No textbook? Woo hoo!
The good news is, you save $50 or $60 bucks.
The bad news is, you are going to have to work harder because of it.
Dull as they can be, textbooks fulfill a vital role in a survey course: they cover all the bases. They may not cover any one topic well, but neither do they overlook anything important. With a textbook you get the tour bus approach to the past, with a little taste of everything. The downside of the tour bus is that you explore nowhere in detail. If you want to look at something at length, because it has caught your fancy, too bad. Back on the bus!
I have abandoned the textbook for a variety of reasons, but both you and I have to do the work that was formerly done by the textbook. While we get to explore, we still need to try to cover all the bases. After all, if a French tourist spent six weeks in Idaho then went home, she could say she learned a lot, but she could not say she had seen America.
This course is about European history from the ancient Greeks through the Thirty Years War. Somehow, you have to read a little about everything important across that entire 2000 year span. Your job is to do the reading and to demonstrate your understanding through a series of assignments, including class discussion. My job is to construct good assignments and to evaluate your work, but it's also to let you know what constitutes "the basics" and show where you might find information about them. I've done that by my choice of topics for assignments, my choice of online readings (including my own essays), and by providing some standard reference tools such as the timelines or maps.
In a traditional class, you read the textbook(s), attend the lectures, and that's it. You know the boundaries of what's expected. This class works a little differently. You have a core set of expectations: participate in discussion, and do the assignments. I have provided a set of resources online, but I expect that you will read as much as you need to read in order to do what's assigned.
How much is that? I cannot say, for the amount one person reads to gain understanding will be different from the amount another reads. This varies not only by native intelligence but also by how fortunate you are in your choice of reading material.
The trouble with online information is that certain topics get done to death while other topics are quite neglected. The Net reflects the preoccupations of humanity in general, which are *ahem* not entirely academic in focus. For all its terabytes of information, the Net does not contain all of what can be found in any freshman college history book. I've done my best to show the gaps and to provide ways for you to fill them. That's one of the reasons for the short writing assignments. But you will certainly wind up consulting physical books. If you happen to have a history textbook around the house, you will no doubt find it useful.
If the Net isn't up to snuff, why am I doing this? Two reasons.
First, I like to experiment. I like to try new ways of teaching. By listening to the students about what works and what doesn't, I improve as a teacher and keep engaged with the process.
Second, the Net will catch up. Is catching up, with more material available every month. Abandoning the textbook two years ago would have been out of the question. Having everything online brings certain benefits and I want to explore the possibilities now, while the new teaching environment is in formation.
So, you are part of an experiment. Or, more accurately, you have joined a group of explorers. Maybe you are just looking to fill a core credit. Maybe you want only to hop on a tour bus and be led around the main highways of history. There's nothing at all wrong with that. But if that is what you want, you had better drop my class. Because here, we're backpacking cross-country, relying more on a compass heading than an itinerary. And you're being led by an outfitter who insists on doing things the right way. If that appeals to you, then welcome! I am quite sure you will both learn a lot of history and learn things of personal interest.