While citations are not so difficult to produce, getting the details right can be time consuming, especially for a history student looking to deliver flawless Chicago-style citations. For this reason, many students are increasingly turning to online citation-generators.  There are some partially free services from commercial providers, like EasyBib or CitationMachine, and there is at least one good open-source platform called Zotero.  In this post, I will explain why I believe Citation Machine is the easiest to use, especially for history students.

But first, here’s some quick background.  Digital humanities faculty at George Mason University have created Zotero to be an academic, non-commercial platform for help with organizing bibliographies and citations. EasyBib and CitationMachine are actually now both owned by Chegg, a massive fee-based student tutorial service.  Such commercial services have mixed reputations, though, especially among teachers, who sometimes believe that they encourage cheating and plagiarism.  But few teachers object to online citation and bibliography generators.   The expectations for original writing are just different.  Yet most students don’t quite realize that these online generators still require significant work on the part of the student in order to get the details exactly right.  You still have to edit the materials. Today, I will focus on Chegg’s CitationMachine, because it doesn’t charge anything for generating Chicago-style citations and because I do think it’s the best of all the options.

How To Use Citation Machine

Citation Machine search bar (Courtesy of Citation Machine)

1. Open your web browser and go to Citation Machine for Chicago Style (Citation Machine).
2. Click the type of resource you want to cite.
3. Enter a link, title, or author into the search bar and search through the results for the right source. The more specific your search is, the fewer sources you will need to go through. Most likely for links, the correct page will pop up right away.
4. Once you select the correct source, double check and edit the information it pulled.
5. Citations automatically appear in bibliographical form. Copy and paste the citation into any platform.
6. For footnotes, simply click on the “footnote” link at the bottom right corner of the citation, enter the pages you plan to use, and then copy the generated footnote and paste it in into any platform.
7. Then just repeat steps 2-6 until you have cited all of your sources. Remember, however, that Citation Machine will only keep your citations for a couple days, so you can access them for a limited amount of time.

How to Use Zotero

Zotero page with “download” button (Courtesy of Zotero)

1. Open Zotero in your web browser (Zotero).
2. Click the “Download” button, select “yes” to allow Zotero to make changes to your desktop, and then open Zotero when it finishes downloading. Note: if you are using a Mac, you will need to download both the 5.0 and the browser connector.
3. Click the icon of the folder with a green plus mark to create a new folder and name it.
4. Be sure to leave Zotero open before returning to your web browser. Zotero will not work if it is not open in the background.
5. In the top right corner next to the search bar there will be a little icon of a page. Click on that icon and a little box should appear right below it.
6. Click on the little downward arrow/carrot and select the folder you want the source in. You can create a tag at the bottom of the little box to find the source more easily later.
7. Go back to Zotero and you can edit the information in case it did not pull all the needed information for a citation. Always double check to make sure all the information you need for a citation is present.
8. Repeat steps 6-8 until you have all the sources you want.
9. When you are ready to create a citation, go to the platform you are using to write in. See step 10 for Word, step 11 for Pages, step 12 for Google Docs, and step 13 for LibreOffice.
   

   Zotero plugin in Word (Courtesy of Word)

10. Word is one of the easiest platforms to use Zotero with because it will automatically show up in Word as a tab at the top of the page. You will first need to install Zotero within Word. Once it is installed, click on the Zotero tab in Word and select “Add/Edit Citation” for a footnote or “Add/Edit Bibliography” for a complete bibliography that includes all the sources in the folder you select.
11. There is no Zotero plugin for Pages, but it is compatible with the RTF Scan function. To use this, type the author’s name and year of publication of a source in brackets for footnotes or “Bibliography” in brackets for a bibliography. Save the document as an .RTF file and reopen Zotero. Click the tools button in Zotero and then click “RTF Scan.” Zotero should pick up your citations and insert correct Chicago Style citations so long as they are in brackets.
12. The RTF Scan is also compatible with Google Docs. If you would prefer not to do the RTF Scan in Google Docs, you can place Zotero and Google Docs side-by-side and click and drag sources from Zotero to Google Docs for a bibliography. For a footnote, click on an item, press the “shift” key and drag it to Google Docs.
13. Zotero offers a similar plugin to Word for LibreOffice. LibreOffice functions on Apple products, so Apple owners can access the perks of a Zotero plugin without needing to switch to a PC.  Just like with Word, you will need to install the plugin in LibreOffice for Zotero before you can access it.
14. You can create as many folders as you need in Zotero and reference your folders and sources whenever you need them because they are saved on your desktop.

Choosing Your Preference

Citation Gathering

Once Zotero has been installed, both Zotero and Citation Machine are equally quick to access because Zotero appears in your browser and Citation Machine opens in a tab. However, Zotero often does not pull all the information it should and it sometimes confuses the types of information, so revising the citations can be especially time consuming. Citation Machine, on the other hand, is quicker because it gathers more information and automatically converts titles that appear in caps to proper capital and lowercase letters, which Zotero does not do.

Saving Citations

Zotero folders with tags (Courtesy of Zotero)

One of the most helpful features of Zotero is that it can help to archive important websites and sources. This is incredibly helpful for projects that rely on multiple sources. Its inclusion of “tags” makes categorizing similar sources much easier. In addition, you  can add an unlimited number of sources to each folder and can make an unlimited number of folders, so you will not lose any sources from previous projects. Citation Machine will only allow you to access sources for a few days, so you will need to save any citations you need in a document.

Cost

Both Zotero and CitationMachine are free to use,  although every 48 hours in CitationMachine, you will need to watch an interactive ad for a few minutes.  EasyBib actually charges an upgrade fee if you want citations generated in Chicago-style (the preferred format for most history classes).  So, as long as you can put up with some ads, right now CitationMachine is the best value for the time-pressed history student.

While phones can be a distraction in the classroom, with augmented reality (AR) they can help bring lessons to life and create an interactive learning experience. By simply aiming their phones at augmented images, students can unlock the personal stories of historical figures, triggering videos and other online content (called auras). Here at the House Divided Studio, we are working to enhance our visitor experience and to model classroom applications through the use of AR. You can learn more about the various uses of AR and how to create your own free augmented experiences in this instructional post.

Downloading the HP Reveal app

To view the auras created by the House Divided Project, visitors and educators can download the free HP Reveal app, create an account and follow the House Divided channel in HP Reveal. (House Divided content won’t trigger until you follow the channel). Once those steps are completed, simply open the app, select the blue viewer square located at the bottom of the screen, point your phone at images located throughout the studio and the app generates specific video content (auras) related to those images.

Once you’ve followed the House Divided channel on the HP Reveal app, select the blue viewer button and then point your phone at an image.

The HP Reveal app’s viewer scans images with pulsating dots and triggers augmented content (auras).

An image augmented with a video about the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Using Augmented Reality

Through AR, teachers can bring new experiences into their classrooms. Below are some of the most innovative uses of AR.

• Augmented Portraits – At the House Divided studio, the walls are decorated with augmented portraits that trigger brief student-produced films. At right, check out this augmented portrait of President James Buchanan (Class of 1809).  You can access all of the House Divided images with AR enhancements here at the online version of our studio.
• Handouts/Facsimiles – Reproductions of historic photos, letters and newspaper articles enable students to connect to personal stories.  Here’s an example of Lincoln’s famous Blind Memorandum from the 1864 election, augmented with a video by project director Matthew Pinsker.
• Virtual field trips –  The Google Expeditions app is already being used in schools. Google created a brief promotional video showing how students at an Iowa middle school experienced world-renowned architecture using the app. The app is free, and can be downloaded and accessed by anyone with a Google account. Google Expeditions shows virtual images of sites accompanied by longer text explanations, available by tapping the bottom of your screen. Especially in classroom settings, Google encourages the use of a Virtual Reality headset for the best experience. Students can place their phones into the headsets, known as Google Cardboard, and experience a site. The Cardboard headsets are available for around $15.

Creating Your Own Augmented Reality Experience

Augmented reality is not only an effective teaching tool, but it is also free and relatively easy to learn. Using the HP Reveal studio, you can upload images and augment them. When editing your image, you should use a variety of circles, eclipses and rectangles to mask the background of your image (see below), making faces and main objects easier for the app to recognize.

Masks hide parts of the image, enabling the app to trigger augmented content (auras).

Tips for masking images:

• Identify and mask mundane objects/spaces in the background of your image. Think of it as removing clutter so the app can recognize the image and trigger your content. For the example above, I masked the indistinct faces of the pursuers in the background, making it easier for the app to focus on the four main figures.
• HP Reveal is often color sensitive. If your trigger image is in color, a black and white version (i.e., photocopies) may not work successfully. For the best results, convert an image to grayscale and then mask it.
• Finally, make sure you save and then share your aura. If you haven’t shared your aura, it will be marked private.

After you have finished masking the image, click “Next” and upload your overlaying video or other content. Press save and then try viewing the image through the HP Reveal app to verify it works.

For more guidance on how to mask images in the HP Reveal studio, see the following House Divided tutorial.

John E. Roll

In 1895, the Chicago Times-Herald launched a series of recollected accounts about Abraham Lincoln which the editors claimed would introduce new elements to the Lincoln story.  These rare recollections have never since been republished as part of their own series, but modern scholars have used some of them to powerful effect.  However, this summer, student interns from the House Divided Project are busy scanning, transcribing and preparing this series for free distribution on the web.  Today, we are posting just one of these recollections, an account from John E. Roll, a carpenter who knew Lincoln from New Salem days and also claimed to have heard him say during the famous “House Divided” speech (June 16, 1858), that, “I used to be a slave.”  This last comment has taken on some real importance in modern years, employed in various books by some leading scholars, including Michael Burlingame and Allen Guelzo, and also, most recently, by journalist Sidney Blumenthal who is using that quotation to help open his projected four-volume biography of Lincoln.  The decision raises many interesting questions about historical method, but for now, we thought it would help teachers and students to see for themselves the full transcript of Roll’s original account here.  What follows below appeared in the Chicago Times-Herald on August 25, 1895 (transcribed by Trevor Diamond, Class of 2017):

John E. Roll

John E. Roll is celebrated, among other things, as having assisted Abraham Lincoln in the construction of the flat boat with which the tall Kentuckian made his first trip from Salem, Ill., to New Orleans, in 1831.

“I knew him when he was 22 years old,” said Mr. Roll. “He came down here to Sangamontown and worked in the timber building a flat boat for Orfutt & Greene, who were merchants and shippers. Sangamntown was then quite a place. There were two stores, a steam saw mill and a grist-mill, a tavern and a carding mill. I have seen fifty horses hitched there of a Saturday afternoon. Now there is not a stick to mark the place. The roads are cut out, so you can’t get to it without going across the fields.

They built the boat up there because there was better timber, and were going to take it down and load at Petersburg. Charles Broadwell had a sawmill at Sangamontown, and Lincoln was there bossing the job. I came along and wanted work, and he hired me, and I made the pins for the boat. We launched here there, and she got a good deal of water in herm and we got her down as far as Salem dam, and there she was stuck, with her bow over the dam. And Lincoln bored a hole in the bottom of the boat, and let the water out. Looks like a funny way to get water out of a boat, to bore a hole in the bottom, but if the bottom is sticking out in the air, it is all right, I guess.

Lincoln was an awful clumsy looking man at that time. He wore a homespun suit of clothes, and a big pair of cowhide boots, with his trousers strapped down under them, as was the custom of that day, to keep them from crawling up his legs. And his coat was a roundabout, and when he stooped over his work we could see about four inches of his suspenders. He had on an old slouch wool hat. He was getting $15 a month from Offutt & Greene at that time.

After we got the flatboat launched we went out in the timber and found a good tree, and made a canoe. John Seaman and Walter Carman were along and they wanted to have the first ride in the canoe, and they jumped in, and the water was very high and swift and they tipped over and were in danger of drowning. The whole bottom was overflowed and there was a big elm tree standing about 100 feet from the shore, with its branches in the water, and Lincoln called to them to swim to the tree, and hold on there till we could get them. So they caught the branches, and got up in the tree. It was in March and the water was very cold. So we got a log and tied a rope to it and James Doyle got on the log and tried to get to them but the log turned over with him and he had to get in the tree with the other two.

Then we pulled the log ashore and Lincoln got straddle of it, and the rest of us paid out the rope and let him down toward the tree, and he got to them and took them off and brought them ashore.

After that he went on and loaded his boat with corn at Petersburg, and went down the river to New Orleans. I don’t know how he got back but I have an idea he walked back though he may have come back by steamboat. He worked a while for Offutt & Greene in their store at Salem, and then he bought it out, and afterward he sold it and came here to Springfield and wen to practicing law.

All the time he was running the store he had been studying law. He would walk up here to Springfield, twenty miles, and borrow books from Major Stuart and read them, and bring them back. He didn’t seem to be much of a speaker, but it seemed he could do whatever he started to do.

I had come up here to Springfield as soon as I got through the job on the flatboat and was working at the plastering trade when he moved up here. One time I remember I saw him out here on the Salem road walking along and reading one book, with another under his arm. He got tired and sat down on a log to rest. And while he rested he went on reading.

I put my money in land as fast as I made it and was worth a good deal of money. Lincoln and I were always good friends. One time Tom Lewis and I were standing and talking on the street and Tom said: ‘John, why don’t you run for some office? You’ve got so many tenants you could make them elect you.’ And I said I didn’t want no office till Abe Lincoln was elected President of the United States, and then I would expect him to give me an office because I had worked with him on the flat boat. And Lincoln came along just then—it was long before he had ever been mentioned for President, and Tom told him what I had said. And Lincoln laughed and said when hot to be President he would give me an office.

So I was the first man he ever promised an office to, but I never got it. Oh, yes I was making more money then than any office was worth. I wouldn’t have had any office. I didn’t want any.

I remember one time in a speech he made at the courthouse, that time he said the country could not live half slave and half free, he said we were all slaves one time or another, but that white men could make themselves free and the negroes could not. He said: “There is my old friend John Roll. He used to be a slave, but he made himself free, and I used to be a slave, and now I am so free that they let me practice law.’  I remember that.”

By Sarah Goldberg

While some teachers might have heard of topic modeling technology in the context of cutting-edge digital humanities research, few have considered how these exciting new tools might find a place in the history classroom. However, a topic-modeling project offers an ideal introduction to the dynamic world of digital historical methodology. Perhaps best suited for an undergraduate setting, aspiring history majors can gain hands-on experience and useful technical skills in quantitative historical analysis. Yet while topic modeling has continued to make waves in historical research, most teachers are hesitant to include this technology in their curricula. For those more accustomed to conventional historical methodology, attempting topic modeling can be a daunting task. Even the most technologically literate teachers are left scrambling for the basics: What is topic modeling? How can these tools be used in meaningful ways?  Are they teachable in already overburdened classrooms?

Topic modeling refers to a variety of programs that use complex algorithms to reduce an extremely large collection of text to a number of distinct topics. While diverse options exist for a more technologically advanced audience, the casual researcher and student should be most familiar with MALLET, an open source Java-based program that can be used without any coding knowledge through Topic Modeling Tools (TMT). There are plenty of good web-based resources for all skill levels that can help first time users get started with MALLET and TMT (like this overview of topic modeling, or this introduction to TMT).

To understand the philosophy behind topic modeling, it’s easiest to start by identifying the human function this technology is trying to mimic on a grand scale. When an individual reads through a text, they use their own critical thinking skills to identify what topics are contained in the work. For example, a student might listen to a politician’s speech and be able to articulate distinct themes in the text – the economy, the law, civil rights, etc. While some of this ability to categorize comes from the reader’s prior knowledge, the distribution of certain words is also crucial to making these connections. For example, a reader might see the words “troop,” “victory,” and “casualty” in a paragraph and come to the rational conclusion that the speaker is referring to the military. Topic modeling aims to do the same by identifying distinct subjects within enormous quantities of documents that would be impossible to read page-by-page.

When a user inputs their database of text, topic-modeling technology generates lists of words that are likely to appear in proximity to each other throughout the entirety of the collection. These lists represent topics, or “a group of words that often co-occur with each other in the same documents,” explains University of Richmond Director of Digital Sciences Robert K. Nelson. Users are left to use their own knowledge of the source-base to give meaning to these word lists and decide which categories represent legitimate themes. Once these topics are identified, the program can quantify the appearance of these categories within the body of work. For example, once having identified topic A, the program could tell you that 20% of the collection was relevant to topic A, or that Document 1 was 70% related to topic A. From these computations, researchers and students can draw conclusions about the collection of sources as a whole.

Nelson utilizes this technology in his Mining the Dispatch, one of the most noteworthy examples of topic modeling research. Working with the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond in partnership with Tufts University’s Perseus Project, Nelson analyzed the rich archives of the Richmond Daily Dispatch. Using 37 unique topics, Nelson and his research team were able to track “the dramatic and often traumatic changes as well as the sometimes surprising continuities in the social and political life of Civil War Richmond.” While it would be impossible for his research team to read through the 112,000 pieces containing nearly 24 million words, Nelson used MALLET to discover unexpected insights . Teachers looking for a good introduction of the value and limitations of topic modeling would do well to read through Nelson’s project as an example of topic modeling success. While Nelson’s introduction explains how topic modeling can both succeed and fail at the individual document level, he emphasizes how these tools are most suitable on a much larger scale. Using engaging graphics, Nelson shows the rise and fall of his topics between 1860 and 1865. Some patterns are easily explained.  For example, Nelson’s discovery that fugitive slave advertisements were more likely to appear when the Union Army was near Richmond makes sense, as slaves were likely to run away in hopes of joining the northern forces. Others are less obviously correlated to outside events, such as Nelson’s discovery that slave rental advertisements sharply reduced in 1862, suggesting a destabilized market without an apparent cause. Unexpected results such as this are just as potentially significant, argues Nelson: “Topic modeling and other distant reading methods are most valuable not when they allow us to see patterns that we can easily explain but when they reveal patterns that we can’t, patterns that surprise us and that prompt interesting and useful research questions,” he explains. Mining the Dispatch should serve as an example of successful topic modeling that can demonstrate to undergraduates the utility of quantitative analysis in historical research.

Yet while Nelson sets high standards, teachers shouldn’t write off topic modeling as the domain of research professionals. My first encounter with topic modeling was as a college sophomore at the Dickinson College Digital Humanities Boot Camp. With minimal instruction, I learned quickly how to use the Stanford Topic Modeling Toolbox to create topics out of a large digitized collection of student publications from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. My research partner and I chose to generate five distinct topics, which we then labeled based on our own prior knowledge of the works. For example, one list of words was “Baby Babies Indian Care Children Water Mother Child Food Proper,” which we decided was most relevant to Reservation Life. We could then identify which works were most relevant to this topic, and how relevant this topic was to the collection as a whole. While we ended up using the topics as a taxonomy system for an online exhibit of historical photographs, the exercise of using topic modeling proved useful in and of itself by allowing us to get a better grasp of a collection much too large to read closely. Moreover, I gained a broader understanding of data-driven historical methods and how to apply digital skills to meaningful analysis.

The bottom line is that topic modeling is worth your attention. With the basic instruction, a few strong examples, and the right set of sources, topic modeling can provide an engaging and surprisingly simple lesson in the possibilities of digital humanities.

The Netflix model of customized, easy to use selection could help revitalize the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) industry, according to Jonathan Keats at Wired.  Since bursting onto the education scene in 2011, MOOCs have experienced both an increase in participants and in dropouts. As low as 5% of MOOC students are actually completing the courses that they have signed up for. This is a clear frustration for professors and producers who have put so much effort into developing this new form of distance education.

Keats suggests that MOOCs focus too much on job training, writing “the rapid retreat of MOOCs into vocational banality represents a squandered opportunity.”  He cites inventor Buckminster Fuller, who presented an idea that “students would gain knowledge through ‘an intercontinentally networked documentaries call-up system, operative over any home two-way TV set'” in 1961.  Keats believes that Fullers original vision was not about vocational studies but “generalism, to interest people in everything, so that they could grapple with complexly interconnected global problems.”  This is how the Netflix model can save MOOCs.  As Keats describes “recommendation engines like those employed by Netflix and YouTube” can “entice students to compulsively take up new interests.”  A streamlined system of easy to view courses that are quick and simple to follow would allow students to study topics they are interested in, regardless of skill level and availability.

A number of MOOC enthusiasts remain confident that student-oriented improvements such as the one outlined in the Wired article –or other changes yet to be realized– will inevitably emerge.  Stanford professor Mitchell Stevens, for example, remains optimistic.  “I’m not disappointed with MOOCs,” Stevens reports to Stanford News, “We’re still in the horse-and-buggy stage.”  Stevens is not alone when thinking that MOOCs have been successful despite their growing pains.  Fellow Stanford professor (and co-director of the Stanford Lytics Lab), Candace Thille, explains that at least one major advantage of the recent experiments in MOOCs is that professors can now use this new form of online pedagogy  to learn a great deal more about learning.  Thille and Stevens, (along with John Mitchell) argue that the key to understanding the potential of MOOCs is understanding that they are not really “college courses. “They are a new instructional genre,” claim the authors in a recent op-ed, “somewhere between a digital textbook and a successful college course.”

This insight and other innovations (like the Netflix model that Jonathan Keats has been promoting) might well combine to infuse online learning with greater staying power in the second and third stages of its revolution.  By having a simple, easy to use platform with access to a wide (almost infinite) range of compact subjects, lifelong students might eventually feel empowered to learn almost as easily as they channel surf.  Of course, that means that MOOCs will have to develop greater humanities content and not just remain focused on the STEM and professional development fields that have so far been enticing the largest numbers of online registrants.  Also, it might mean that online “courses” will have to become shorter and much more flexible in their commitment level, and most certainly less “massive” in their aspirations.  Netflix, after all, succeeds in part because it understands the needs and habits of niche viewers.  It might well be the ironic consequence of the MOOC experiment, that ultimately it proves to be transformative in our approaches to individualized learning.  

“Higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse,” warned Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen in 2013. Pointing to the rise of MOOCs, or Massive Online Open Courses, Christensen argued that the emerging popularity of online learning would disrupt the traditional model of classroom-based instruction. Christensen even claimed that the most established institutions would be forced to embrace a “hybrid model” of blended in-person/online education and integrate the use of MOOCs with their more specialized in-person offerings.

Yet just three years after Christensen’s sensational warnings, the pioneering spirit of democratized, open education has waned among its former believers. While some critics blame technical difficulties, copyright and intellectual property issues, or high drop out rates for the fading enthusiasm, others argue that MOOCs have yet to meet the inherent challenge of online learning. Unlike traditional classrooms, online academic experiences lack the personal interactions between professor and student and between peers that is crucial to creating a collaborative and engaging community of learning. In research investigating the social elements of online learning, educational technology specialists Whitney Kilgore and Patrick R Lowenthal argue that MOOC users often struggle with the individualistic experience of online learning: “Students regularly report feeling isolated and alone when taking online courses. This potential problem is amplified in MOOCs where there are hundreds, if not thousands, of learners,” Kilgore and Lowenthal conclude. As MOOC developers face declining interest in their products, they must address this social gap.

A recent study from Pennsylvania State University’s Saijing Zheng, Mary Beth Rosson, and John M. Carroll discusses one potential solution. Presented at the annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale on April 26, 2016, “The Role of Social Media in MOOCs: How to Use Social Media to Enhance Student Retention” analyzes how MOOCs can utilize social media platforms such as Facebook to build community connections among online learners. Analyzing peer-to-peer interaction through the quantitative analysis of digital responses as well as a qualitative survey component among students and instructors, Zheng, Rosson and Carroll studied three MOOCs offered by Coursera. The researchers discovered that while more students were included in the Coursera-based discussion groups, the quality of interaction was much higher in the Facebook group created for course participants. Measuring the number of comments and likes/votes, the researchers concluded that students and professors were more likely to successfully find academic help and social interaction by posting or commenting in the Facebook group rather than in Coursera forums.

Students and professors participating in the study confirmed these data findings: “At the beginning of the course, I frequently asked questions on Coursera but [received] no answers. After a while, I chose to ask questions on Facebook and it worked. Actually, I like answering question on Facebook, as least I received some thanks and we can have real interactions,” reported one student, stressing that conversations on Facebook felt like a more authentic connection. Both students and professors noted that the anonymity of the Coursera forums could be problematic. Students admitted to using fake names, leading to a lack of accountability that contributed to a more negative community environment. “You cannot imagine how painful it was when I tried to look through the comments,” recalled one instructor. By forcing students to use their real names and pictures, the Facebook group for the courses fostered “very effective and meaningful discussions,” another instructor reported.  Overall, participants in the Facebook group were much more likely to finish the course than participants in the Coursera forums.

The study from Zheng, Rosson, and Carroll highlights the potentially significant role of integrated social media into the MOOC experience. The successful utilization of social media as part of the online academic experience raises new questions among those invested in the success of MOOCs. Could live-tweeting classroom sessions similarly produce authentic peer-to-peer or student-to-instructor interactions? Could the features of sites such as Facebook be replicated within Coursera forums for more success in these spaces? If the use of social media can foster a sense of community comparable to traditional classroom environments, MOOC developers should take note — the MOOC revolution may depend on it.

Noted filmmaker Jake Boritt is coming to Carlisle on Wednesday, May 7, 2014 for a special free public showing and discussion of his latest film, “The Gettysburg Story,” a state-of-the-art documentary about the pivotal Civil War battle narrated by actor Stephen Lang.  What makes this film especially unique and cutting-edge is Boritt’s use of high-definition camera-enabled drone aircraft.  His innovative project quite literally depicts the 1863 battlefield from a perspective that you have never seen before. You will be amazed at the visual spectacle and fascinated by Boritt’s discussion of how 21st-century technology helped bring to life this classic 19th-century American story.

The Gettysburg Story Preview from Jake Boritt on Vimeo.

Digital Scholarship Lab.  University of Richmond, 2014.  http://dsl.richmond.edu/projects/

Reviewed by Leah Miller, Dickinson College

DSL Projects gateway

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 Historical Geography of the United States
• Virginia Secession Convention
• Hidden Patterns of the Civil War
• Mining the Dispatch
• Visualizing Emancipation
• History Engine
• Redlining Richmond
• Voting America

While the data covered by these projects spans all of American history from Columbus to the present, particular focus is devoted to the nineteenth century.  Rather than presenting the large-scale, political history which is available in the average classroom textbook, these projects analyze the movements and actions of the common person.  The result is a series of new stories about the experience of the average American—white, black, male, female—who worked, migrated, fought, and suffered for their freedom.

The most recent project is the digitized Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, originally drawn up in 1932 by U.S. naval historian Charles O. Paullin and geographer John K. Wright.  The print edition of the atlas—which includes over 700 maps on 166 plates that cover American history from 1492 to 1930—has greatly impacted many historical publications even to the present day.  Recently for the New York Times, project director Robert K. Nelson explained that “Paullin’s maps show ordinary people making a living, moving across the landscape, worshipping at churches, voting in elections.”  This new, digital edition changes the way we can interpret these maps.  Each map has been georeferenced and georectified to provide accurate and optimal web-viewing, but the viewer can switch to a high-quality scan of the original plates.  The user can also toggle a sidebar with Paullin’s original text and legends, as well as zoom in and out and adjust the transparency of the map overlay.  Permalinks save all these preferences and ensure they can be accessed in the future.  Series of maps that show progression of movement or activity through time have been animated.  For example, the animation of slave populations from 1790-1860 shows the concentration of southern slave power and its expansion westward concurrently with gradual emancipation of slaves in the North.  Furthermore, the statistical annotations provided for this map declare the exact numbers and percentages of slaves in each county, and by 1820 provide a breakdown of the slaves’ genders.  Some maps are accompanied by additional analytical blog posts.  “Vanishing Indians,” by lab director Robert K. Nelson, discusses the atlas’ shortcomings when it comes to portraying Native Americans in their relationships to each other.

The Visualizing Emancipation project is another interactive map which highlights slavery’s end during the Civil War.  The map “presents a history of emancipation where brutality is sometimes easier to see than generosity and where the costs of war and freedom fell disproportionately on the most vulnerable in the South.”  Users can filter through different types of emancipation events (i.e. African Americans helping the Union, their captures by either army, fugitive slave-related incidents, etc.), as well as different types of sources, including books, newspapers, official records, or personal papers.  Like the Atlas, this map is animated, so as the user toggles pins and filters on and off, she can follow the relationship between emancipation and the position of the Union army, or the agency of slaves in obtaining their own freedom.  The project also features certain events and figures as starting points for understanding emancipation, with the ability to pinpoint each event on the map.  I only wish that there were at least one featured example where a person or group were involved in multiple events, so a user could follow their physical journey using the map.  For those teaching emancipation, there is an accompanying lesson plan and worksheet.  Students are encouraged to contribute by submitting information they find in primary source documents, since the map, which covers “only a small slice of the available evidence documenting the end of slavery,” could never be complete.

Voting America also makes use of animated maps to show changes and differences in voting preferences for presidential and congressional elections (1840–2008).  The key factor is scope, which illuminates different patterns and trends.  For example, changing popular votes at the state level show which parties won each election, while at the county level show how each state was politically divided.  The dot-density maps are even more democratic, as 1 dot=500 votes in an area; this way, more third-party votes are recorded.  For these types of maps, every legend shows important political events in history; so, one can watch the progression of voter turnout since 1840 and note the effect the Fifteenth and Twentieth Amendments had.  The user also has the option to view individual elections in each of these capacities.  Population maps show the location and movements of black Americans (represented—a bit stereotypically—as black dots) and white Americans (represented by pink dots).  Unfortunately there is no option to view these populations together, nor is there any representation of immigrant populations.  The project is accompanied by an interactive map which can be used to compare presidential election years, but my computer, running Adobe flash player version 12.0.0.38, was unable to open it.  An alternative version is available through Google Maps, but currently this feature is down.  Finally, a “Scholars Corner” provides expert analysis by DSL staff on certain voting trends.

Three other projects in the lab focus on the American Civil War.  Mining the Dispatch uses topic-modeling, a computerized method of pulling together multiple documents that have the same key words within them.  This can reveal interesting categories and patterns among texts.  In this case, Nelson ran every issue of the Richmond Daily Dispatch from November 1860 to Lincoln’s death in April 1865.  Some of the more interesting topics are fugitive slave ads, anti-northern diatribes, military recruitment versus conscription, humor etc.  Nelson juxtaposed line graphs showing the frequency of similar topics, and, tentatively, relationships emerged.  This project is still in its preliminary phase and because of its algorithmic collection process, the data is imperfect.  Still, it is a good jumping off point for research questions.

The Virginia Secession Convention project seems to diverge from the site’s aim to tell the average American’s story.  It seeks to explain the decision of the VA delegates to secede from the Union through their full-text searchable speeches and the Convention’s proceedings.  However, as the Data Visualizations page shows, their decisions were likely influenced by their constituents.  Each county is annotated with statistics about the constituents: percentages of slaveholders and the enslaved, average farm value per acre, and pro- or anti-Union stances.

Finally, though Hidden Patterns of the Civil War largely highlights many of the projects already discussed, it also includes other mini-projects and tools, like a collection of maps that shows the migration patterns of black Virginians who married after the war, a Google Earth tour of the Richmond slave market developed from a sketch by painter Eyre Crowe, and a full-access digital database of the Richmond Daily Dispatch during the Civil War.

While the two remaining projects are less relevant to the nineteenth century, they are great tools for the classroom.  Redlining Richmond maps and annotates the racist categorizations of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (a New Deal agency) in the late ’30s.  The assigned value of each neighborhood is based on race and nationality, and shows the lingering effects of slavery in the Jim Crow era.  The History Engine is a “moderated wiki” where students generate three-paragraph “episodes” (rather than arguments) about people, places, or events in American history, drawing on local university or online archives and secondary sources.  Because registration is required, each submission is carefully screened for quality and accuracy.  The project’s aim is to place students from around the world in conversation with each other and their work.

The eight projects of the Digital Scholarship Lab thoughtfully and extensively explore the individual experiences of Americans during the nineteenth century.  The Lab’s innovative use of technology illuminates otherwise obscure patterns of growth, contest, suffering, and change.  This is an invaluable resource for studying the social history of our nation, and a must for anyone teaching or learning about the American Civil War.

Click here to find out more or to register today for “Understanding Lincoln”

Last year, nearly 750 participants signed up for a unique online learning experience.  “Understanding Lincoln” was the first open, online graduate course offered in partnership between the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  Taught by historian Matthew Pinsker, the course focused on classic Lincoln texts –not just his great speeches, but also his most important personal and political letters.  The participants studied and debated these documents through a series of live, interactive online sessions and helped create a brand-new website:  Lincoln’s Writings: The Multi-Media Edition.  Now, as we are getting ready to launch the 2.0 version of this exciting course (REGISTRATION CLOSES ON MAY 27, 2014), we think it’s worth sharing some of the comments from those who joined us during Fall Semester 2013.

From our auditors:

“I have seen the future, and it is “Understanding Lincoln.” Thanks again, and keep going with this approach as far as it will go!”

“I originally was just going to give the general kudos already stated above on a highly educational, interesting, and enjoyable course.  But having started to take [another] MOCC more recently in which I was very disappointed, I’ve decided it is important to re-enforce some of the particular techniques you used that were noticeable by their absence in the other course.  [Most important], the use of live interaction in video classroom sessions including on-line participation….The [other] course restricted live videos to semi-scripted sessions with teaching assistants, while “discussion” sessions were simply non-video chatrooms, sometimes with a 2nd level teaching assistant throwing in an occasional question, sometimes totally unstaffed.  In the video classrooms, Matt’s active role as discussion leader was very effective, particularly given your ability to actively monitor the chatline.”

“My goal in doing this was to add to my own knowledge, of course, and to provide some material to the greater community in the class.  This whole experience has been a very positive one for me and I thank you for all  of your hard and good work in putting it together.”

From our graduate participants:

“I just wanted to thank you again for the great academic experience provided through “Understanding Lincoln.”  I really learned a lot from the class and enjoyed every minute of it… I only wished I’d had more time to devote to my research!  I loved the amount of freedom we were given to create our own projects and having never designed a Web site before, I learned a great deal not only about historic content but also about 21st Century presentation!  There’s a lot more I still have to learn, but this was a good start!  In a strange way, I found all of our writing assignments to be a great release from my day-to-day school and family demands, so I really am sorry to see the class come to an end!”

“I’m so glad I took this class — living with Honest Abe these last four months has been a really moving experience in more ways than I can count and frankly, has made me realize that I need to keep pursuing history research and exploration as much as I can.”

“I just want to express my thanks in offering a challenging and yet rewarding course. My multi-media project has been shared with 100 other history teachers in my district and I have utilized it many times in my own classroom. The students are tickled at seeing their “teacher’s work” for a class on display in addition to its usefulness so I appreciate your multimedia project assignment.  I look forward to learning more…isn’t that the key to a successful class?”

“I’ve taught professional development courses and taken a lot of them myself, but I honestly found this to be one of the best classes I’ve taken since I was an undergrad 11 years ago.  I appreciated the expertise, depth of content and the flexibility you gave us to find our own areas of interest.  I also thought the online format was just a really interesting way to take a class.  Most helpful to my teaching, though, the website is already proving to be an amazing resource.  It’s a great project that is really going to help a lot of teachers across the country.”

“I am really proud of what I have learned through the course of this project and I thank you for the opportunity to do this for my students. I have very much enjoyed the course!”

“I really enjoyed the format of the class and the material presented within it. It was a logical arrangement of topics and primary sources, and I hope that our work helped you get closer to reaching your goal of creating an in-depth website that looks closely at Abraham Lincoln as both a person and president.”

“I want to also thank you for the experience provided by this course.  I feel like it has enhanced my  confidence teaching Lincoln and made me step out of my comfort zone and embrace the technology.  I learned a great deal, love the Lincoln writings site and will use your close readings in my classroom.”

“Thank you for an exciting past few months. Not only did I learn quite a bit about Lincoln, but I also learned some great technology programs to use with my students.”

“I know that I am a better teacher from the time I spent working on this course.”

Registration for the 2014 edition of the “Understanding Lincoln” course will remain open until May 27, 2014.  Full graduate student tuition costs $600.  Auditors pay a small fee of $25.  To sign up or to find out more details, go to the course registration page (http://gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course) and see for yourself.