Genre Site Review
In analyzing the genre of teaching on the web, it is helpful to identify three broad categories into which most teaching sites fall – archive and museum teacher resources, teacher resource centers, and teaching sites centered on a small set of primary documents or theme.[2] Following a brief overview of the first two categories, the bulk of the following discussion centers on the third since the proposed site is closest to it in terms of use and overall design.

Many public history sites whose main aim has been to put primary documents or parts of collections online have also integrated teacher helps as part of these collections. One of the most popular is the Library of Congress’s Learning Page. Connected to their American Memory Collections, the Learning Page is a great resource for teachers of American History. The site not only offers lesson plans developed and “tested” by teachers around the country, but also resources and ideas for teaching certain themes in United States History that utilize several of the American Memory collections. Likewise, the National Archives’ Digital Classroom provides students access to a wide range of primary documents grouped according to time period and themes, as well as providing teacher lesson plans. The Smithsonian offers online versions of two history exhibits that do a masterful job of exploiting their artifacts for teaching purposes. Both The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden and Within these Walls include lesson plans and online exercises that use the exhibit material.

The second category of teaching sites leans toward gateway sites, or more accurately for the genre, resource centers. George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media (CHNM) History Matters and World History Matters are some of the best examples of sites that serve as a gateway to teaching resources on the web. From links to online syllabi to primary documents, as well as history web sites and lesson plans that use web resources, History Matters provides extensive web resources for teachers and professors of United States history survey courses. World History Matters serves as a resource center for teaching world history survey classes. Yet it is also a site developed around primary sources. In addition to a guide to the best 100 web sites that offer access to primary sources for world history, there are also case studies and genre-based guides in which historians discuss ways to analyze and unpack world history evidence.

CHNM has been working on additions to these sites that take them beyond resources centers, however. For History Matters, development is underway for modules of online exercises that direct students to various sites and sources on the web in order to complete the assignments. These four modules – broken down by time period from early America through the twentieth century – cover topics as diverse as pre-eighteenth-century Native American creation stories to twentieth-century advertising. Similarly, World History Matters has several online exercises in development that invite visitors to “be the historian,” working with primary documents to answer questions, solve problems, and develop critical thinking.

The third category of teaching sites expands on this idea of encouraging students to “be the historian.” These sites are often built around either some small cache of primary sources and/or some historical “mystery.” Who Killed William Robinson? Race, Justice, and Settling the Land asks students to try their hand at solving the mystery of who killed nineteenth-century black farmer, William Robinson, living on the British colony of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Although a local Indian was tried, convicted, and hung for the murder, historians Ruth Sandwell and John Lutz present a cache of evidence that they think suggests that the real murderer went undetected. In addition to issues of race, justice, and settlement, this site also speaks to how the examination of different evidence may yield different reconstructions of the past. The site is well designed and the developers include a good explanation on how to navigate its complexity. There is, however, a question of audience, as there is no information as to what level of student the site is designed for. The sophistication of the site and the way in which the documents can be reached through myriad paths would certainly overwhelm high school students. Likewise, even college undergraduates may find this site overwhelming unless it was assigned to them as a project over the course of the semester. Moreover, solving the mystery is not a foregone conclusion even after spending some time in the site. Perhaps this is why Sandwell and Lutz suggest an answer within the “cast of characters” by telling visitors who had the most to gain from Robinson’s death. Unfortunately, providing this information is the not the same as coming to a conclusion based on immersing oneself in the sources.

Another teaching site that plans to engage in mystery solving is The Lost Museum. This highly interactive experience is a joint effort by City University of New York’s American Social History Project/Center of Media and Learning, and CHNM. The site opens with P. T. Barnum “asking” visitors to help solve the mystery of the fire that destroyed his American Museum in New York in 1865. At present, this invitation to the mystery is an invitation to explore the online version of the museum, reconstructed largely from a wood engraving of the “Second Saloon,” the interior “picture gallery” of the museum. Visitors can “walk” through the museum and click on objects to get a closer view, as well as click on the “archives” link for additional information. The archives also contain primary sources related to the museum and nineteenth-century life. Finally, a classroom section provides teachers with assignments and online exercises that utilize the museum, the archives, and other online sources. Eventually, CHNM plans to expand the mystery-solving aspect of the site so that students may try their hand at figuring out who started the fire. Even at present this site is a satisfying and rich exploration into the nineteenth century. Yet the question of audience again looms large. Nowhere is the audience of students to which the site is directed defined. And whereas the navigation of this site prevents it from overwhelming in the way that Who Killed William Robinson? does, I believe there is still an issue of complexity with it that may limit its audience.

The Harvard Film Studies Center’s DoHistory is another site that uses the “solving a historical mystery” technique as a way of engaging students. This site employs the diary of eighteenth-century midwife, Martha Ballard; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s scholarly work on the diary, A Midwife’s Tale; and the PBS film on the same as the focal point for its exploration of “doing history.” Unfortunately, the suggestions for teaching with the site need to be expanded and updated, and the “doing history” part of the site is not nearly so open-ended as the William Robinson or Lost Museum mysteries, as there is a strong emphasis on the interpretations set out by Ulrich. Moreover, there is also a complexity associated with this site that would prohibit many audiences of students from being able to utilize it on their own. Yet the cache of primary documents is rich, the diary is contextualized well, and the idea of working with primary documents that the site seeks to encourage comes across through the “do history” theme.

A final site that has another rich collection of primary documents for students to work with was developed by the State University of New York’s Center for the Study of Women and Gender. Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000 brings together in one virtual location over 1000 primary sources related to women’s experiences with social movements during the last 225 years of American history. The documents are grouped for browsing by time period and subject, and are also searchable by keyword. A “Teacher’s Corner” link provides lesson plans grouped for both halves of the United States history surveys and a United States women’s history course, as well as document-based questions for teachers of Advanced Placement high school students. The lesson plans are fairly static, however, and lack the creativity of the History Matters sites.

The common thread to all three of these categories of teaching sites is that while the sites integrate teaching as a component of the material they offer, they are not constructed from the standpoint of clearly making the site in and of itself the classroom. The public history sites generally bring in teaching as an important, yet secondary concern to their online exhibits or archives. The teaching resource centers are important sites but they are generally designed to be used more by teachers than students. And while the third category comes closest to emphasizing teaching on par with their exhibits or archives, these sites have a definite hybrid nature to them and, therefore, often struggle to define their audience.[3] In short, most of the sites provide ideas for the teachers through lesson plans or exercises, resources for the students or teachers in the way of primary sources, or point the teachers to other sites for additional resources. There are few web sites that are designed with teaching as the primary objective, integrating their primary sources as a resource to assist in the teaching, in the manner in which this proposal outlines. Moreover, when one considers the intersection of the topic of African Americans in Sport with the genre of teaching, Headlining the Sports Page will fill a distinct void in the world of academic web sites. At present, the online exercises of World History Matters come closest to what is envisioned for this proposal, and it is to that site as a technical prototype that we now turn.

[2] Roy Rosenzweig, “Varieties of Online History,” in Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Making Online History (in-progress draft), 31-35. Rosenzweig separates digital history into five genres that include teaching: Archives; Exhibits, Films, Scholarship, and Essays; Teaching; Discussion; and Organizational. While he does not specifically further classify the teaching genre into the same categories I have used, my breakdowns are drawn from his discussion of teaching sites.
[3] Rosenzweig, “Varieties,” (draft), 10-11. In his discussion, Rosenzweig observes the hybrid nature of most history web sites and the difficulty of categorizing them. For example, most online archives include some teaching component, and many teaching sites rely on essay, exhibit, or an archive of primary documents. His case for making the distinction is two-fold: to better focus on audience, and to think more clearly about models for future sites and ways to go beyond or improve upon what has already been done. Indeed, the focus on the teaching genre in this proposal has helped to define how this project will differentiate itself from other teaching sites and hopefully improve the genre of teaching on the web.