I am moderating a special panel at Ford’s Theatre on Tuesday, October 15, 2013 from 12:30pm to 1:30pm on the always relevant topic of “What Would Lincoln Do?  Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (And Abused) in Today’s Washington.”  This is part of the closing phase of the “Understanding Lincoln” online course (which the House Divided Project produces with the Gilder Lehrman Institute) but it is open to anybody who wants to attend in person or watch later on Vimeo or C-SPAN.  You can find out all of the details –and reserve seats- here, but this post (the first in a series about the event) is designed to more fully introduce our notable panel of experts and provide some easy access to their published opinions on these matters.

First, however, we should dispense with this shutdown business.  Ford’s Theatre is closed as long as the shutdown lasts, but our panel will continue regardless.  Ford’s Theatre has a new Center for Education & Leadership which is just across the street and which remains open to visitors.  We can always relocate there on October 15 if the crisis does not get resolved.

Our panel is a truly remarkable collection of figures who combine both expert knowledge of Abraham Lincoln with shrewd understanding of modern-day Washington and policy-making.  They include:

* Michael Lind, Policy Director, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation and author What Lincoln Believed (2006)
* Richard Norton Smith, noted presidential historian, George Mason University and former founding director, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
* Craig Symonds, Emeritus Professor of History, U.S. Naval Academy and Lincoln Prize-winning author, Lincoln and His Admirals (2008)
* James L. Swanson, Senior Scholar, Heritage Foundation and best-selling author, Manhunt (2006)

Michael Lind was one of the co-founders of the New America Foundation, a leading Washington DC think tank, which is co-sponsoring this event.  His current policy focus is on economic growth, but he has authored several thought-provoking books on American political history, including an engaging study of Abraham Lincoln entitled, What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America’s Greatest President (Doubleday, 2005).   In this work, which the New York Times called “intellectually bold” and one that “will almost certainly change the way you think about America and one of its greatest presidents,” Lind argues that Lincoln’s core conviction was democratic self-government and that he should be known first and foremost as, “the Great Democrat.”  Over the years, Lind has produced numerous books that invoke Lincoln’s legacy, but for the purposes of this panel, one of the most relevant was a short piece he authored for Salon in 2009, under the headline, “How would Lincoln vote today?”, which promised to reveal “where Lincoln really stood on the issues.”  The bottom line of this eminently readable (and thoroughly debatable) piece is Lind’s assertion that Lincoln “might find himself more at home among Democrats focused on technology and economic growth” (um, like folks at the New America Foundation, perhaps?) and that most emphatically, “Nobody with Lincoln’s religious and political beliefs could be a conservative Republican” today.

Richard Norton Smith might beg to disagree.  Smith is one of the nation’s most prominent presidential historians. Currently a history faculty member at George Mason University and completing a biography of Nelson Rockefeller, he has been a fixture over the years on C-SPAN and PBS “Newshour,” and a widely read political biographer of diverse figures such as Thomas Dewey, Herbert Hoover, Robert McCormick and George Washington.  He is also far more reluctant than Lind to identify Lincoln with either modern-day political party.    Smith told PBS in 2012 during this virtual tour of the new Ford’s Theatre Center, that “everyone wants Lincoln on their side. Almost everyone can devise a rationale to justify that.”  As a former director of several presidential libraries (including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield), Smith has a uniquely rich view of how American presidents, in particular, are always “getting right with Lincoln” (a famous line that Smith often quotes from David Donald’s well-regarded 1956 essay in The Atlantic).  Yet even the prudent historian sometimes finds himself invoking Lincoln or other Rushmore figures to comment on present-day political trends.  Just last week, Smith offered NPR a subtle critique of President Obama’s handling of the shutdown / debt ceiling crisis by comparing him to “successful presidents”:

“Successful presidents are defined in part by their enemies, [For] Andrew Jackson, it was the Bank of the United States. [Theodore Roosevelt], it was the ‘malefactors of wealth.’ Ronald Reagan, it was the ‘evil empire.’ This president — it isn’t that he has lacked for enemies. But I think he’s been very reluctant to … play that game.”

Like Richard Norton Smith, Craig Symonds tries to embody the classic scholarly caution about applying the past the to the present.  Symonds taught for years in the History Department at the US Naval Academy.  In fact, Symonds was the guy whom Harrison Ford “shadowed” in 1991 while he was studying up for his role as professor / spy Jack Ryan in the “The Patriot Games.”  Symonds has authored or edited more than 20 history books, mostly on the Civil War or US naval history.  He won the 2009 Lincoln Prize for his book, Lincoln and His Admirals (Oxford, 2008). Yet even Professor Emeritus Symonds occasionally indulges in the inevitable “getting right with Lincoln” parlor game. When asked about leadership lessons that might be derived from Lincoln, Symonds responded pointedly during a recent interview with the Abraham Lincoln Institute at Lincoln Memorial University, that he could name three:  “patience; a willingness to listen, as well as talk; and a sense of humor.  Sadly, all three are sorely in need in our nation today.”

James L. Swanson does not hold a professorship, but he has published one of the most influential books on the Lincoln assassination and its aftermath, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (Harper, 2006) and has edited or authored several historical books, including another fast-paced historical narrative coming out next month on the Kennedy assassination.  Also, even more than any other member of this panel, Swanson has spent a career in and around the federal government and federal policy-making with a special focus on the Supreme Court and constitutional law. Trained as an attorney, Swanson has held positions at the US Department of Justice, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation among others.   He has written frequently about partisan obstruction of judicial nominations, including this 2003 piece in The Weekly Standard which exorciated congressional Democrats for waging unprecedented “preemptive war” against George W. Bush nominees (apparently what was “unprecedented” in 2003 has now become the dysfunctional norm…).  During an interview with Scholastic, Swanson emphasized Lincoln’s self-made qualities as a prescription for all modern-day Americans.  “Lincoln once said that he was a living example of how a young person could succeed through hard work,” Swanson reported, “and he was right.”

“What Would Lincoln Do? Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (And Abused) in Today’s Washington” is a free public panel that will take place at Ford’s Theatre on Tuesday, October 15, 2013, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.  Tickets may be reserved at http://www.fords.org/event/what-would-lincoln-do.  Those who cannot attend the panel, may view it online starting on the evening of October 16.  Information about where to obtain access to the video will be available through http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln.

As readers of Blog Divided are well aware, we have been fascinated by the story of Samuel and Bayard Wilkeson, a father and son who were both at Gettysburg, one as a correspondent for the New York Times and the other as a 2LT for the Union army.  The son died on the battle’s first day after being wounded by an artillery shell and after amputating his own leg.  The father discovered his son’s body on July 4, 1863 following more than a day of intense searching.  Then he wrote a passionate, angry account of what happened for the New York Times, which closed by resolving that the dead at Gettysburg had “baptised” with their blood, the “second birth of Freedom in America.”  President Lincoln knew the Wilkesons. The story of the family’s tragedy echoed across the North during the summer of 1863.  So the connection to Lincoln’s famous phase in the Gettysburg Address, “a new birth of freedom,” seemed overwhelming, intentional, and eminently teachable.  We first posted about the story of the “Angry Father” in July 2010, but then followed up with more details in the summer of 2013, here and here.  I spoke about the Wilkeson family during the 150th anniversary commemorations for the Battle of Gettysburg and have been featuring the story in numerous K-12 workshops during the last five years, typically through this handout.

Matthew Pinsker from Gettysburg Foundation on Vimeo.

But there’s been one nagging concern that we just have not yet been able to fully resolve.  What exactly did Sam Wilkeson look like?  The problem is that there are multiple images attributed to him but they don’t seem to align properly.  I brought this up at the final seminar session of the “Understanding Lincoln” open, online course and asked for help, in true “class-sourcing” fashion.  Remarkably, within a few hours, I got a very helpful lead from course participant Martha Bohnenberger, a social studies teacher from South Carolina.

Here is the problem that first disturbed me in the summer of 2013.  The House Divided Project has been using this striking 1859 image of Sam Wilkeson (on the top left) taken by Alexander Gardner, discovered and cleaned up by project co-founder John Osborne, courtesy of the online collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  Yet the Buffalo News profiled the Wilkesons this past summer because the family were Buffalo natives  and they used the image on the top right –clearly not the same person– to represent Sam Wilkeson (undated, no source citation).  I presume they obtained this photograph from the Buffalo History Museum, but I haven’t yet tracked it all down. By the way, Buffalo was a nineteenth-century city partly founded by the grandfather in this story, Judge Samuel Wilkeson, Sr., who had hailed from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Dickinson College is located.  However, there is even more about the image to consider.  The Gettysburg National Military Park features the story of the Wilkesons inside their main museum experience at the Visitor’s Center, but they use an entirely different image reportedly of newspaper correspondent Sam Wilkeson, which they credit to the National Archives (on the bottom left).  Meanwhile, Martha Bohnenberger discovered this illustration (bottom right) in the New York Sun from December 3, 1889 as part of an obituary for Wilkeson –read it, he led a truly remarkable life– by doing some shrewd online research at the Library of Congress site, Chronicling America.  Again, it’s different.

Sam Wilkeson (Smithsonian)

Sam Wilkeson (Buffalo News)

Sam Wilkeson (Archives)

Sam Wilkeson (New York Sun)

Now, I am not willing to bet my tenure on this, but I think that the Smithsonian Wilkeson (1859) is the same as the New York Sun Wilkeson (1889), just bearded in that latter illustration.  The lines of the face, however, strike me as almost identical.  But I don’t quite know what to make of the National Archives Wilkeson or the Buffalo News Wilkeson.  The image quality isn’t quite good enough for me to decide, but they seem (especially the Buffalo Wilkeson) to be a different person (and probably different from each other as well).  What do you think?  There’s certainly more researching and phone calling to do, which I haven’t yet accomplished, but I appreciated the quick extra help from my class-sourcing exercise the other day and would like to continue to seek help if others would provide it.  Feel free to comment here and leave your opinion, or contact me directly by email (pinskerm@dickinson.edu) to share any insights.

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 Udacity to create open, online courses for its students, New America Foundation’s Director of Education Policy Programs, Kevin Carey, claimed, “A well-regarded public university giving credit for free or inexpensive MOOCs . . . is like a crack in an enormous dam.”  According to an excited Carey, if one college began accrediting MOOCs, many would follow, which in turn would shake the world of higher education by dramatically reducing costs nationwide.

In a debate with Carey in May, Arizona State University President, Michael Crow, insisted that technology should be used to augment the traditional classroom experience, not replace it.  He warned against over-reliance on MOOCs to “cure” the fast-rising costs of higher education.  “The problem that I have with an overgeneralization of this lightning bolt technology,” he stated, “Is that we will find ourselves on a trajectory where the rich get face-to-face with professors and everyone else will be taught by some type of robot…the [class] separation will grow deeper.”  Carey responded that the system of higher education is already “radically unfair.”

Crow is not alone in fearing that group segregation will result because of MOOCs.  University of Nebraska Professor, William G. Thomas, expressed his disapproval of Thomas L. Friedman’s opinion that MOOCs were the cure for special-needs learners, claiming that simply giving them a link to an online course will segregate them from children with “normal” learning needs. “The frightening and retrograde idea that people with special needs can be set apart (to be special somewhere else) should be seen for what it is—exclusionary.”  Professor Thomas is currently working on his own MOOC-like course on History Harvests, a project he helped create at Nebraska to “democratize” American history.

Meanwhile, San Jose State announced earlier in July their decision to discontinue their courses with Udacity, as students failed at alarming rates.  The university plans to continue their partnership with edX, which devised courses that merely supplemented traditional, in-class learning.  Reports show that   less that 51% of students enrolled in the Udacity program at San Jose State passed their courses, while students enrolled in the edX hybrid program faired better even than students enrolled in traditional classes.

With the recent failure (and success) of the San Jose State experiments, it appears that Crow was wise in cautioning against the full implementation of MOOCs in place of traditional, in-class learning.  If the mission of MOOC-makers is truly philanthropic, they need to consider the full consequences of their endeavors.

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.

MOOCs are supposed to be free, but it appears that for universities and professors, that is hardly the case. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have so far proven to be a huge financial commitment for institutions and according to recent studies, the preparation can be very time consuming for the educators who build them.

Financial Commitment

The Chronicle of Higher Education has been reporting that MOOCs have been quite expensive for universities. MOOC provider EdX apparently charges $250,000 per course, and then another $50,000 every time the course is offered (April 29, 2013). EdX also keeps part of the revenue generated by the profits of each course. To use the “Coursera platform”, another MOOC provider, The New York Times reported that universities would have to pay $8 per student enrolled, and $30-$60 per student to use content developed at a different school (May 30, 2013). In a class of 1,000+ students, those numbers really add up. Such prices show that creating a MOOC is a large and risky investment for any educational institution. As a result, many people, such as writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education Jason Mittell, believe that these investments will only be possible for elite institutions.

Time/Labor Commitment

On March 20, 2013, an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a survey taken by MOOC professors. In the survey, the vast majority of these professors expressed how teaching a MOOC “took a lot out of them.” Most spent over one-hundred hours on the project before it even started, and devoted 8-10 hours to running it during the week. Duke University professor Cathy Davidson has been blogging about her own preparation for teaching an online course. She says that the time and labor involved is so great, that she doubts how any professor would “be crazy enough to do this”, let alone for free. Although she gets paid a $10,000 stipend for the course, Davidson says that all of it is being used for “teaching assistants, technical assistants, and equipment.”

While many are jumping on the MOOC bandwagon now because it’s new and exciting, these commitments may cause it to get old in a hurry. With such high costs in money, time, and labor, it appears that MOOCs may not be worth the effort or risk. Universities must be willing to pay both for the course itself, and a higher compensation for the professors that teach them. Without this, the much talked about “MOOC revolution” will become nothing more than a moment in history.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning in the field of history funded by the Mellon Digital Humanties grant.  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 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 for a three-hour period.  I had heard from the upperclassmen that he was an intimidating professor, one of those who forced you to really defend and question your opinions.  Both excited and nervous, I arrived over ten minutes early with all the course materials in my book bag and the reading printed out.  As my classmates trickled in, I recognized some of them and made immediate judgements about the others.  One or two people were conversing with each other but no one tried to start a conversation with the entire class.  At five past, the Professor walked in, sat down between two students (we were in a seminar-style classroom), and introduced himself.  We did what you usually would on the first day of class: review the syllabus, discuss the course aims, and ask a few questions before being dismissed early.  It was what every student expects from their first day of class.

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend another first class led by Professor Pinsker, but this time, it was very different.  Yesterday was the launch of our online course, Understanding Lincoln, and I virtually attended the first online seminar via Adobe Connect.  It ran from 7-9pm EST and was exclusively for the graduate-level students who had paid to take the course (though the free participants were able to watch a half hour after its conclusion).  I will admit, I was a bit skeptical going in.  I didn’t think it would be at all comparable to a traditional classroom, having participated in other MOOCs and finding it not that compelling to watch a professor lecture on a screen.

Well, I was right, and I was wrong.  It certainly wasn’t a traditional classroom, but it was surprisingly engaging.  I entered the “classroom” three minutes late, having had computer difficulties, but no one noticed.  The flexibility of the program allowed participants to come and go as they needed to, and up to 70 students were present by the end of the session.  The setup included a shared screen with the professor, a live feed of him at a lectern, and a chat window where participants could ask questions and comment on what the professor was saying.  Although the professor couldn’t read them, Gilder-Lehrman’s Education Coordinator, Lance Warren, moderated the chat box and communicated the best ones to him.

Although it was by no means a traditional classroom, I was intrigued to find that there were some key overlaps.  Even though I couldn’t see my fellow students, I still found myself curious about who they were and where they were from.  I kept making judgements about their personalities.  Kory L. reminded me of an awesome high school teacher I had, while James G. was obviously a snarky Lincoln-skeptic.  I could tell when participants were excited to talk or nervous to ask questions, just like on the first day of class.  What’s more, Adobe had a “Raise Your Hand” feature, where a participant could ask a question of the professor directly.  Clicking that button would put them in a queue, which Lance would access and enable their mics.  Aside from the technical difficulties some participants experienced, it was very much like asking questions in a traditional classroom, and I think that alone could be said to have revolutionized the online lecture.

There were a few adjustments that could be made.  For one, I’d prefer the live feed of the professor to be larger.  Some of the time I felt distracted by other things on screen, and I found I was able to pay more attention when I was watching him speak.  If he can’t adjust the size of the video, he might try to do more interactive things with the shared-screen as he lectures, especially bringing up text as he reads it.  And while I do feel that the live chat was a great tool, I would suggest encouraging students to utilize the private chat more for trivial comments.  I assume that will happen more often as participants get to “know” each other, but last night some of the comments were more distracting than helpful.

I know the question on everybody’s minds is how online learning might change or negate the traditional classroom.  Already, from my experience yesterday, I can see the possibilities of utilizing social media sites like Twitter to replicate the live chat in the online seminar.  I really appreciated this feature because it encouraged the meeker students to pose their questions, without physically having to speak up.  A greater diversity of voices were heard and intellectual conversation flourished.

Overall, I thought it was a great experience, better than I had hoped for.  The chat box and the ability of the participants to ask direct questions really underscored the objective of this online course—to have participants collaborate to create a project that is useful to others outside of the course, to expand Lincoln’s legacy using the legacies of present-day scholars.

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 Massive Open Online Courses continue to gain popularity and media coverage, much of the focus has been on learning online vs. learning in a classroom. However, just as important as learning itself, is how to evaluate the learning. For most MOOCs, this comes in the form of tests and quizzes. The problem presents itself mainly in humanities courses, where Professors are simply unable to grade written assignments for all the students enrolled. As a result, MOOC providers such as Coursera and EdX have developed new techniques to help solve this problem.

Getting Creative

In an article written in The New York Times on November 2, 2012, writer Laura Pappano gives a general overview on MOOCs, and the questions surrounding their validity as educational classes. One of the biggest concerns that she addresses in her article titled “The Year of the MOOC” is how assignments are graded. While multiple choice and true/false questions are standard for computer grading, written assignments force professors to “get creative.” She continues to explain how Coursera has developed the process of “peer grading” in order meet these needs. This works by making an individual grade the paper of five peers, before seeing feedback for their own work (which will have been graded by five people). Pappano adds that Coursera is also in the process of developing software to help eliminate the “bad graders”. By comparing the scores of all five peers, Coursera will be able to flag people who grade inaccurately, and will therefore “give their assessment less weight.”

Colorado State University Professor (and former MOOC student) Jonathan Rees wrote an article on March 5, 2013 in which he expressed his disapproval. He says in his article titled “Peer Grading Can’t Work“, that while peers often grade accurately, it is the comments that truly matter, and are unfortunately often sub-par. He stresses how learning from mistakes on tests are fundamental in college education, and is unsure whether MOOCs can deliver helpful responses. Rees states that this will not impact those taking MOOCs simply for expanded knowledge, but “its victims will be the future students who take MOOCs to earn college credit.” To him, these students will be deprived of the necessary instruction on writing, argument forming, and the appreciation of literature that are necessary for success.

Instant Feedback

On April 4, 2013, John Markoff wrote an article for The New York Times titled “Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break“, which explains how MOOC provider EdX has created new artificial intelligence software that grades written assignments instantly. According to Markoff’s report on research done in this area, the quality of these grades are “similar to the variation you find from instructor to instructor.” However, Markoff also explains how many people, such as MIT researcher Les Perelman, criticize the effectiveness of the software, and can often fool it with “nonsense essays” that somehow receive “high marks.” Perelman also started a petition against the program (now up to 2,000 signatures), in which they claim that computers are unable to detect many of the essentials that compose good written communication. Despite this, Markoff ends his article optimistically, referencing University of Akron in Ohio professor Mark D. Shermis and saying “In his view, the technology — though imperfect — has a place in educational settings.”

Both of these articles show that while the ability of MOOCs to accurately grade papers is still developing, it may be on the rise. Although they are likely to remain imperfect, will MOOC grading nonetheless one day become effective? Or, will the absence of Professors in this vital area create a hole that will eventually sink the entire ship?

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning in the field of history funded by the Mellon Digital Humanties grant.  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

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 claim that MOOCs could have serious, positive effects on US foreign relations.  He suggested that the US “rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic,” all for very cheap.

Coursera co-founder, Daphne Koller, seems to share this opinion, as she claimed in 2012 during a TED Talk (a non-profit series of online mini lectures which helped inspire MOOCs) that MOOCs could “establish education as a fundamental human right.”

There are many who don’t share Friedman and Coursera’s enthusiasm for the global reach of MOOCs.  In September of 2012, Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser warned of the prepackaged and standardized format of the MOOC, calling it the McDonaldization of higher education, and Ghanashyam Sharma wrote last Monday, July 15, “The excitement about the unprecedented access that people around the world now have to education from places like Harvard and MIT overshadows what should have been a topic of serious conversation: the intellectual barrier in spite of technological access.”  Both pieces, written for the Chronicle of Higher Education, warned that most MOOCs created in the US by US professors are only perpetuating a “wave of intellectual neo-colonialism,” in which geographical areas lacking in first-rate education are fed Western ideas that are in all likelihood incompatible with local cultural understandings and even methods of learning.  Furthermore, online learning imported from the US could seriously damage progress of developing brick-and-mortar institutes of education and cultivating local teachers in third world countries.

An article by Inside Higher Ed from April, 2013 cites the efforts of the African Virtual University, which refuses solely to utilize online content from Western universities, but which seeks to build its own content.  In the process, local teachers and IT staff are given critical support and training.  “An online course beamed in from America doesn’t do this — even if there is enough bandwidth to access it.”

While it is undeniable that the prospect of opening higher education to the world is inspiring, these words of caution must not go unheeded.  Is there a better way to democratize education than simply mass-distributing the opinions of elite American professors?  Can some sort of collaboration occur between professors of American universities and universities around the world?

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.

Along with the growing popularity of MOOCs, has come a rising debate in regard to their effectiveness.  It seems that there is a constant comparison between learning in an online environment and learning in a classroom environment.  However, as several new articles suggest, perhaps the best solution can be found in a “hybrid” or “blending” of the two.  But does blended learning actually work? What would this mean for the future of education?

Steve Kolowich’s article for The Chronicle of Higher Education in May of 2013 examines the issue in light of recent protests from university faculty members.  San Jose State philosophy professors wrote an open letter in which they stated their refusal to use MOOC material from well known Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, in their classrooms, claiming that students would have neither “self-paced learning” or the “responsiveness of a professor” who caters to the needs of specific students.  Kolowich points out that the professors were not opposed to the technology itself, but rather to the important principles of their teaching that this collaboration could destroy.  In particular, they feared that universities would “use those materials to phase out local departments and professors.” Although San Jose State said that they plan to let professors have control of the MOOC content, the professors themselves remain skeptical.

Another Chronicle article written on the same day by Oregon State associate professor, Andrew Valls, also examines the San Jose State protests.  Valls sees the letter as too black and white; it only addresses the difference between strictly online learning and strictly classroom learning.  He insists that true hybrid learning is a combination of both, and while nothing will replace classroom learning,online components could provide many advantages.  Not only are they convenient, he writes, but sufficient online lectures allow professors to “rethink how we spend our time in the classroom,” spending less time lecturing and more time engaging the students.  Valls also doubts that only elite universities can provide successful online content.  “Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection” might create a MOOC, lending more varieties of lecturers and courses to the world of online education.

Valls is right in saying that everyone has the opportunity to produce online material, but it is also true that not all material carries the same weight. A course taught by a Harvard professor and one taught by a community college professor would not be comparable, although thanks to MOOCs, both would now be at the same price. However, as Laura Pappano notes in her November 2012 article, teaching ability is also a factor. Perhaps credentials will become less important as MOOC instructors are sought not for their research, but “because of how they teach.” It is a combination of these two factors that may ultimately change the face of education, making hybrid learning a detriment for some, and an enhancement for others.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning in the field of history funded by the Mellon Digital Humanties grant.  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

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 MOOC credits on a transcript?  And, perhaps more importantly, how comfortable are employers with hiring applicants who received their experience online?

MOOCs gaining ground for college credit

In the first half of this year alone, it already seems like MOOCs are well on their way to being accepted for college credit.  The American Council for Education has at the start of this year recommended five Coursera courses as credit-worthy, and the state of California just approved legislation requiring high school and undergraduate institutions to accept transfer credit from certain MOOCs to alleviate overfull classrooms and continue students in their degree progression.   Georgia Tech has recently announced its plan to launch a completely online master’s degree in computer science.  Although the program requires tuition, it’s much less expensive than enrolling in traditional courses.  AT&T has pledged  $2 million dollars to support the program, hoping to prepare more students with skills they’re looking for in future employees.

Is accreditation contrary to the spirit of the MOOC?

Of course there has been backlash to this news.  Professor Joshua Gans at University of Toronto holds that accrediting MOOCs will tailor their content towards testing.  Instead of allowing room for teacher creativity and class curiosity, both professors and students will be worried about what’s on the final.  He claims that this is in opposition to the spirit of the MOOC, which, when they were free and credit-less, students took because of curiosity and the desire to learn.  While it can be said that intellectual curiosity is a driving factor for some, aren’t most MOOC-takers looking to improve their skill sets in ways that are demonstrable to current or future employers?  In these instances, some form of assessment is necessary.  Are there ways to freshen up the online classroom experience while still teaching to the exam?

Alternatives to accreditation

In lieu of credit, some people are now suggesting that online students be awarded “badges” for certain skill sets they’ve learned online.  Employers can look at these badges and determine if an applicant has the necessary skills they’re looking for—despite not having attended “real” college.  In the same spirit, MOOCs are now showing up on resumes.  This article advises students on when and how to incorporate MOOCs into their resumes and LinkedIn, and this article advises employers on how to assess MOOCs on applicants’ resumes.

Accredited or unaccredited, it is becoming increasingly evident that  employers are becoming more willing to consider MOOC education as a valid form of job training.

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.

On Tuesday evening, July 7, 1863, Abraham Lincoln responded to a “serenade” from a crowd outside the White House celebrating the wonderful news  received in Washington earlier that day that Vicksburg had finally surrendered to Union forces (actually on the Fourth of July, Independence Day). Speaking extemporaneously, the president struggled to find the right words to put the twin victories –Vicksburg and Gettysburg– into context.

How long ago is it? –eighty odd years– since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.”

Ever since, many Lincoln scholars have noted –though not nearly enough classroom teachers have realized– that this “Response to a Serenade” from July 7, 1863 stands as an especially compelling “first draft” for the Gettysburg Address, whose famous opening lines delivered just over four months later on November 19, 1863 clearly owed their origins to Lincoln’s desire to revise and improve what for him had been a somewhat awkward initial effort:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

But there’s even more to this “first draft” story than most Lincoln scholars have acknowledged.  It appears very likely that Lincoln was working at least in part from another man’s text as he contemplated how to answer that boisterous serenade on Tuesday evening, July 7.  Sometime the night before or earlier that day, the president probably read and was inspired by what historian Harold Holzer is now calling “the greatest piece of war reporting ever,”  a stunning dispatch from Gettysburg written by a New York Times correspondent whose eldest son had died tragically on that first day of the great battle.

The story of the reporter, Samuel Wilkeson, and his son, Bayard, is also reasonably well known to Civil War scholars and Gettysburg buffs, but nonetheless remains absent from most American textbooks and classroom discussions.  Yet the reason why Holzer is featuring it in his next book (on Lincoln and the press) and why we have been focusing so much attention on it here at House Divided (see our earlier posts here and here), is because of the many layers of human drama involved.  Lt. Bayard Wilkeson was 19-years-old when an artillery shell nearly severed his leg around mid-day on July 1, 1863 north of the town , along what is now known as Barlow’s Knoll (see image above).  The brave young man was then forced to amputate his own leg before he ultimately died from shock that evening while in Confederate custody.  Meanwhile, his father Samuel had been trying to rush up to the battlefield to report on General Meade and the Army of the Potomac as they entered into combat with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.  Sam Wilkeson spent two anxious days reporting from Meade’s headquarters and wondering what had happened to his son, knowing only that Bayard had been wounded and captured.  Eventually, Wilkeson found his dead boy on Saturday evening, July 4, and wrote his lead dispatch for the New York Times  with these memorable words:

Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest  -the dead body of an eldest born crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not stay?

Wilkeson then produced a dramatic and detailed account of the battle, which was published on Monday, July 6, 1863, and which he closed in this stirring fashion:

Oh, you dead who at Gettysburg have baptised with your blood a second birth of Freedom in America, how you are to be envied.

To read the full text of Samuel Wilkeson’s article, go to the House Divided research engine, or click here

This story raises a profound question:  was Wilkeson’s “second birth of Freedom in America” a line that Lincoln was recalling and intentionally evoking when he closed his own Address at Gettysburg on November 19 with the phrase, “a new birth of freedom”?  The National Park Service displays relics from Bayard Wilkeson’s death, including the sash he used as a tourniquet, and they provide a text panel showing the opening of his father’s famous dispatch (later turned into a pamphlet, Sam Wilkeson’s Thrilling Word Picture of Gettysburg), but they refrain from making any direct connections between Wilkeson’s account and Lincoln’s address.  Most scholars have so far been equally reticent about making that interpretive leap.

Yet that is surely too much scholarly caution.  Holzer confirms that during the Civil War Lincoln had same day or next day access to the New York Times, and while nobody knows for certain if Lincoln read Wilkeson’s dispatch before he replied to the serenade, there are a handful of good reasons for believing that he did.  First, he and his aides knew Sam Wilkeson quite well.  The story of Bayard’s death and his father’s dramatic reaction is one that would have transfixed them as it did nearly everybody else in the North.  But second, and more important, Lincoln appeared to allude to the episode in his brief remarks on Tuesday evening, July 7:

I would like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of the country from the beginning of the war … [but] I dislike to mention the name of one single officer lest I might do wrong to those I might forget. Recent events bring up glorious names, and particularly prominent ones, but these I will not mention.

Perhaps the president was referring here to General John F. Reynolds or other tragic losses from the battle, but I believe this is a direct reference to the Wilkeson sacrifice.   One certainly cannot ignore the fact that the sentiment Lincoln offered here of not mentioning names later became the guiding principle of his Gettysburg Address.  On November 19, 1863, Lincoln mentioned nobody by name.  He offered no specific details.  Ordinarily, we warn students against abstractions and encourage them to be as concrete as possible in their writing.  Lincoln was anything but specific in his Gettysburg Address.  However, like many great writers, he was thoroughly evocative.  Those last lines of the Address were especially evocative for nineteenth-century audiences, not only paraphrasing Daniel Webster’s famous Second Reply to Hayne (“It is, Sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s Government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people” (January 26-27, 1830), but also  –I would argue– paraphrasing the “greatest piece of war reporting ever” from Samuel Wilkeson.  Even if we will never know the full truth behind the “first draft” of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, I hope more teachers see the value in bringing up this poignant and powerful story in their classrooms and letting students decide for themselves.

Stories like this one and many others like it that help bring to life Lincoln and the Civil War provide the animating spirit behind our latest project –the creation of a new multi-media edition of Lincoln’s Writings that we are launching on July 7, 2013 (marking the 150th anniversary of Lincon’s “first draft” of the Gettysburg Address).  The multi-media edition will include 150 of Lincoln’s documents that I have dubbed his “most teachable.”  The pages of this site will be populated with all kinds of digital tools, such as audio recordings of the documents in Lincoln’s voice (by Dickinson College theatre professor Todd Wronski), interactive maps, clickable word clouds, and videos of me conducting close readings of the top 25 key documents (starting with the Gettysburg Address, ranked naturally as #1).   This has been a big project with excellent work from many people, most notably House Divided co-founder John Osborne, our technical director Ryan Burke, and Dickinson College undergraduates Russ Allen and Leah Miller.  The multi-media project itself will then become the focal point of the “Understanding Lincoln” open, online course that we are currently preparing to offer this summer and fall in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  Students in that course will work toward building out the Lincoln’s Writings website with an anticipated first-stage completion date of November 19, 2013 (not coincidentally marking the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address). Registration for that course closes on July 19, 2013.  A full credit graduate section is available and designed especially for K-12 educators.  Please check out the new Lincoln’s Writings website and watch specially designed close reading videos, like the one below, with me explaining Lincoln’s writing process for his Gettysburg speech and the Wilkeson connection to the Address:

Matthew Pinsker: Understanding Lincoln: Gettysburg Address (1863) from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo.