Technology and Constructivist Teaching in Post-secondary Instruction: Using the World Wide Web in an Undergraduate History Course

 

DRAFT - Version 2.0

 

 

Natalie B. Milman (nmilman@virginia.edu)

Walter F. Heinecke (wfh@virginia.edu)

University of Virginia

Curry School of Education

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 1999, Montreal, Canada. Session # 11.22.

I feel somewhat daunted standing here on the edge of the Civil War. It is a subject I have studied more times over than I can accurately count, and yet it never fails to present itself in a different way to my examination. I relish in casualty numbers, regimental histories, and have been known to be able to rattle off the horses of commanding generals, north and south. But now I find myself on unfamiliar and unfriendly ground, I feel like Lee perched atop Seminary ridge, looking up at Meade, and not knowing where to go, but only where he had come from.

[Student11-Journal Entry]

 

Introduction

Who says higher education is not changing? It is and technology is fostering that change. Studies by the United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment (OTA, 1988, 1995) and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Researc h and Improvement (OERI, 1993) suggest that technology has the potential to redefine and change teachers’ roles in the classroom. Under the right conditions, technology can foster a shift in the teacher’s role from one of "sage on the stage" to that of facilitator. By using technology, "[teachers] can go beyond the traditional information delivery mode where they are presenters of ready-made knowledge, and become facilitators of students’ learning" (OTA, 1988, p. 91). The use of tec hnology also can impact students who "become more actively engaged in learning and thinking than during traditional lecture-oriented lessons" (OTA, 1988, p. 91). The potential for technology supported instructional change is significant.

In the traditional university classroom, professors teach in a lecture format with very little student interaction. In this sense, professors act as the "sage on the stage" where students soak up all the knowledge professors have to shar e. This study explores what happens when a professor introduces the use of technology, such as the World Wide Web (WWW), into a classroom that has traditionally been taught in a lecture format. It asks: What happens when technology is used as the primary vehicle for instruction rather than the traditional lecture format? How do the professor’s and students’ roles change? Does the professor relinquish his/her role as purveyor of knowledge? Do students become more active in the learning process? This is a qualitative case study about the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) as the primary medium for instruction and learning in an undergraduate history course taught at the University of Virginia. Following is a discussion of the conceptual framework for th e study, the research design, the research methods, and the resulting findings.

There have been calls for the reform of post-secondary instruction and post-secondary institutions are undergoing transformation (Kovalchick, 1998; Person, 1994). An underlying premise in this reform is that technology can promote changes in instru ction and learning. Barr and Tagg (1995) contend that "[a] paradigm shift is taking place in American higher education...Subtly but profoundly we are shifting to a new paradigm: A college is an institution that exists to produce learning&q uot; (p. 12). In the new "Learning Paradigm," there is a shift from the passive learning that occurs in traditional lecture courses, to more active learning where "students must be active discoverers and constructors of their own learning& quot; (p. 21). The new "Learning Paradigm" is constructivism. "Central to the vision of constructivism is the notion of organism as ‘active’--not just responding to stimuli, as in the behaviorist rubric, but engaging, grappling, and seekin g to make sense of things" (Perkins, 1992, p.49). In this sense, the roles of teachers and students shift; the teacher provides guidance and students devise their own learning. In addition, Smith (1997) asserts that technology can support the shift from traditional teacher-centered to more learner-centered approaches. The Digital History course is an example of how technology can be used in a constructivist environment. This qualitative case study of how the WWW was used in a university history cl assroom provides insights into the effective use of technology in constructivist reform. Other academic disciplines, moreover, may benefit from these insights as well.

This study examines the following research questions:

  1. What is the role of the instructors and the students in the learning process using the World Wide Web (WWW) to present historical narratives?
  2. How do students construct meaning in this type of a learning environment?
  3. How do instructors adapt the advantages of technology to serve instructional needs?
  4. What does it mean to "do" history? What is digital history?

Research Methodology and Methods

Paradigm and Conceptual Framework

The paradigm for this study is interpretive inquiry (Erickson, 1986). We chose to work from this paradigm because of our assumptions that social and educational reality is multiple and complex. Complex systems operate as networks of individuals wh ere differing meaning perspectives interact. Reality is not viewed as separate from the individual but is viewed as complex, contextual, and embedded in multiple contexts. Reality is seen as of our own making and beyond our own making. Human acts are se en as intentional. The main epistemological and methodological assumptions of interpretive inquiry are the focus on meanings and patterns of meanings reflected in social interaction and the interplay between such interaction and the wider social context i n which it occurs. Erickson (1986) explains that social interaction should be examined from the actors’ points of view in a "wider social world" (p. 120); each of these points of view can have a different, even conflicting perspective. In such inquiry, the objective is to answer (or to discover and analyze) what is happening from the participants’ points of view and to make sense of the patterns of meaning held by the various participants?

The conceptual framework defines the role of the researcher, forecasts the design for data collection, and grounds the study in a larger context. The conceptual frameworks used for this study were symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969) and construc tivist theory (Brooks & Brooks, 1993; Fosnot, 1989; Piaget, 1977; Vygotsky, 1962, 1978). Symbolic interaction rests on three primary assumptions: 1) human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them; 2) that the me anings of things are the product of social interaction; and 3) that meanings change when self reflective individuals symbolically interact with each other (Denzin, 1992). This approach applied to the study of teaching and learning defines each classroom as a culture created by students and teachers as they interact over a period of time. A symbolic interactionist investigation into technology and instruction seeks to find out how meanings and definitions get worked out in practice and how the classroom works (Bolster, 1983).

While there are different views of constructivism, such as cognitive and sociocultural constructivism, Duffy and Cunningham (1996) contend that constructivists of all stripes generally perceive "(1) learning [as] an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge, and (2) instruction [as] a process of supporting that construction rather than communicating knowledge" (p. 171). In addition, they assert that constructivists "view the learning as the activity in context" where "[the] situation as a whole must be examined and understood in order to understand learning" (p. 171.)

Research Design

Yin (1994) suggests that the case study, "an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context" (p. 13), offers a "distinct advantage" over other research strategies "when a ‘how’ or ‘why ’ question is being asked about a contemporary set of events over which the investigator has little or no control’ (p. 9). Because the study is based on such questions, this research strategy was chosen. Data were collected over the course of a semester and included interviews with students and professors, classroom observations of nearly every class, and document review. Analytic assertions about the meaning of the data were generated using analytic induction (Erickson, 1986). Analytic induction calls for the generation of empirical assertions which are then warranted through a search for instances of confirming or disconfirming evidence. Each of these methods is described more thoroughly in the data collection and data analysis sections below.

Course Context and Setting

The genesis of HIUS 403, Digital History and the American Civil War, is the result of a University-wide Teaching and Technology Initiative (TTI) fellowship. The TTI fellowship, developed at the University of Vir ginia to encourage professors to use technology in innovative ways, provides professors with both financial and personnel support to incorporate the use of technology in their classrooms for a one-year period. Faculty members submit a proposal describing their needs and objectives for incorporating technology into their classrooms; if awarded, they are expected to share their experiences as well as write a final report. In this case, two history professors were awarded a TTI fellowship to co-teach a cour se in which students would gather primary data and present their interpretation of an assigned topic, on the WWW. The idea for the course arose from the professors’ involvement with the Valley of the Shadow, a Web-based archive of "every available p iece of information about two opposing communities from 1859 through the (civil) war: Confederate Augusta County in Virginia...and Unionist Franklin County, in Pennsylvania " (Shea, 1998). The URL for the site is http://valley.lib.virginia.edu.

The course description excerpted from the online syllabus available at http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/spring98.html, provides the overview of the class:

In this course, students will investigate the possibilities of writing digital history of the American Civil War. Using resources of the Valley of the Shadow project, students will be able to have quick access to original records and sources. On rese arch trips to archives and using microfilms resources at Alderman Library, students will collect, examine, evaluate, and integrate primary sources on the Civil War. They will collaborate in teams of 4 to build a digital history web site on the Civil War. Individually they will keep journals on their experiences, focusing on the limitations and possibilities of digital history.

A variety of technologies, many of which the students had not encountered previously, were utilized in the course. Students digitized photos, acquired information and photos from CD-ROM’s, and learned to use graphic software to modify digitized images and to create images for their Web pages. Students transcribed handwritten letters into a Web-based form that was created by the Electronic Text Center, whose purpose is: "to build and maintain an internet-accessible collection of standard generalized markup language (SGML) texts and images and to build and maintain a user community adept at the creation and use of these materials" (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/). Also, students learned to write hypertext markup language (HTML); one group learned SGML. Some students, moreover, created Web-based searchable databases. The majority of the technology learning occurred outside of classroom meetings. Only two classes were dedicated to learning how to use technology. The topics for the other class meetings included discussing group progress, theory, and presentation of information, questions, and strategies for planning and organizing grou p responsibilities and deadlines.

The setting for the course was a Macintosh laboratory classroom at the University of Virginia. The lab housed nineteen PowerPC's, an instructor station, a projection system, and a laser printer. However, students spent countless hours outside of clas s conducting research at the National Archives, locating sources in other libraries in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, transcribing letters, digitizing photos, and developing their Web sites.

Participants in the Study

The participants in the study were students and professors of an undergraduate history course conducted in an instructional computer laboratory at the University of Virginia. The course was co-taught by two professors, one who is tenured, on leave for the semester; the other is not tenured and is the Project Director of the Valley of the Shadow. The tenured professor had taught at the university for 18 years whereas the non-tenured professor had over ten years of high school teac hing experience and several years of teaching in higher education.

There were twelve undergraduate students in the course ranging from freshman year of college to senior year. Four of the students were female, while the remaining eight were male. There was one freshman, one sophomore, four juniors, and six senior s. Seven were History majors, (one of which was also in the five-year Masters in Teaching program of the Curry School of Education), one was a History minor, and the others were economics, engineering, government, and mathematics majors, including one non -major (an Echols scholar). Of the History majors, two were majoring in another discipline, and one was minoring in another. Nine of the students owned their own computers whereas three did not own one at all. The students’ level of self-reported technolo gy experience varied. They were asked to answer the following question in order learn about their technology competence: "Which best describes your computer skills prior to this course, a) Expert, b) I'm pretty good, c) I get by, or d) Novice". One stud ent responded that he was an expert, seven students considered themselves "pretty good," three said that they "get by," and one considered himself a novice. In addition, students were asked to rate themselves with regards to how often they used certain te chnologies. Table 1 outlines how often students reported utilizing Internet technologies prior to the course.

Table 1

Students' Prior Internet Experience

Never

Occasionally

All the Time

I use e-mail

1

3

8

I read newsgroups

8

4

0

I surf the Web

1

6

5

I write HTML

5

7

0

The professors indicated that students would work together in groups of four on a collaborative semester project on one of three projects: Letters and Diaries of the Civil War from Franklin and Augusta, The Franklin Home Front, and The Freedmen’s Bureau in Augusta County. Some of the students chose their group/topic, whereas others who enrolled in the course later did not (because choices were much more limited). The final projects completed by the students are available at http://cti.itc.Virginia.edu/~ela/spring98.html.

Ethical Considerations, Access, and Confidentiality

In interpretive inquiry, as in other forms of qualitative research, ethical and confidentiality issues normally should be considered before the study even begins. While gaining access was relatively easy, scheduling interviews proved to be a bi t more challenging considering the participants’ and the researcher’s schedules. To maintain the participants’ confidentiality, there are no references to individuals or particular groups in the study. Moreover, each student participant signed a release form acknowledging the purpose of the study, what he or she would be asked to do, and how confidentiality would be handled. Participants agreed to allow the researcher to observe them in class and to use their journal entries for research purposes; also, they agreed to participate in at least one interview. After the taped interviews were transcribed, the tapes were erased.

Data Collection

A number of strategies were used for collecting data. The two primary methods of data collecting were classroom observations and interviews. The researcher observed ten out of fifteen class meetings--most of which lasted about three hours. Du ring these observations, the researcher wrote field notes and later typed the notes into a word-processing program. Observations totaled about 25 hours. Interviews were also conducted. All twelve students and both professors participated in at least one interview with the researcher. Seven students and the non-tenured professor participated in a post-interview. Interviews, lasting between fifteen and sixty minutes, were taped and transcribed. Other forms of data included: students’ online journal entr ies, the course syllabus, the course Web site, the Teaching and Technology Initiative (TTI) fellowship proposal, the TTI final report, journal articles about the class and the Valley Project, and the actual Web sites that students created collaboratively.

Data Analysis

Analytic induction (Erickson, 1986) was utilized as the primary method of data analysis in this study. This approach is holistic and considers the researcher’s assumptions as well as the participants’. At the heart of data analysis, is the formul ation of empirical assertions--conclusions or statements about the data made through analytic induction. These assertions in turn must be confirmed or disconfirmed by a search for empirical warrants. Warrants are generated through repeated readings of th e data and testing the validity of the assertions, often modifying them to reflect the data. The qualitative data analysis program, Folio Views (Folio Views, 1996) was used to manage, retrieve, and analyze the data. As data were collected, they were entered into the Folio Views program. From the analysis of data and the questions that originated the study, a set of empirical assertions were formulated and warranted through a search of confirming and disconfirming evidence. Assertions are presented in the Findings section along with exemplars from the data and accompanying descriptive and interpretive commentary.

Validity< /A>

In interpretive inquiry, validity is achieved through a variety of strategies. Critical components in establishing validity are the relationship between the role of the researcher, the data collection strategy, the data analyses, and the conce ptual framework. In this study, the conceptual framework determined the research design, strategies, the questions of the study, and the role of the researcher. Validity is also established through access to participants' meaning perspectives. This was f acilitated through triangulation of data sources and methods. ). Data sources were the professors and students who participated in the course. Data methods included observations, interviews, document analyses, and fiel d notes, collected over the course of a semester (about five months). Validity also was established through a rigorous process searching for confirming and disconfirming data.

Discussion of Findings

While the study initially focused on how the use of technology affects the roles of both the instructor and the students in the Digital History course, it later broadened to include the role of technology in "doing history" and how to define digital history. As Professors Ayers and Thomas explain (1998, p.1), "[t]he main goal of the class was to understand what history looks like in the new medium of digital technology and to create a digital history project that would meet traditional expectations of scholarship, craft, and integrity." Students worked collaboratively to create a Web site using primary resource data, which they collected and researched, on one of three topics. The tab le below outlines the series of assertions that were warranted through analytic induction:

Table 2

Assertions

Assertion 1:

Professors who actively seek to reform instructional practice can find a powerful ally in current technologies resulting in meaningful, constructivist student learning experiences.

Assertion 2:

Technology can affect the roles of professors and students by shifting the center of attention from the instructor to the students and the technology being utilized.

Assertion 3:

Technology, in a variety of forms, facilitates students to conduct historical research (to "Do History").

Assertion 4:

The use of technology fosters the social construction of knowledge when students work in groups.

Assertion 5:

Digital history is in its infancy. There are multiple definitions of Digital History.

Assertion 1: Professors who actively seek to reform instructional practice can find a powerful ally in current technologies resulting in meaningful, constructivist student learning experiences.

The professors of this course were actively involved in exploring the possibilities of Digital History. In essence, they were involved in reforming their teaching practice with the assistance of the TTI Fellowship. Throughout the course, the p rofessors learned that technology fostered and promoted student learning in ways that were incomparable to their previous experiences teaching traditional lecture courses. The professors found that the use of technology meshed well with the changes they wanted to make which resulted in powerful learning experiences for all involved.

Rather than asking students to conduct research on their own and presenting their work in the form of a term paper (whose only audience would likely be the professors themselves), the professors required students to work collaboratively in groups to bu ild a WWW site using primary resource data. Students needed to find, collect, and interpret the primary resource data (with financial and technical support and guidance) then they had to digitize the data so it could be accessible and presentable on the W eb. In order to locate and digitize many of their sources, students had to master the use of a variety of technologies: CD-ROM’s, electronic mail, databases, digital cameras, graphical and word-processing software, different operating systems (Mac, PC, U nix), and scanning equipment. Further, students had to rely upon one another (their group members), and also upon a variety of other people and resources to create their sites: the professors, other historians, technology professionals, and library staff. Thus, students participated in a constructivist learning environment where students managed the complexities of finding primary resources and presenting them through the WWW, which is a very complex process, as a professor explains:

Doing history yourself is actually investigating the past and looking into these questions and coming up with some kind of interpretation. It involves confronting all of the complexities, all of the missing pieces that you can’t put together necessaril y in a neat and tidy way. And yet at the same time, coming to some kind of interpretation, some kind of closure, some kind of story...they’re more connected than they have ever been to the primary sources. And to the process, they’re more aware of the pr ocess of doing history themselves because they actually not only have to do it, but they have to present it. If all you have to do at the end of the term is present a research report to a professor then the stakes are different. And the questions you ask about presentation are fundamentally different from if the presentation you have to do is a more public [presentation] judged like a historian should be. [Professor1-Interview]

Indeed, finding, interpreting, and putting all of these pieces together was very difficult for most of the students, even for those comfortable and confident with using the technology.

While the use of such technologies can provide meaningful learning experiences, it can also be very demanding, requiring a great deal of time, effort, coordination, and knowledge about the medium. Frustration and stress were often cited as feelings st udents experienced in the learning process, as the following illustrates:

The frustration in all of this lies with the first attempts to ascend this mountain. To begin drawing the first parameters of the project, and decide, out of this mountain of information, what to include, and further, what to do with it after that. [S tudent11-Journal Entry]

Here, the student describes his responsibilities, all of which are representative of tasks in a constructivist learning environment in which learners "make tentative interpretations of experience and go on to elaborate and test those interpret ations" (Perkins, 1992, p. 49). His tasks are not passive tasks, but active ones that involve skill and higher order thinking. Creating Web sites, although frustrating and overwhelming, provides students with a way to interpret and present their lea rning. Professors, too, learned a great deal about using the Web for instruction and what it requires of students as the following demonstrates:

I’ve learned that the medium is demanding, that it requires a lot of training and effort to produce anything worthwhile and that makes it doubly difficult to teach in it, because students have to master technology issues and then history. [Professor1 -Interview]

A common thread amongst all of the students was the inability to visualize the end-product and the realization about the amount of work needed to complete the project, both of which were overwhelming for the students, as one student explains:

I am kind of taken aback at what is going to be required to get this even near completion. I mean, it is so difficult to even visualize what this site might look like in the end it is difficult to try to work on something towards that goal. Plus we hav e so much to sort through and transcribe its getting kind of overwhelming at the same time. [Student9-Journal Entry]

This inability to imagine the end result is not unusual in a constructivist classroom, especially in one where students are grappling with the technology aspect, such as finding and digitizing primary sources, as well as the history aspect which includ es the interpretation of these sources and how to present them. Although the process was demanding, students profited from this learning experience.

Another facet of the technology that proved meaningful for students was the multi-linear nature of the WWW which provides the readers/viewers (users) with the ability to make their own interpretations of the information before them. In this sense, the readers of the Web sites can construct their own meaning of the content of the site, as two students clarify:

By allowing the viewer (reader) to explore a network of information compiled from primary and secondary sources on the internet, we provide an innovative and fun way of learning about history without misrepresenting the facts. The Internet is an impre ssive medium that allows an individual to seek information pertinent to his or her interests from large data sources without sacrificing historical accuracy. It is a much more interactive means of presenting information and allows the individual to view and compare data on a single screen. [Student4-Journal Entry]

I would say digital history is a medium that has potential to, to allow the user to form more of their own opinions because it has the potential to put all the resources and research that you’ve done at the disposal of anybody who’s interested in readi ng it and therefore there is less of that thesis filter going on and they’re, they’re not seeing just the parts that you’ve edited out to support your own point of view. They’re seeing everything that you looked at and drawing their own conclusions. And I think it, it puts more responsibility on the researcher to be fair and not manipulate their data. [Student7-Interview]

For these professors involved in reforming instructional practice, technology offered a powerful venue for student learning. The WWW in particular, provided a demanding, open-ended environment for students to "Do History". It was a meaningful, con structivist learning experience in the manner in which students interpreted and presented their subjects, and assembled all of the pieces (census data, databases, diaries, images, letters, text) into one Web site that had a consistent theme. Students had to master the technology and the history simultaneously in order to present their findings in a cohesive, understandable way while meeting the "traditional expectations of scholarship, craft, and integrity" (Ayers & Thomas, 1998, p.1). In s um, professors can use technology to help them reform their own teaching practices, and consequently, change how students learn and interact in their classrooms in ways that lecture courses do not allow.

Assertion 2: Technology can affect the roles of professors and students by shifting the center of attention from the instructor to the students and the technology be ing utilized.

The use of technology in this course, particularly the WWW, shifted the center of attention from the professors to the students and the technology being utilized. The shift put the professors in the position of guide or coach, rather than the traditional teacher who lectures to students about a topic. The professors did not teach any specific content; instead, they provided students with guidance and pointed them to appropriate resources. As one professor puts it: "I'm a guide here, explore the past for yourself, feel the rush of making the connections yourself" (Interview). The professors’ position clearly was not the same as traditional professors. The use of technology enhanced their facilitator roles because they were not in a position to play the traditional teacher role providing students with all of the answers about each topic or the technology. As a result, students viewed their professors as collaborators of learning rather than "sages on a stage," as one student indicates:

They’re facilitators of our class. They poke at us, they challenge us, they try to come up with some basic ideas without pressuring us; they provide a framework for us to be creative. To, I guess a little ironic, but they’ve given us some information , they’ve given us some leads but kind of are letting us take it to where we want to go with it. They kind of steer us in the right direction, keeping us in a general path, but I think we’re quite free to go where we want with it...I think they facilitat e our discussion, our research, you know, our teamwork, all the things I think combined and they’re kind of responsible for making sure that we’re gonna get our project done, even though they don’t really oversee us…I don’t see them really as being instru ctors, you know, I don’t feel like I’m, no offense to them, I just don’t feel like I’m learning from them per se. They offer incredibly interesting ideas, they definitely have the background and I think in the next few weeks we’re gonna probably begin to use them as resources a lot more in which case I probably will learn from them a lot more. [Student4-Interview]

In the Digital History course, there was a wide range of technology experience amongst the students (see Table 1). However, all of the students were aware that they would use technology to complete their projects. In a sense, exploring the use of technology was the "point" of the class. In addition to varying levels of technology experience, students also were required to work collaboratively in groups of four. Although the professors were content experts in Civil War History, they wer e not experts in the topics that students were researching. Moreover, while the professors were technologically adept, they relied on other technology professionals and resources in order to meet the students’ needs. Therefore, students could not rely s olely on the professors to provide them with everything they needed to know or do.

Even the professors recognized their roles were different, and noticed themselves playing the "facilitator." The professors remarked:

But I guess of all the things, that was one thing that I thought about most often in the course. The course required much more coaching than it did instructing. And that’s a good thing. I think we need that in higher ed and I think we need it in educ ation more. Better coaching. Because that perspective understands that the student is an independent learner and participant in all of this and not just a receptor of instruction. [Professor1-Interview]

Only to the extent that I, like all my classes, often do think of myself as a facilitator. But here it verges on me being a bystander…for large stretches of the class…But since it’s a brand new medium and we’ve built one version of it, but our version as you know is an archive, and we’re asking them to build an interpretation. There’s no blueprint. So even if I wanted to be more than a facilitator, I couldn’t. [Professor2-Interview]

Both the professors and the students had no clear picture exactly how these projects would turn out especially since the construction of these sites were in the students' hands. All the professors could do was provide guidance, encouragement, and supp ort. Hence, the emphasis moved from the professors to the students and what they could do using the resources and technology.

For the professors in the Digital History course, part of being a facilitator or coach involved the exercise of restraint, which can be difficult for those accustomed to being in control of students’ learning. Also, the professors allowed students to make mistakes; they viewed these mistakes as part of the learning process, as one professor discloses:

Coaching requires an even greater step, I think, in restraint. And letting them make mistakes. Letting them have problems. And learning from that and then working with that. I’ve never done that in an academic setting quite the way it worked out this time. This is the first thing I’ve ever seen where it really was more like being the head coach than it was being an instructor. [Professor1-Interview]

Playing the facilitator or coach role was not always easy. Allowing students to take control of their own learning involved a more bystander role for the professors, which was especially challenging, for the professor who typically taught lecture cour ses with 100 - 480 students. The transformation caused him to question whether or not he was actually doing his job. In this course, for instance, he felt that at times he was not doing his job--he was not teaching--as he described in an interview:

< DIR>

I’m not the shyest person you’ve ever seen probably and it’s not natural for me always to step into the background, but I’ve had to do it here. I’ve felt anxiety sometimes in the classroom, early in the semester where I’m running the discussions about theory and stuff like that, that feels like I’m teaching. But when I’m just sitting there responding to their work, it’s like, am I really teaching? Is this really being a professor?...A good discussion I don’t really want to talk much either, but I’m t here in the middle. But here I’m on the edges. [Professor2-Interview]

For this professor, being in the periphery was difficult probably because he had spent so many years in the spotlight as a lecturer. Also, especially in the humanities, it may be hard to shake a system of traditional beliefs about what constitutes tea ching and learning in classrooms. In light of students' interviews and journal entries, however, the students seemed pleased with the structure of the course and the roles of the professors. In fact, they seemed to welcome such role changes.

The WWW supported the professors’ roles as facilitators and students’ as generators of learning, marking a shift towards the new "Learning Paradigm" described by Barr and Tagg (1995). In the "Learning Paradigm," as in the Digital H istory course, students control their own learning: The image of the student-as-repository of knowledge is replaced by an image of the student as a constructor-of-knowledge and master of a process. Professors, moreover, viewed themselves as facilitators, as did the students in the course. Such changes are not easy. They go beyond the requirement of a change in instructional practice; they also include a reformation in one's educational philosophy and the belief systems one holds about learning and teach ing. In addition, they are counter to traditional conceptions of teaching that most humanists hold.

Assertion 3: Technology, in a variety of forms, facilitates students to conduct historical research (to "Do History").

In this course, students used technology to 1) collect data, 2) interpret data, and 3) present their findings. In the process of conducting research and converting their data into digital form, students learned how to apply technology in learning processes, they learned how to "Do History", and learned about the process of interpreting history, all more significant than learning dates and figures. In most undergraduate history courses, students do not have the opportunity to "Do History" because they spend most of their time listening to professors lecture and researching secondary sources in which the interpretation of history has already been done for them. Also, in most history courses, students have little-to-no interaction with his torians in the field. In the Digital History course, however, students had the opportunity to "Do History," which simply involves doing what historians do; according to one professor, "Doing History" means

[Taking] inchoate, unorganized, raw material, to find meaning in it. As far as I can tell, that’s all doing history is. And my objection to the way most history is taught is that people are never shown the inchoate part and never, therefore, are given the chance to do history. They’re given the chance to memorize somebody else’s done history…In many ways this is more, even though it uses machinery, it’s more tactile, you actually have to go get all these things and actually drive across the landscape and go into the archives and get them and then manipulate them. It feels more like doing history than using some set of published books in the library. [Professor2-Interview]

Also, for these students, "Doing History" involved communicating and acquiring primary data from a variety of experts. Besides working with their professors and peers, students communicated with historians and representatives from the following organiz ations: the National Archives, the National Park Service, the National Military Park, the Alexander Mack Library at Bridgewater College, the Staunton Historical Society, the Staunton Public Library, and Mary Baldwin College. The TTI fellowship sup plied the funding for the trips out of town.

Throughout the entire semester in the Digital History course, students were actively engaged in learning, researching, and piecing together their topic to tell a story; in other words, they were "Doing History" ; rather than passively regurgitating recycled information. Although students completed a limited amount of secondary source research using other historians’ interpretations of the topic, emphasis in the course was on the students formulating their own in terpretations of history based on their primary research. While the professors "gave [students] the basic subject, some of the raw material, technical help, guidance in the discipline, and abundant support,...[students] had to define the essential na ture of the final product" (Ayers & Thomas, 1998, p. 6) themselves. Technology assisted the process of "Doing History" in a way that traditional means did not allow. For instance, students were able to compile all of their data into one site, ac cessible by many. Their sites included photos, census data, newspapers, diaries. If these had been presented in paper format, others would not be able to conduct searches of the census data or the newspapers.

While students learned how to use techology to their advantage, they still came away with a good grasp of the history, as a student explains:

I have learned a great deal about HTML, but also about the common man in the Civil War. The letters we read weren't about causes, or politics, but about how the simple man dealt with the "horrible machine" of war. Having to close early because I'm getting kicked out of the lab, I have to end with the thought that no matter how high tech history gets, it will never be able to take away what really affects us about the war--the fact that people just like us, and soldiers my age, endured the hard ship of war, and made the United States in America, the United States of America. [Student11-Journal Entry]

Here, "Doing History" goes beyond just finding the sources, it entails sifting through that information and forming an interpretation of it. In sum, as one professor put it, "History needs to be about 'Doing History' yourself as a student, and the mult imedia environment allows that like never before." [Professor1-Interview]

Table 3 below outlines each of group's respective Web sites.

Table 3

Web Address for Each Group

Group

URL

Letters and Diaries of the Civil War

http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/letters

Franklin Homefront Burning of Chambersburg

http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/frhome

Freedmen's Bureau in Augusta County

http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/freedmen/bureau.html

 

Assertion 4: The use of technology fosters the social construction of knowledge when students work in groups.

The use of technology and the collaborative structure of the course fostered the social construction of knowledge. Students did not learn the history or the technology individually, but socially through interaction among peers, professors, and other historians. Technology promoted the social construction of knowledge because it was used as a means of communicating what they had learned and were learning. Electronic mail was used quite a bit to bounce off ideas between each other and the profe ssors as well as to schedule meetings. Through all their interactions, students learned a great deal from each other. There was so much research to be done, information to be read and interpreted, and countless hours of digitizing materials that they ha d to rely upon one another for instruction and division of labor.

Students' responsibilities were different than that encountered in traditional history courses. Here, students were generators of their own learning, taking constructivist dimensions, but also they were team members who relied on each other’s expertis e, divided up the work, and worked towards a unified goal; one student compared his role to a colony of bees, working on building a hive together. This analogy emphasizes how even students perceived how they were socially constructing their sites and learning from each other. Students were forced to interact together for their projects to be completed. One of the professors describes how he feels technology has enhanced students:

...the students are active participants in the whole project. They are the leaders really of the project. They own it. It either succeeds or doesn’t on their shoulders and so they become less students and more workers. I t’s almost a Deweyesque student as worker model...Students…take an odd ownership role over their projects. [Professor1-Interview]

The social construction of knowledge was not limited to the academic and technical. Students also learned about themselves and working with other people. While it is clear that students experienced difficulties with some group members, it is evident t hat they benefited from the experience as well. One important point that one student made is the fact that History majors rarely have the opportunity to work in a group for any extended period of time beyond class discussions. This is probably the case with most humanities majors. The workforce of the Information Age needs decision-makers that can work in teams, relying on others to problem-solve and find solutions. Yet all six seniors in this particular course were about to graduate without ever havin g worked on an extended group project in their entire undergraduate careers! Two students observed the importance of skills learned through working in a group:

That’s something that, before I came to this class, I had a job, I guess a job as a law clerk in an office this past summer, that was my first professional experience working in groups. And that was very rewarding but I was always pretty hesitant to t rust the performance in my group to other people. I usually just took it on. And this, there’s so much work really it’s impossible to do that and I was very lucky again, that at least three, or at least two other members of my group besides myself were very interested in doing a good job and doing the best job we could. [Student11-Interview]

I learned a lot. I mean I really never worked in a group setting like this so I definitely learned how, how things work in, how you get people to do stuff and what you can expect of some people and what you can’t. [Student2-Interview]

The extracurricular, real-world life skills that resulted could not have occurred if students had not worked together in groups to create their WWW sites.

While the benefits of group work were evident, it did not mean that problems did not exist or should be ignored. All of the groups in the course chose to work out their own dilemmas, without the professors’ intervention, although many students wr ote about difficulties with their peers in their journals. The comments below demonstrate how troublesome group dynamics can be:

I was just like "no, I think, I mean we’re gonna have to do it. We’re gonna have to work it out." And it is one of the experiences that you carry away from the class and I think it’s one of the most important experiences because most histor y majors, they don’t work with anybody at all. They discuss in class but actually doing the work, they don’t work with anybody at all...Actually working with three other people with very different personalities and struggling through it and depending on them for his work. [Student6-Interview]

The use of technology for collaborative research projects can have far-reaching benefits for students, beyond the academic. Students completed the Digital History course with increased technical experience and inter-personal skills. Not only did the students learn about how to position an image on a Web page, but also how to come to a consensus about where to put that image. In addition, they further developed the skills necessary to function in a group: division of labor, communication skills, patience, and diplomacy. Also, they learned to share ownership of the project and to rely upon one another for getting the job done. Although group work is rare in the humanities, it appears that more professors should be incorporating it in their cour ses.

Assertion 5: Digital history is in its infancy. There are multiple definitions of Digital History.

One of the emergent goals of this research study was to define what "digital history" meant for the participants of the course, since they were essentially creating it. Did students understand digital history to be an archive of info rmation such as the Valley of the Shadow Project, or was it something entirely different? Through classroom observations, it became evident that the professors expected students to create more than just an archive of information; they expected students t o organize their Web sites in a meaningful way that told a story. Many students had difficulty defining what they were doing--digital history, whereas others clearly articulated what digital history meant to them. The following quotes from interviews ill ustrates the participants’ multiple definitions of digital history:

I really don’t know what digital history is. And I know that this class was supposed to answer that question but it hasn’t. It really hasn’t. Because I don’t think a lot of people think of history and then go look on a computer. [Student6-Interview]

Another student echoes her lack of a grasp of what digital history is:

I still don’t think I know what it is. It can take on so many different flavors. Sometimes I think our Web site is kind of like an alright book -- you know a bunch of images and a bunch of text kind of mixed together and I think that’s one way digital history can take itself. Kind of like a different presentation of the same material but then when I look at [GroupC’s] site I think that’s a, that’s something you can’t ever do in traditional forms of history. And I think that’s really powerful. [Stude nt2-Interview]

While this student explains she does not know what digital history is, she perceives it to take on multiple forms and views it as a way to present information. Throughout the semester, students demonstrated that they were keenly aware that their Web sites would be viewed by more than just the professors and students in the course.

Another student discusses how he considers digital history to be a way of "presenting" history using technology:

I think digital history is very simply taking traditional history, taking the accurate and absolute scholarship of traditional history and taking that and presenting (emphasis added by author) that in a way that capitalizes as much as possible o n the new technology of computers. But at the same time without sacrificing the interpretive aspects of that traditional history. [Student11-Interview]

Here, the student perceives digital history as a way to communicate history using a new medium while remaining true to the tenets of traditional historical scholarship, which was one of the objectives of the course.

Several students viewed Digital History as a medium for sharing history with the masses. Digital History allows those who are not part of the Ivory Tower to have access to it. In a sense, it can be seen as a way to democratize History, mak ing it more available to anyone interested, as the following student explains:

The target audience for me is not necessarily professors or college students. My target audience is the kids who surf the Web, who decide hey, this looks pretty cool, let me look at this." History is such an elitist academic. I mean, any academi c is so elitist and they’re so full of themselves and it makes me so angry. It does! It makes me so angry because it’s like at the end of it I said, "you know, one of my history teachers, the one who actually got me interested in history told me, y ou know, historians should share history and not dictate it." And that was one of the things I have always followed by and I think if we do limit our audience to the people who are experienced and who are, who are eligible to be members of the Histo rica Club, I think we are just keeping a monopoly on intellectual property and, so my audience is basically like my fourteen year old sister, who likes to surf the Web and who doesn’t necessarily have a college degree or money, cause she lives with my par ents. [Student6-Interview]

One of the objectives of the Digital History course was for students to "understand what history looks like in the new medium of digital history" (Ayers & Thomas, 1998, p. 1).

Digital history currently has multiple definitions--its characteristics and potential are still being defined. One professor summarizes what digital history is, and is not, succinctly:

I think that it is obviously a narrative of history in this medium. And all that means is that the digital medium allows a different way to tell the story. And we’re still working out what that way is…or is it an accepted way to tell a story in a dig ital medium. But a couple of things that we know, that we’ve been able to find out from this course, are...what it isn’t. And it isn’t just text up on the screen. And it isn’t just a picture book with images. I think that digital history does require the full use of the technology of the medium. And what that means is the key elements of that are the searchability, the kind of deep data base and the, the kind of openness that that allows. [Professor1-Interview]

While there are multiple definitions of what Digital History actual is or what it looks like, it is clear that the participants in the Digital History course did indeed explore the possibilities. They can be viewed as pioneers, shaping and laying the foundation for future historical scholarship for many years to come. In the future we might look back at these explorations as the stepping stones for how History classes should be "taught" and the kinds of activities that all History students should exp erience.

Conclusions

The roots for constructivist reform have been planted. However, for the roots to grow and blossom, professors need to receive the appropriate resources as a condition to facilitating the integration of technology in constructivist approache s to teaching and learning. This case serves as an example of the challenges and rewards of pursuing such a course of action. The time and resources necessary should not be underestimated, nor should the learning outcomes. Both the professors and the st udents were given time, resources, and support to carry out the objectives of the course. Students had two professors guiding them, access to a multitude of high-powered computers, staff who helped them digitize sources, and funds to pay for travel, phon e calls, and copying materials. In addition, the class size was very small, with only twelve students.

Technology's role, moreover, is not neutral in instructional reform--it is dependent on the instructional beliefs that instructors hold and the availability of the necessary technology and institutional commitments to such reform. Not only did these st udents learn how to conduct historical research, a skill often left to graduate studies, but they also wrestled with working in a group, managing time, and mastering the "how to" aspect of using the technology. Yet, the use of technology was almost seaml ess in the course. It was not the primary intent of the course instructors, but it empowered students to "Do History" in a way that a traditional lecture course can not. In the process of constructing Web sites that combine group dynamics, a varie ty of technologies, resources, and primary sources, students actively learn to "Do History" like real historians; also, they learn about the potential of using a variety of technologies to create Digital History.

While some professors might be wary of "jumping onto the technology bandwagon," McMichael (1998) contends that the World Wide Web is an ever-expanding fact of the historians’ existence, and one with which [historians] need to come to grips&qu ot; (p. 32). As one student explains:

I find myself reflecting upon the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I am thinking of the old dog being history and digital history being the new trick. Many people believe this can't be done, but I think [our group] accomplished j ust that"[Student11-Journal Entry]

McMichael’s assertion coupled with Barr and Tagg’s (1995) contention that a paradigm shift is taking place in America’s institutions of higher education provide impetus for more explorations of Digital History and acknowledgement that the roots have be en planted and many are taking seed.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Professors Edward Ayers and William Thomas for opening their class to us. Also, we wish to thank the students for their participation in the study.

For a glimpse of all of the student projects that explore Digital History and the American Civil War, please see: http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/projects/projects.html.