This summer, I am working with undergraduate researchers Russ Allen and Leah Miller to study the new possibilities and enduring limits of open online learning.  We are researching the subject through a grant provided by the Mellon Digital Humanities Fund and are experiencing the reality by actually creating our own open online course called “Understanding Lincoln,” in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  Based on our initial survey of the literature, we have identified ten critical questions that will probably guide the rest of our research.  We’re publicizing them here to share our initial work and also to help solicit constructive feedback.    Please feel free to let us know what you think…

1.       How does grading work for open, online courses, especially for written assignments?   How can you prevent plagiarism and other forms of cheating?

2.      What have been some of the best recent experiences for students in online learning?

3.      Are MOOCs and other online courses good for some faculty and disastrous for others?  Will more extensive online learning create deepening labor problems in academia?

4.      Can tools and tactics developed for online courses help with regular courses?  Can they actually improve teaching?  Does “blended learning” work, and if so, at which levels?  Also, are “flipped classrooms” effective?

5.      How should we measure achievements in online learning –by registrations?  By completions?  By other types of assessments?

6.      Who controls the intellectual property of online content and “courseware”?  What are the leading models and challenges in this new open environment?

7.      How difficult is it to create and maintain effective open, online courses –in time, labor, and money?  Will this space become dominated by a handful of large providers?

8.      Can MOOCs lower costs, especially for undergraduates?  Will open, online courses succeed in providing cheaper and faster ways to obtain credits toward graduation?  Can MOOCs benefit students outside of college?  Will these certificates of completion help people compete in the job market?

9.      Can open, online courses achieve something new in crowd-sourcing?  Can students in such courses help build and develop shared projects as part of their learning odyssey?

10.   Are MOOCs really something new?  What has changed –if anything– that makes them seem so revolutionary?

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning.  Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course.

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 down and the memories of her musical childhood they evoke.  She eyes the students; they are young—only undergraduates—but they are polite and professional.  It’s evident they’ve been trained carefully to handle historical artifacts, and so she loosens her grip on her treasures and lays them on the table; her lips open, and out pours a story of a Lost Generation, a nation divided by color but united through jazz, and plunking piano keys in the childhood of a girl who grew up in 1950s Omaha.

This is what I imagine, anyway, when I, an undergraduate student of history myself, read about the collection of Janice Cleary, a resident of Omaha, Nebraska.  She’s one of hundreds of Nebraskans and Virginians who’ve participated in the University of Nebraska and JMU’s “History Harvests“, headed by Professors of History, William G. Thomas III and Patrick D. Jones (of the University of Nebraska) and Andrew Witmer (of JMU).  The aim of the project is “to create a popular movement to democratize and open American history” by inviting members of a community to bring their artifacts to be examined and digitally archived by undergraduate students of history.

The event is usually set up around a theme that has local significance; railroad history, local black history, refugee history, and the history of religion in surrounding counties are all examples of what has already been done.  In the words of the professors, the Harvests “must be organic, grassroots, and local” to generate community support and to ensure that the objects being digitally archived really contribute to the sense of “the people’s history.”

It is immediately apparent that this project has great educational significance.  How many colleges and universities aim to give their students hands-on opportunities in their fields of study?  I think it’s safe to say most of them.  And here is the perfect opportunity, where students are handling artifacts which might never have been seen before, connecting with the community, hearing oral histories, collecting data, and categorizing it all online for the rest of the world to access.  Although undergraduate students are commonly involved in the archival process (we here at House Divided do the same things), the History Harvests are unique in that they place real significance in the ordinary objects of the past.

Yet it is not so obvious just how great is the project’s educational significance, especially to the realm of online education.  MOOCs, or massive open online courses, are still on the up and up, and Professor Thomas has announced his plans for a “MOOC-like” course designed around the concepts of a History Harvest, to be launched in Spring of 2014.  It is not clear what this online course would look like, beyond that it will be different than most MOOCs in that it will be open to professor-led classes of other colleges, rather than open to any joe-shmoe on his own in front of a computer.

But can American history really be “democratized and opened” through the medium of a MOOC?  Should it?  Already, the course undercuts its own aims by cutting out those students who are learning at home by themselves and only allowing tuition-paying, residential college students to benefit from the experience of handling and digitally archiving the artifacts.  But how many students learning on their own are qualified to handle the treasures of people like Janice Cleary?

I think the History Harvests themselves are a fresh approach to teaching historical methods.  It will be interesting to see how the MOOC fleshes out.  And as a tuition-paying, residential college student, I’d take the class.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning.  Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course.

The stage appears to be set for what could be the future of higher education. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the hot topics for universities around the country, with hundreds of courses being offered worldwide at no cost to  users. Some have said that this move towards online higher education is a revolution. Is this true…or is it deja vu?

Thomas L. Friedman, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, wrote an essay on March 5, 2013 titled “The Professors’ Big Stage”. In it, Friedman expressed his belief that MOOCS and online learning will have a huge impact not only in the United States, but also globally. He opens by telling a convincing story about his friend Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor, who has gained attention worldwide as a result of his new online “Justice” course. Having become a celebrity in both Korea and China, Friedman states that he has received popularity “usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars and N.B.A. players.” Friedman uses this illustration to convey the magnitude of the situation. He believes that “the MOOCs revolution, which will go through many growing pains, is here and is real.” Using information that he gained from a recent conference organized by MIT and Harvard, Friedman goes on to discuss the changes in education. He describes how there is beginning to be a shift where there is “less interest in how you acquired the competency … and more demand to prove that you mastered the competency.” Friedman believes that this trend will create the necessity for colleges to not only offer online courses by themselves, but also to make them an integral part of regular classroom learning. He thinks that regular note-taking learning environments will increasingly be removed in favor of online courses or supplements, and that soon classrooms will only be a place where “knowledge can be honed through lab experiments and discussions with the professor.” In order to keep jobs, professors will also have to improve their teaching skills and ability to talk with students, or fear that they will be replaced by better instructors online. While Friedman does acknowledge that there is “still” value in traditional classrooms, he warns that universities will need to blend technology into their education if they want to thrive.

A little over a month after Friedman’s piece, an article by Susan Matt and Luke Fernandez on April 23, 2013 for The Chronicle of Higher Education challenged his perspective. Titled “Before MOOCs, ‘Colleges of the Air'”, their article challenges much of the hype surrounding online learning by noting that the idea is not nearly as revolutionary as what Friedman and other supporters think. The authors, both from Weber State, write about how in the 1920’s and 1930’s, “massive open ‘on air’ courses” swept the country. With new technology readily available, thousands embraced the idea that college courses could be taught over the radio. Throughout the article, Matt and Fernandez make striking comparisons to the modern day. Just like MOOCs, many of the leading universities such as Harvard, Columbia, Kansas State, and Ohio State were offering ‘open air’ courses. To sign up for a class, Matt and Fernandez state that “students registered by mail and received a syllabus by return mail. Some then mailed in assignments to the faculty.” Advocates praised these courses as creative and potentially successful ways to “reduce isolation” and “mitigate class differences.” However, Matt and Fernandez suggest that radio courses eventually succumbed to the same problems that might affect the MOOCs today. Attrition and the temptation of other forms of entertainment plagued the ‘open air’ courses. The learning also became passive, with a tendency to absorb information but not apply it, and social interaction was minimized. Another problem, according to the article, was that once students finished the course, “it wasn’t clear what that meant.” Just like MOOCs today, some universities in the 1920’s and 1930’s offered certificates, but very few offered credits, making the usefulness of the course hard to understand. While the article does admit that MOOCs are different than radio courses and offer the potential for more interaction, Matt and Fernandez are still skeptical. They write, “While MOOCs expose students to information, that is not the most fundamental dimension of learning. Perhaps most central to an education are the habits of mental discipline and the motivation it instills.”

It is undeniable that MOOCs are becoming more popular and widespread, but questions about their effectiveness are also intensifying. While many people would agree that incorporating technology into a classroom setting could be useful, the success of having online courses stand alone remains to be seen. The prospect of cheap yet high quality learning is indeed one that is worth getting excited about, but perhaps should first be met with a healthy dose of skepticism…or history. Learning from previous examples, such as the radio ‘open air’ courses, provide an important way to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Although viewed as a failure, acknowledging their existence does show at least that people have long yearned for massive open education. Perhaps now, that reality is not far away.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning.  Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course.

As a college student, I have always been both curious and skeptical about “online courses”. Although I have never taken one, I have often imagined the potential ease that learning at home would bring. Is this concept too good to be true though? Surely there must be a catch. As an intern at Dickinson College with Professor Pinsker (who is preparing to launch a new online course of his own titled, “Understanding Lincoln”) I have had the opportunity to do some additional research on this topic. What I have found so far, is a range of opinions that seem to only highlight my own mixed thoughts. In response, I will be writing a series of blog posts on the subject, comparing and contrasting some of the main points of these articles while bringing to light both the potential benefits and risks of online courses.

In an editorial for The New York Times Opinion Page, concerns for online learning and cautionary advice were deeply expressed. The article titled “The Trouble With Online College” from February 18, 2013, highlights the students rather than focusing on the professors and course itself. It uses recent studies to explain that the attrition rates for online courses are high, sometimes close to 90%. More specifically, The New York Times believes that the students damaged most are those who are vulnerable. The article classifies this group of people as those often barely prepared for a college setting, potentially having needs for more basic math and english classes, and often attending community colleges. It states, “A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in Washington State community and technical colleges. It found that those who took higher proportions of online courses were less likely to earn degrees or transfer to four-year colleges.” As a result, it proposes that these types of students should demonstrate their ability to learn first in a classroom, saying “Lacking confidence as well as competence, these students need engagement with their teachers to feel comfortable and to succeed. What they often get online is estrangement from the instructor who rarely can get to know them directly.” This concern is too big for The New York Times to ignore, and their article encourages universities to either improve online courses before opening them on a wide scale, or providing a hybrid option, which has proved to be more effective.

Taking a much different approach than The New York Times, is Steve Kolowich, a writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. In his article titled “The Professors Who Make the MOOCS” from March 20, 2013, he gives recent and compelling evidence in favor of online learning, Kolowich broadly reviews the responses of the largest ever survey of online course instructors. The result, is an overwhelmingly positive portrayal. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) are the main focus of Kolowich’s article, in which he uses numerous generalizations from the statistics (103 responses) and personal statements from the professors themselves, in order to show their potential. Over 50% of the instructors, he says, believe that the online classes are as rigorous as classroom instruction, and many universities are now giving certificates for their completion. While most colleges do not offer these classes for credit, many believe that it is only a matter of time. Kolowich notes that, “The American Council on Education, a group that advises college presidents on policy, recently endorsed five MOOCs from Coursera for credit, and it is reviewing three from Udacity.” Although a wide variety of schools have adopted variations of online learning, the professors who are at the forefront of these massive online courses are from prestigious universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Duke. Despite many of them originally being skeptical of these courses, Kolowich says, “Now these high-profile professors, who make up most of the survey participants, are signaling a change of heart that could indicate a bigger shake-up in the higher-education landscape.” Two-thirds of the professors surveyed see MOOCS as potentially lowering the costs of earning a degree from their home institutions, and possibly making college less expensive in general. Kolowich goes on to discuss that while the time and effort for creating these courses is excessive, most professors list altruism, increased visibility, greater reach, and staying in the forefront as worthwhile reasons for adopting them. While some critics say that online learning decreases the need for classroom learning, Kolowich makes it clear that many professors in his survey see it instead as a way to help improve classroom education. He states that “A key way professors are learning new teaching tricks is by taking cues from their MOOC students. Coursera, edX, and Udacity all track the interactions each student has with the course materials, and with one another, within a given course. Each platform then gives professors the ability to see data that could tell them, for example, which methods and materials help students learn and which ones they find extraneous or boring.” This outlook expands on the possibilities and potential of online courses by viewing them not only as a course itself, but also as a learning device for teachers.

Despite such contrasting articles, one thing remains clear: online courses are racing to the forefront of education, and cannot be ignored. Kolowich, while focusing mainly on professors, portrays online courses positively, while The New York Times article focuses on the students and portrays online courses negatively. Even though The New York Times does not deny that some online courses may be successful, their article does bring about an important concern regarding certain students. I believe that each of these articles convey ideas that need to be equally examined. It appears to be true that there are many benefits to online education, and that many of these courses can be effective. However, with such great size, it is easy to overlook the students themselves. For any school offering an online class, I think it is crucial for them not to see students as numbers, but rather as individuals. This appears to be a difficult, if not impossible task. To benefit potential “borderline” students such as those expressed in The New York Times article, perhaps students should have to meet certain requirements before taking an online class in order to guarantee a higher success rate. In the end, there is still much to be discussed and thought about regarding this new and controversial subject. I am looking forward to reading more articles about these online courses, and using my student perspective to sort though them.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning.  Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course.

The House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History are doing something unprecedented. They are launching an open,online graduate course called “Understanding Lincoln” that will be taught by noted Lincoln scholar Matthew Pinsker in Summer / Fall 2013 and available for anybody who wants to learn more about Abraham Lincoln and his legacy during the the period leading up to the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The limited enrollment graduate section of this unique online seminar which offers a full-semester graduate course credit (3.0 hours certified by transcript from Dickinson College) is designed especially for K-12 educators who want to learn innovative ways to teach Lincoln’s writings within the new Common Core state standards. Registration for graduate students ends on Friday, July 19, 2013 but space is limited and enrollment will close on a first-come, first served basis.  The course tuition is $450.  The open section of the course is entirely free, however, and offers any lifelong learners a chance to follow along with selected elements of the experience and to receive a Certificate of Completion from Dickinson College if they complete certain key components of the coursework.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

Graduate students in the limited enrollment section of the online course will also have a very special opportunity to participate in the events surrounding the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.  On November 19, 2013, selected graduate students from “Understanding Lincoln”  will be invited to attend the anniversary commemoration in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania at no cost –including free travel and accommodations.  After the morning Dedication Day ceremonies, we will host a live-streaming webcast directly from the historic Wills House in Gettysburg where President Lincoln stayed during the night before he delivered his famous address.  Partly through the extraordinary generosity of the Lincoln Leadership Institute, we will then be able to highlight the best multi-media final  projects submitted by students in the course.  These are the students who will be selected by Prof. Pinsker to attend the ceremonies and present their work in a live online session with fellow students and other interested course observers.

If you’d like to see an example of how this online learning experience works in a history course, please check out this video segment on the Emancipation Proclamation, produced by Gilder Lehrman education coordinator Lance Warren and featuring Prof. Pinsker leading a short, close reading of the January 1, 1863 document.  You might be surprised by what you don’t know about this famous executive order and how much can be gained by going through it almost line-by-line.

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Additional Course Information

Faculty Profiles

Matthew Pinsker will be the main instructor for “Understanding Lincoln.”  Pinsker holds the Brian Pohanka Chair for Civil War History at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where he also directs the House Divided Project, an innovative effort to create free digital resources on the Civil War Era for K-12 classrooms.  Pinsker is the author of various books and articles on Abraham Lincoln, including Lincoln’s Sanctuary (Oxford, 2003) and the forthcoming Boss Lincoln (W.W. Norton).  Currently, Pinsker serves as a Visiting Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  He is also a Distinguished Lecturer with the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.

Lance Warren will serve as the chief course producer.  Warren is Director of Digital Projects for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  He leads Gilder Lehrman’s online education programs and creates original video content for use in K-12 classrooms.  His co-directed film, That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town, won the Audience Award for Short Documentary at the 2009 Virginia Film Festival.  Warren received a B.A. in History and Political Science from Syracuse University  and an M.A. in History from Brandeis University.

Course Description

Nobody would have appreciated the power of open online education more than Abraham Lincoln, one of the great self-made, lifelong learners in world history.  This open online graduate history course aspires to create the kind of course that Lincoln would have appreciated. Just about 150 years ago, President Lincoln explained at Gettysburg how he believed that the Civil War would establish what he termed “a new birth of freedom” for the United States.  During our sessions in 2013 (July 23-Nov. 19), Professor Matthew Pinsker will use this anniversary moment to share the latest historical insights about Lincoln as well as to introduce participants to a number of cutting-edge digital resources for the study and teaching of Lincoln’s legacy.  The course will be organized around five popular designations that have been applied to the great president over the years (Railsplitter, Honest Abe, Father Abraham, Great Emancipator, and Savior of the Union) and will dig deeper into each of these themes in order to help explore their origins and assess their validity. In the process, participants will come to better understand Lincoln as man and president, and will also enjoy a unique online platform to share their own insights.

Course Objective

Crowd-sourcing is a phrase used to describe how individuals can help develop online projects by contributing content to them remotely.  Through the “Understanding Lincoln” course, we will attempt an experiment in what might be called “class-sourcing.”  Participants in this course will have the opportunity to develop various types of content that will be published online as part of a forthcoming multi-media edition of Lincoln’s selected writings.  The very best work by course participants will then be featured during a Livestreaming field trip to Gettysburg on November 19, 2013 –the date which marks the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.  We will webcast that day from the historic Wills House where Lincoln slept the night before delivering his famous remarks. Three seminar participants whose work has been judged the best in the course will then be invited to participate in the November 19 events at no cost to themselves –with travel and lodging costs paid for by the course sponsors.

Course Readings

All readings for this course will be freely available online.  Beyond intensive readings of Lincoln’s own letters, speeches and personal documents, participants will also have assigned essays and articles to read from leading historians such as David Blight, Michael Burlingame, Eric Foner, Mark Neely, James Oakes, and Sean Wilentz.

Course Assignments

Graded assignments for this course will include various types of online discussion and written participation as well as a series of short writing assignments, including blogging.  The culmination of the course will involve the production of a major multi-media teaching project with an accompanying research paper that describes the project’s pedagogical intentions.  The final multi-media projects will employ at least one of the digital tools introduced during the course utilized in a way that helps teach Lincoln’s legacy in a creative fashion by presenting various documents and writings from his contemporaries.

 Course Schedule

Dates and times for particular course sessions remain subject to change, but here is a tentative list of key course events:

Friday, July 19 Registration closes

Tuesday, July 23 Seminar Introduction (7-9pm EST)

Thursday, August 1 Discussion section (7-9pm EST)

Wednesday, August 7 Seminar –Lincoln the Railsplitter (7-9pm EST)

Wednesday, August 14 Discussion section (7-9pm EST)

Wednesday, August 21 Seminar –Honest Abe (7-9pm EST)

Wednesday, August 28 Seminar –Father Abraham (7-9pm EST)

Tuesday, September 3 Seminar –Great Emancipator (7-9pm EST)

Tuesday, September 10 Seminar –Savior of the Union (7-9pm EST)

Tuesday, October 15 Final multi-media projects due

Tuesday, November 19 Virtual Field trip –Gettysburg Address with special participant presentations (Time TBA)

Sunday, December 15 Final grades posted

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW