Digital Scholarship Lab.  University of Richmond, 2014.  http://dsl.richmond.edu/projects/ Reviewed by Leah Miller, Dickinson College The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond uses technology to digitize and present historical data in a way that reveals hidden patterns.  The lab consists of eight main projects which present various insights into American history: Atlas of the […]

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Last Friday, the Associated Press reported on the discovery of a previously unknown Abraham Lincoln document, and with it, a puzzling mystery.  Addressed only to “My dear Sir,” a portion of the letter had been carefully removed, eliminating the key to understanding its meaning.  Lincoln appears to have been writing “in haste” to someone asking if he […]

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We often think or hear of the MOOC  as the great equalizer of higher education, a medium to disseminate college-level education to billions, regardless of their income bracket.  But recent events should lead us to reconsider this overly-optimistic perspective. In January 2013,  just after the announcement that San Jose State University planned to partner with […]

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The first day of class—most people know what that experience is like: Nerves—Am I in the right place?—Excitement—I’ve heard this professor is really good—Curiosity—Who are these people sitting around me? As an undergraduate student of European History at Dickinson, I’ve only ever had Professor Pinsker once, for a methods course which met once a week […]

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New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has always touted his enthusiasm for the MOOC, calling it a “revolution” to sweep the status quo of higher education.  In January of 2013, he wrote that MOOCs have the ability to extend access to higher education to the most remote areas of the globe, going as far as to […]

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In recent media, that has been the question.  Although the average completion rate of a MOOC is around 10% (which, for a class of 160,000 students, is pretty good), many in higher education have pointed out there is more to mastering a subject than just simply completing a course.  How comfortable are universities with accepting […]

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An elderly woman approaches a table, behind which stand excited university students.  She tightly clutches a stack of yellowing papers, her favorite selections from her collection of Ragtime sheet music.  She’s been collecting sheet music for about sixty years, and each piece is important to her for the time and effort she spent tracking them […]

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As a summer intern with the House Divided Project of Dickinson College, I’ve been assigned the task of coming up with a lesson plan for the incredible story of how the tragic death of Bayard Wilkeson during the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg touched our nation.  Make sure to read the full story […]

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