History and Online Learning

In a response to a fellow historian also participating in a H-Net List for Online Education in the Humanities , I wrote the following and post it here for others reactions:


Stephen: I'm also a historian and must say I agree with you regarding the growing sense of routinization of our online courses. For all the reasons you mention, I believe very strongly we need to be employing better constructivist strategies. I'll just mention a couple of ideas that I have used: I try to involve learners in "doing" history rather than being taught history (even by student-led interactions). I require teams to build web sites where they have to go out to those same museums and collections you mention to create their own slice of history. I also have tried several simulations and think they could be used (much better than I did) to develop learner interest. corky