Teaching History in the Digital Age

There seemed to be some disconnect between the various readings this week. Two major topics seemed to be the focus of the authors’ concerns. Some wrote on the creation of digital content which might be used in a classroom setting, while others explored the utility of such documents in both classroom activities and in planning a curriculum. In both cases however, the underlying theme was the buzzword of the semester so far: design.

Reading through the reviews of both Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution and Who Killed William Robinson? the importance of design in creating a useful educational website seems nearly as important as content. Gregory S. Brown is enthusiastic about the design options the Web offers with regards to multimedia presentation arguing that moving beyond textual, linear documents is “a natural extension of the work we have already been doing in our scholarship and teaching,” and “that the Web in various ways foregrounds the process of representation in writing, teaching, and discussing history.” He finds that in presenting images and sound simultaneously to text, Web authors can create far more useful and instructive documents than traditional media allowed. The inherent design capabilities of digital media, then, are for Brown an important, yet natural, step forward for both research, presentation, and education.

Approaching the topic differently, but with the same end in mind, Terry Crowley’s assessment of Who Killed William Robinson? finds that in presenting thick and layered information in hypertext documents requires thoughtful design to make the content meaningful. Believing that digital media offers unprecedented opportunity to encourage critical thinking among students, without guidance both from within the website and without, much of the potential will not be realized. For example, he highlights the excellent organization of the site’s materials, but laments the ambitious amount of content, noting “The surfeit of information that can be conveyed in Internet format is one of the essential drawbacks to this Web site.” He believes here is where a classroom instructor can step in, positing, “Due to the Web site’s complexity, students cannot be thrown into it without considerable in-class preparation that includes discussion about the nature of primary and secondary sources, how to assess evidence, why some sources are better than others, and then how these ideas govern navigation of the Web site.” While the site can be used in a meaningful and instructive way, it might be overwhelming for some students, requiring teacher intervention. This is a useful point. Too often it seems that websites are thought of as self-explanatory and automated teaching devices. Really they are little more than another tool at the instructor’s disposal, and like any tool, a well-designed one will serve more usefully than one faultily conceived.

In a sense Crowley is the bridge between the content assessments and the classroom assessments presented this week. As Michael O’Malley bluntly states in his blueprint for maximizing the educational potential of the Web, “the consistent argument here is that the design of sites matters” and “an effective website must convey a unified thesis or theme.” This theme was researched by Mills Kelly who hoped to find “a clearer understanding of exactly how students actually use the technology and what role the technology plays in their learning about the past.” Kelly’s was able to identify that much of the hype about hypertext did seem to play out in the classroom. His found that students engaged in much more recursive reading, in no small part due to the associative, rather than linear, qualities of hypertext.

Though this scholarship is fairly recent, the blinding pace of development of digital technologies begs the question, where do we stand now? O’Malley’s comments were made six years ago, a short time in human history but nearly half of the Internet’s existence as we know it. Similarly, how has Kelly’s prediction of the disappearance of the coverage model from the survey course borne out over a similar period of time? I’d suggest that in some ways digital media has become inextricable from the educational experience, even when ignored by instructors. From Wikipedia to JSTOR to the projects at CHNM, there is a wealth of resources available to students who now seem more likely to look to the Web than any other source. Crafting digital material to be employed in the classroom is now more important than ever if instructors are going to leverage their expertise and continue to control certain aspects of their curriculum.

Linda Pomerantz also recognized the importance of design early, positing a series of questions five years ago that point to the need to properly assess the power of digital media in history teaching and constructing content relationships carefully to exploit its associative properties,”Should we be celebrating the creative possibilities of associational thinking and the prospect of ranging through vast fields of knowledge by means of a few mouse clicks? Should we rethink our goals in the light of this technological shift? Where do linear thinking modes intersect in this new domain, or do they?” These continue to be important question even for the most enthusiastic adopters of digital technologies, and are vital to consider in attempting to provide a positive and educational Web experience for students.