Syllabus
Modern China History, Politics and Culture
HI/POL 442
Chaminade University of Honolulu
Spring Evening 2014

Instructor:              

Terrence Monroe
2023 Coyne St.
Honolulu, HI  96826
808.941-7140

Experienced as an instructor of in-class courses (since 1974) and online courses (since 2000) in various disciplines of world history and contemporary Asian civilizations for colleges and universities throughout the United States. Educational background: Master of Arts Degree in Asian Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1974; Bachelor of Arts Degree in Asian Studies, 1973.

Course Overview:	

This course examines those major events and issues in China’s modern history that shaped its politics, culture, and industrialization. It makes comparisons and describes linkages, historically and culturally, between China, its Asian neighbors, and the Western powers. Its addresses China’s turmoil under Mao Zedong and surveys its unprecedented economic development and impact on the global community.

About Mind Mapping:

This course uses “mind mapping” (a concept actually pioneered by Leonardo da Vinci some 500 years ago, but which we’ve taken to a new level). Mind mapping is premised on the idea that all information is inter-related, and mind maps are a way of laying out information visually so that the learner can see how everything fits together. It uses a “relational ontology” to link information together in terms of causes, means, consequences, meaning, implications, shared concept, and more. 

This course invites you the learner to go wherever you like in the mind maps and explore whichever topics most interest you (while at the same time developing a balanced and well-rounded perspective of the overall material), and it asks you to develop insight into the meaning and implications of those topics. You will find that there is considerably more information and multimedia resources available on your topics of interest than you will find in a textbook (which is why no text is required).

Course Requirements:

Please note: this course has special requirements (as explained here), so please review these carefully before registering.

•	This course is conducted entirely online, and there are no face-to-face meetings.

•	This course requires you to have a desktop or laptop computer; tablets and phones are inadequate for mind map display, and are not acceptable for this course.

•	All of your assignments will be done in either Power Point or Keynote (the Mac counterpart to Power Point).

•	You will be required to complete an evaulation of your experience with this course upon its conclusion. Your feedback is especially valued, given that this is course involves a new learning technology, and your comments will be carefully reviewed with an eye toward improving the learner experience with future mind-mapped courses.

Text

No text is required; however, there is a $79 course management system fee, as discussed below.

Assignments and Grading:

In terms of assignments, there is only one: a written journal each week of the reflections, insights, and observations that you have developed in the course of your perusal of the mind maps. Your instructor will guide your exploration of the maps, mentor the development of your understanding of their material, provide you with ongoing evaluation of your progress, and provide guidance for productive avenues of academic inquiry.

Your grade in this course will depend on the nature and extent of your engagement with the maps and their myriad resources, and upon the quality of insight you develop into your areas of interest. A good faith effort will serve you well.

Getting Started:

Step One: Go to www.WisdomMaps.com and click on “Go to Courses” (the link is located towards the bottom of the homepage). Create an account and login, then click on “Course catalog” in the Tools section to the right. You’ll see our course (HIS/POL 321 Ancient Europe) in the “WisdomMaps Courses for Colleges” section. In the “Selected lessons” box (to the right of the screen), click on the blue “Continue” button; in the enlarged “Selected lessons” page that opens up, click on the blue “Pay now with Paypal” button to remit payment of $79.00 for the course. 

Step Two: Go to Mindjet.com, register, download your free trial of Mind Manager, and launch the app on your computer. Once you’ve done that, let your teacher know so that he can then send you a link to Dropbox (which is where you’ll find the folder of course maps) along with your Mind Manager user license key (which you can enter in Mind Manager when prompted). Please note: at the end of this course, you will be asked to uninstall this license key so that we can reassign it to another user.

Step Three: Click on the Dropbox link that the teacher sends you. In Dropbox, you’ll see a folder named “China”: just click on the blue “Download” button to the upper right of the page. Select “Download as .zip” on the drop-down menu, and the maps will then download as a .zip file into the Downloads folder on your computer. For Mac users, .zip files are self-extracting; for PC users, you may need to click on the maps you’ve downloaded to extract and upload them to your computer’s file management system. Let the instructor know if you experience any difficulties (worst case, I can always email you the maps).

Step Four: In Mind Manager, you can then access the maps through the file navigation system (under “File”); you can begin, if you like, with the “AAA Map Directory_Ancient Greece” file in the sub-folder of the same name, which has links to all the maps. Or you can browse the list of maps as they are and start with whichever map you like. It doesn’t matter where you begin; go wherever your curiosity takes you in these maps and focus on whatever strikes your fancy.

Any questions, concerns, or complications, you know who to ask. That said, welcome to the future of learning!