would have been very helpful. Also for the final study guide giving us a little more direction that a 100+ list of words to study from. 

Not as much reading, 3 chapters in one week mixed with a full time student is very hard, especially when we are doubling over most of the info in the Ken burn's series.

better communicate your grading on forums!!