The centennial of the First World War has offered instructors across the humanities an exciting opportunity to enhance students' disciplinary expertise while reflecting on the significance of an event that continues to shape the world today. Drawing on established courses on the history and literature of the war, respectively, the authors designed…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is sharing out basic guidelines and examples from an extended collaboration to move educators move online while avoiding synchronous meetings. "gPortfolios" are public (to the class) pages where students write responses to carefully constructed engagement routines. Students then discuss their work with…

Evidence shows that the skills and dispositions that lead to thoughtful and effective participation in civic life can be developed and promoted through participation in assigned advocacy, argumentation, and debate. We argue that debate and argumentation are uniquely well suited to be implemented across the curriculum, which means that students…

For The past two years, Siena College and Loyola International College for Diversity and Sustainability (LCDS), formerly Loyola International College, have jointly taught a comparative Canadian/ U.S. history class. Concordia University, an English language university, has more than 46,000 students and offers 433 undergraduate and graduate…

Boys show a stronger preference for digital entertainment games than girls. For this reason, it may be that game-based learning is more acceptable to boys than to girls. Yet game-based learning might improve the performance of both boys and girls, depending upon the instructional design. In a quasi-experimental study with a secret-trail game,…

The complexity and interrelatedness of aspects of the geosciences is an important concept to convey in an undergraduate geoscience curriculum. A synthesis capstone project has served to integrate pattern-based learning of an introductory Earth History course into an active and process-based exercise in hypothesis production. In this exercise,…

This document presents the proceedings of the 20th Annual Research Forum held June 25, 2015, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 21 action research papers: (1) History Lives! The Use of Simulations in a High School Social Studies Classroom (Lydia Adkins); (2) Using Francophone Music in the High…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2013 proceedings: (1) Teaching About Asia in a Social Science Education Program (Cyndi Mottola Poole and Joshua L. Kenna); (2) Teaching Students about…

Primary sources in religion and history enable first year university students to connect "content-based" linked courses in the core curriculum. Fifty-four first year university students in three separate pairs of courses worked in teams to present oral critical reports on texts related to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the…

Describes exercises in which students create a fictional character from history and write a journal entry in a cooperative group activity. Discusses further assignments in which individual students create additional characters descended from the original for study of later historical periods. Suggests that the project demonstrates how historical…

Few events in American history are so universally deplored as the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The United States government has acknowledged the error and the injustice that resulted with an official Presidential apology and a Congressional disbursement of reparations to the victims of the incarceration policy. The…

Describes one fifth grade teacher's approach to the teaching of U.S. history. Reveals that the teacher limited breadth of coverage in favor of an approach that sought to connect themes and facts. Explains that the teacher incorporated language arts teaching, storytelling, writing assignments, and cooperative learning activities. (SG)

Suggests that defining critical thinking as assessing authenticity, accuracy, and worth of knowledge claims and arguments also describes the historian's role. Recommends teaching students history in such a way as to necessitate higher level thinking skills. Argues that the writing process helps because it requires evaluation of existing data and…

Asserts that, although middle school students have rudimentary map skills, they typically dismiss old maps as worthless. Describes the use of outdated and inaccurate maps as instructional resources in social studies courses. Concludes that the approach was valuable and helped students learn about the concept of change over time. (CFR)

Argues that effective history instruction requires students to think about content rather than merely reproduce it. Contends that this can be achieved best through peer interaction based on student research papers that require students to state opinions or positions. Provides an assignment example and a evaluation handout. (CFR)