Peter Mabli, American Social History Project
PROPOSAL TYPE
Structured Conversation
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Memory
- Teaching and training
- Public engagement
ABSTRACT
With our soon-to-be launched open educational resource (OER) Who Built America? as an example, we wish to discuss the benefits and challenges of OERs for history educators, and brainstorm best practices for presenting Who Built America? and similar resources to a broader public audience.
DESCRIPTION
For the past three years, the American Social History Project has been translating its two-volume U.S. history textbook Who Built America: Working People and the Nation’s History into an online open educational resource (OER). The project–WBA: The OER–will include the narrative text of the print publication, hundreds of primary and secondary sources (images, documents, maps, and charts) sourced from the award-winning site History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, and additional essays written by historians that delve into topics touched upon in the narrative. The site is expected to be launched in early 2022.
WBA: The OER has been designed primarily for undergraduate history courses and advanced high school classrooms. New features such as the course builder tool were designed for the target audience in mind. However, as a free and open website, we hope WBA: The OER can benefit users outside of the “traditional” classroom experience as well. In essence, we wish to offer WBA? as both an accessible history of the U.S. for educators and a resource for public consumption. We are looking for additional presenters who may be interested in exploring/discussing the questions and challenges of presenting a web-based resource with broad historical narrative as well as primary source analysis for both classroom use and general public use/accessibility. Possible individuals include librarians, museum educators, and experts in the digital humanities. Please contact Peter Mabli for more information and to access our project’s prototype site.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Peter Mabli, American Social History Project, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 1, 2021. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Hi Peter! I am the Director of Virtual Learning for St. Andrew’s Episcopal School outside of Jackson, MS. COVID has fundamentally shifted the K-12 educational landscape, forcing teachers to design rich, interactive, collaborative learning experiences instead of the traditional assembly line model of information dissemination. High quality, open source materials which can be accessed from anywhere, by anyone, will assist educators as we continue to shift more of our activities into virtual spaces, offering the flexibility that families want while improving equity, engagement, and student agency in the learning process. I would love to participate in your panel and speak to how WBA: The OER can fundamentally change both in-person and virtual High School History classrooms.
Hello–I think that there should be more discussion about open educational resources within the public history field as a way to increase access and reach. I suggest that the structured conversation connect with public historians who are OERs as part of their public history work to provide a bridge from classroom texts to public history practice.
This is all fascinating, I wonder if being in conversation with some of the others involved in other such efforts, perhaps even the American Yawp: http://www.americanyawp.com/text/contributors/.
I, like some of the others above, also wonder about the role of OER in the field of public history more generally (not as a product of public history necessarily, but as a discussant of questions of memory, place, community engagement, etc.). It’s hard not to think about the critical role of all of this in the era of the novel coronavirus, of course, and the need for digital access resources.
Hi Peter,
I would recommend also looking at the Museums for Digital Learning project (https://museumsfordigitallearning.org/). It seems very similar to the project you’re developing, but geared towards K-12 students. History Colorado have is an institutional partner; I’d be happy to connect you with one of my colleagues if you’re interested in learning more.