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Transforming Teaching and Learning in U.S. History through New Technologies

Chair: Sara Tucker, Washburn University and H-Teach

Abstract of session:
The internet and CD-ROM have created many new opportunities for teaching, ranging from creating courses that are entirely online, with no face-to-face contact in a bricks-and-mortar classroom, to greatly enhancing the more traditional, face-to-face class through the use of primary source materials that could not have been previously available. The three papers will explore three different dimensions of this technological revolution in teaching: Christopher Miller is respo nsible for creating an entirely online US survey course in the University of Texas system. He will discuss this experience from a theoretical perspective and will also survey and evaluate his experience. Jules Tygiel will discuss his experience in total ly revamping his upper-division lecture-discussion on the US from 1916 to1945. He has created an online syllabus that links to a wide range of primary sources. In his paper, he will discuss the ways that the easy availability of such a wide range of pri mary sources changes the nature of the class and he will evaluate the class in terms of creating new learning opportunities for students. Jeffrey Greene is a sponsoring editor at Houghton Mifflin and was primarily responsible for the development of @hist ory: An Interactive American History Source (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). In his paper, he will discuss the development (objectives, testing, evaluation) of this multimedia teaching/learning package that combines a wide variety of primary source ma terials with learning exercises. Sara Tucker, the senior editor of H-Teach, the H-Net list for teaching history, will chair and comment. Paula Petrik, who has done work both with multimedia and the internet, will comment.