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Beginnings
In the spring of 2006 the Indiana University History Department with generous support from the university's Dean of Faculties Office launched the History Learning Project, an initiative designed to achieve the following goals:
• To define as thoroughly as possible the basic operations that are required for success in undergraduate history courses

• To develop ways of teaching these operations to undergraduates and to assess the extent to which these approaches actually succeeded in increasing students mastery of these skills

• To use the insights derived from this process to reshape the curriculum and the teaching strategies in our department

• To make these insights available to other historians and to secondary school teachers preparing students for college courses.
These efforts made use of the "decoding the disciplines" process developed in the Indiana University Freshman Learning Project and were made possible through the enthusiastic support of colleagues in our department, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning community at Indiana University.
The project is funded by the Office of the Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education, the College of Arts and Sciences and the IU History Department.
Spencer and Teagle Foundations project
In 2008, the project was awarded a grant by the Spencer and Teagle Foundations' initiative for Systematic Improvement of Undergraduate Education in Research Universities. This grant project is exploring strategies to get past two significant bottlenecks: the ways that undergraduates learn to analyze primary sources, a particularly important step in the development of historical reasoning, and the creation of original and persuasive written arguments.
Steering Committee
Arlene Díaz, Joan Middendorf, David Pace, Leah Shopkow.
HLP participants at the 2010 Summer Meetings
Back row: Eric Sandweiss, Michael Grossberg, Marissa Moorman, John Nieto-Phillips, Nicole McGrath, Jolanta Mickute, José Najar
Front Row: Joan Middendorf, Keith Eberly, Arlene Díaz, Leah Shopkow, David Pace, Catherine Brennan, Tara Saunders
Senior Fellows
2008-2009.
Padraic Kenney, Marissa Moorman, John Nieto-Phillips and Eric Sandweiss.
2009-2010.
Michael Grossberg, Marissa Moorman, José Najar and John Nieto-Phillips.
2010-2011.
Michael Grossberg, José Najar, John Nieto-Phillips and Eric Sandweiss.
Graduate Research Fellows
2008-2009: Mayumi Hoshino and Lauren Miller.
2009-2010: Keith Eberly and Nicole McGrath.
2010-2011: Jolanta Mickute and Tara Saunders.
Project Assistant
Catherine Brennan
Faculty in the Indiana University History Department who were interviewed:
Maria Bucur, Deborah Deliyannis, Konstantin Dierks, Wendy Gamber, Peter Guardino, John Hanson, Sarah Knott, Jim Madison, Marissa Moorman, Amrita Myers, John Nieto-Phillips, Scott O'Bryan, Mark Roseman, Eric Sandweiss, Lynn Struve, Kirsten Sword, and Jeffrey Veidlinger.
Faculty and graduate students who worked to create strategies for teaching and assessing specific operations:
George Alter, Dan Clasby, Kalani Craig, Tammy Jo Eckart, Elizabeth Lambert, Matthias Lehmann, Marissa Moorman, Mark Roseman, Alfio Saita, Eric Sandweiss, Steven Stowe, Heather Vrana, and Edward Watts.
Those offering support from the Dean of Faculties Office:
Jeanne Sept, Ray Smith, George Rehrey, and Jennifer Robinson.
We also wish to thank Ralph Zuzolo and his staff for their assistance with the videotaping.
* Contact information for individuals named on this page can be found on the IU History Department page. |
