Deborah Vess | History in the Digital Age: A Study of the Impact of Interactive Resources on Student Learning | The History Teacher, 37.3

History in the Digital Age: A Study of the Impact of Interactive Resources on Student Learning

Deborah Vess
Georgia College & State University

ONLINE COURSES AND DEGREE PROGRAMS are an increasingly common feature of higher education, such as those of The University of Phoenix, Western Governor's University, and the Open University in Great Britain. The University System of Georgia, the third largest university system in the United States, has recently created an electronic core curriculum, known as the eCore®. There is widespread interest among the public in online programs, as indicated by a Georgia study where "90 percent of those surveyed said they or their children would take courses offered over the Internet and/or GPTV"¹ and already a few students in Georgia have taken the majority of their core courses online.² Many of these programs, such as the eCore® initiative in Georgia, include history courses.³ These developments pose new problems and challenges for the profession, especially since there is still a lively debate in the academy as to whether the use of technology always increases learning.⁴

David Noble has remarked that "good teaching involves more than the distribution of information. It also requires a human touch, a knack, possible only in live interaction, to do such things as inspire, spark thought, sense confusion and find a new way to explain complex matters."⁵ Modern historians wonder if it is still possible to have the kind of impact that such teachers as Socrates or Confucius had in their face-to-face conversations with students in a new world where the digital byte is king. This difficulty is all the more apparent when one considers that the majority of historians tend to use educational technology primarily as another delivery tool for traditional hard copy resources,⁶ whereas creating an effective online course or other interactive online materials demands that they learn to use the computer as a cognitive tool.⁷

In order to realize Noble's notion of effective teaching and learning in an asynchronous environment, historians must undergo a profound shift in the way they use educational technology. This article will explore ways to transform traditional static resources into online modules that maximize student interaction with primary and secondary source materials and artifacts, and with faculty and other students. It will also assess the impact of electronic resources and activities on student learning in Georgia's eCore® World Civilization I course. In doing this, this author hopes to provide insights that are equally applicable to traditional courses that use online materials as supplements. Contrary to the opinion that "real historians do not read bytes,"⁸ the evidence that follows suggests that it is indeed possible to create effective online learning environments where students "read bytes" and simultaneously learn how to become "real" historians. In fact, effectively designed online activities and discussions promote very high levels of participation, show significant interaction with faculty and other students, and help to develop analytical ability. The evidence also shows, however, that students, like many of their history professors, are still wedded to hard copy texts, and that they do not exploit many of the web's most attractive possibilities for interactive learning.

Effective Content Delivery: Creating Opportunities for Maximum Interaction

Because many historians remain wedded to lecture and primary source textual analysis as the method of choice, their web pages tend to reflect their biases on this account. Most web pages created by historians tend to be text-heavy and to contain few opportunities for innovative interactions by the user beyond a set of links to explore, and this tendency presents challenges when creating online courses or other materials. In classes using the web in this way, the function of face-to-face classroom meetings is to enlighten the student as to special interpretive problems, to reinforce the material in assigned texts while adding to it through alternative presentations and perspectives, and to develop the ability to use the historical method for the critical analysis of sources. The most effective online courses make some attempt to provide a suitable substitute for the give-and-take of face-to-face meetings; and they attempt to engage students creatively so they increase their mastery of fact and their analytical abilities in measurable ways. Indeed, even web materials that just supplement face-to-face interactions ideally should engage students through innovative alternate presentations and interactions in the same way as a classroom instructor seeks to enlighten required readings. Although what follows is a description of techniques used in the eCore® courses in Georgia, these techniques are also useful as supplements to traditional courses.

Each unit of the history courses in Georgia opens with a brief discussion of an important "moment in history" that summarizes the most important themes to be studied and serves as a "hook" to stimulate further interest in the topic. In the "moment in history" from the World Civ course on the Renaissance, for example, the author describes the consecration of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and links it to the premiere of Dufay's Motet Nuper rosarum flores, which occurred on the same day. The purpose is to highlight the innovative nature of Renaissance culture. This module contains a graphic image of the cathedral, a link to an external real-time web pan of the Cathedral in Florence, and an audio file of the Dufay Motet. Once the students have been "hooked," a content overview and study guide alerts them to key terms, themes, and points to be discussed. Assignments for each unit appear in the next area of the course, after which students enter the actual content area of the course.

To create the actual content, this author expanded traditional lecture and discussion notes into in-depth narrative text chapters. In order to take advantage of the opportunities the online environment offers for interaction, the author often incorporated traditional narrative and analysis into interactive time lines, such as the one for Mesopotamian cultures below (figure 1). Students click on each date to get a detailed discussion of issues and events during that particular period of Mesopotamian history. Timelines develop mastery of comparative chronology, which students often find difficult, while also providing instructors with a way to avoid lengthy amounts of plain text or too many graphics on a single page. The interactive time lines also allow students to easily review specific information without having to access the entire text at once.

Figure 1
Screen capture of the Mesopotamian Empires timeline from the eCore® World Civ I course.
©2002 Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Another technique in the eCore® courses for presenting an in-depth discussion in mini-bites is the interactive map. The creation of interactive maps involves finding a map template, describing the hot spots, writing the text that will appear, and describing in detail for the technical support staff what events will occur when users click the hot spots. Although this often means considerably more work than writing simple text, the maps make it possible to emphasize cross-cultural interactions and various themes, such as migration, government and law, and regional interactions across units, rather than just presenting a simple sequential treatment of the world's cultures in isolation. Often these comparisons otherwise would be next to impossible to develop without creating an additional two or three chapters of text. Clicking on each region of the map below of the world in the Age of Charlemagne (figure 2) produces a more detailed map, which is also interactive. Textual commentary embedded in each hot area allows students to compare the issues, trends, and cultures in medieval Europe with those of Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world during this period. Modules such as this one are not only useful for asynchronous courses, but might as easily prepare students in traditional courses for an analytical discussion, freeing valuable class time for higher order activities. Providing students with an option to print out the text embedded in the various clickable areas allows them to be able to access the materials for review purposes off line and also to see the "whole picture."

Figure 2
Interactive map of the world during the Age of Charlemagne from the eCore® World Civilization course.
©2002 Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Another technique used is to create interactive graphics, such as the interactive illumination (figure 3) below, which introduces a discussion of feudal society. After clicking through the illumination below, which includes women working in the fields, students explore special discussions of Hildegard of Bingen and Heloise and other relevant topics.

Figure 3
Interactive illuminated manuscript from the World Civ eCore® course.
©2002 Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Virtual tours of historic locations also help to develop course themes. For example, the author juxtaposed tours of the Qum'ran with those in later chapters of medieval Christian monasteries. ⁹ Some tours feature Quick time panoramas, as in the author's virtual tour of Ocmulgee, Georgia.¹⁰ Students can actually walk through this site online by moving their mouse from side to side or up and down; they can see the Great Mound, for example, from almost all angles. The time it takes to create such resources can often be staggering. The author personally traveled to Ocmulgee Mounds three times to photograph the site and, on each occasion, the technical experts rejected the photos. A professional camera crew eventually had to take the photos, as it was difficult to get a uniform angle and height for each shot. A technical specialist assembled the panorama and optimized it for use on the web. This particular case illustrates the fact that while faculty may drive the content of online materials, they are often dependent on technical experts for the realization of their ideas.

Since an important aim of all history courses is to teach the historical method, each unit of the World Civ course features an interactive source studies module. The unit on the Hebrews, for example, includes a special analysis of three variant accounts of the animals brought onto the ark by Noah in Genesis, as well as a discussion of patterns of composition in the ancient world. Interactive sources provide an excellent way for students to review techniques for analysis outside of the traditional classroom.

Instructors in the world civilization course can also use special focus segments to develop discussion themes on important historiographical issues. A detailed discussion of Michelangelo and other humanists in the Renaissance unit, for example, enables students to assess the extent to which the Renaissance departed from medieval ideals or to what extent it represented continuity with the past.¹¹ Students then go to the discussion board to have an interactive exchange of ideas.

The final section of each unit is the Big Picture module, which places all materials within the larger context of the course by developing and summarizing thematic connections between units. Each unit also includes a "further explorations" page of links to additional web resources, many of which students use in their discussion board assignments or in their analytical papers.

Effective Online Assignments: Techniques for Generating Discussion

Creating the text for an online course is only the first challenge. Although the Georgia eCore® courses contain many interactive units, none of the aforementioned activities ensure that students are directly engaged. The heart of any effective online course is the discussion board on which students engage in direct debate of course topics through role-playing exercises or other activities. Role playing debates are the most effective discussion exercises, as they provide the most structure and opportunity to engage the sources. The roles students play in the World Civ eCore® course relate to primary source readings and students debate thematic issues central to that particular unit or the course as a whole.¹² In a unit on Mesopotamia, for example, students study the Code of Hammurabi. WEBCT and other course packages allow instructors to form groups of students, and in the discussion board area, the instructor creates an area for each group accessible only to its members and to the instructor. Within these groups, each student assumes the role of a woman, a child, a noble, a slave, an architect, a physician, a judge, or Hammurabi. By posting statements on their section of the board, students debate the relative merits of the Code from their role's perspective within their groups and the question of whether it succeeded in doing what Hammurabi intended, "to provide a measure of justice and right in the land." Structure is essential for success in debates, and students should have a firm date by which they must post their initial statement. Following this first posting, instructors should direct students to respond to at least two other postings from within the perspective of their role, and to take issue with their particular arguments and/or interpretation of the sources. Some instructors create a student identity for themselves and play active roles within the small group discussions by functioning as a "devil's advocate," while others intervene only when the discussion has taken a wrong turn.

Another tactic for organizing discussions is to build a sense of collaboration through group position statements. Students might debate the impact of Constantine's conversion on the Roman Empire, for example, and each group might represent a particular religious faction. The group then develops a collaborative initial position statement within an area of the board restricted to their group. Groups post their statements to another area of the discussion board where individuals from the entire class can respond to it. To create such a statement, group members meet in the chat room for live discussions or use the Whiteboard to post papers where other members of the group can comment on them in real time. Groups function well when one person assumes a leadership role and organizes the contributions of their peers; however, many students fail to participate until the full-class debate, when they must make an individual posting. Although collaborative postings help to develop a sense of community, the majority of students respond more positively to individual assignments.

Instructors can help to foster intellectual partnerships among students by assigning them to the same small groups for several role-playing debates. The author had two students who debated each other in several assignments. Although there were other people in these groups, these two students began to work as a team, demanding that each continue to go further with their respective positions. In one particular assignment, they were only required to make three postings each, but they exchanged nine postings just between themselves in addition to those they exchanged with others. Following one round of the debate, one student remarked to the other, "WOW!...you really made me think! Thanks for the work out."¹³

While students in traditional courses can often sit on the sidelines during a live debate, the structure of the online debates forces each student to participate. One student remarked, "I like the online debates because I feel like my voice has a chance to be heard. In a typical classroom, I rarely speak up. It's easier to talk online than in a classroom."¹⁴ Another student remarked that she saw these assignments "as collaborative teaching."¹⁵ Still another student remarked that she thought the online debates were "better than an in class debate because you have the chance to thoroughly research something and state your opinion without interruption" and that this benefit outweighed the frustration of having to wait for responses.¹⁶ These remarks suggest that the use of online debates might contribute something to the traditional course as well, because they might at the very least spark more involvement, as well as better preparation and reflection.

Online students often formed their own learning communities outside of the assigned discussions. They became more self-sufficient, and rather than asking the instructor for information, they often preferred asking their peers first. As the deadline for the first paper approached, the author counted forty-two exchanges in two days between students discussing their search results, other content issues, and requesting guidance on citation styles. These students illustrated the notion mentioned earlier of "collaborative teaching." Instructors can foster these interactions by creating a permanent "community" area of the discussion board where students can post a personal introduction and any other sort of messages they desire. The students in this course came from six different institutions in the University System of Georgia, yet they formed at least as many collaborative groups as do students in many of the author's traditional classes. From this perspective, the online environment fosters greater initiative, the ability to engage in independent critical analysis of materials, and the formation of social and intellectual bonds. These online techniques can also be very effective as supplements to the traditional classroom.

Online students often showed more initiative in the role-playing debates than was seen among on-campus students. In the debate on the Code of Hammurabi, for example, several students playing the role of the slaves found the excerpt in their course reader to be too brief to formulate the sort of detailed postings they wanted to create. On their own initiative, these students found the complete text of the Code on external World Wide Web sites. About half of those who played the role of slave referred to several laws not found in their required hard copy text but found in the complete text on the web. These examples also illustrate an important shift faculty must make in an asynchronous mode. Instructors have the crucial responsibility for designing the context that fosters student learning, but can no longer be the "sage on the stage."¹⁷

To maintain student engagement in the eCore® course, students completed a discussion board posting or paper assignment every week during a semester-long course. During the semester, students in the eCore® world civilization course did far more writing than do students in the author's on-campus courses, completing eight papers, ten interactive discussions, and a proctored midterm and final. In fact, seven of the eleven students who completed the official survey administered by the eCore® staff at the end of the fall semester 2002 stated that they found the eCore® course more intellectually challenging than traditional on-campus courses, while nine of the eleven stated that the amount of effort required to succeed in the course was much higher than that required in other college courses they had completed.

In an official survey administered by the eCore® staff at the end of the fall 2002 semester, ten of the eleven students who responded rated their involvement as much higher than in other college courses, while one rated it as about the same. The survey specifically defined involvement as "doing assignments, interacting with other students, and interacting with faculty." These reflections suggest that use of online materials and discussion groups even as supplements to face-to-face courses might actually force each student to participate more fully in the course and to become more self-sufficient in their quest for knowledge.

One factor that may account for the excellent quality of the debate postings and more self-reliant behavior of eCore® students, however, is that the majority of students in the online course were non-traditional students; the average age of students in the fall 2002 eCore® course was 33.95.¹⁸ Many were married or divorced, had children, and had full-time jobs.¹⁹ The author surveyed, via e-mail, the students in the course to find out how many were enrolled in other online courses or had been previously, and how many were also enrolled in on-campus courses. Eighteen students responded to that portion of the survey; of those students, seven had taken or were taking other eCore® courses. Ten were also taking courses on campus. Several students who had taken both eCore® courses and traditional courses commented that the eCore® courses were far more demanding. One student remarked that she spent "more time trying to complete assignments and meet deadlines in this class than any of [the] other four campus classes that [she was] enrolled in."²⁰ Perhaps the previous experience of several of these students with online learning and their maturity contributed to their overall ability and drive to succeed. It is likely that students such as these were more able to survive the rigors of the course than the average run of students and more likely to choose to take the course in this format in the first place. The survey responses point to the fact that online learning presents a challenge for students. A challenging environment can be beneficial intellectually, but instructors who wish to use online activities as supplements to traditional courses need to be aware of the additional time often required to prepare them.

Do Interactive Applications Add to the Learning Experience?

While the eCore® history courses in Georgia have had demonstrable success in many areas, in some cases the online environment was not as successful as it might be. Despite the sophisticated design of the interactive maps, students in the author's fall 2002 World Civ course did very poorly on the map portion of the proctored midterm. Only one of the students managed to place the majority of locations correctly (nineteen out of twenty), while the rest got fewer than eleven correct. The author surveyed the students in the eCore® course via e-mail and discovered, much to her dismay, that most were relying on the "print text" option and totally bypassing the interactive map. In the e-mail survey the author conducted, twenty-one students responded to that portion of the survey. Of those students, only four said that they actually clicked through the map. Six other students responded in language that was vague, as some said they "looked at" or "studied" the maps, but did not say they actually engaged in the interactions. Three reported that their failure to use the maps was due to technical difficulties in viewing them. The other eleven students reported that they just used the "print text" option provided in the course to download the text embedded in the maps. The six students whose language was vague also indicated that they primarily relied upon the print version of the text rather than on the interactive map itself. The majority of students preferred to sit with a hard copy rather than spend time online, and viewed these areas of the course primarily as places to quickly download materials.²¹

These results conflict with the author's previously published studies of the efficacy of interactive maps and other materials, done in Authorware, that demonstrated improved performance on exams of fourteen points over those classes that did not make use of these programs.²² The difference here was in design, as students explored the maps and then immediately took an interactive, graded quiz on the material where they had to click on geographical regions. Although students could take ungraded self-tests after exploring the eCore® maps, these mini-quizzes did not seem to encourage students to master geographic locations. There is no graded mechanism in the eCore® course for demonstrating immediate mastery of map materials other than the final unit quizzes, and these focused on the narrative material in the embedded text and did not require visual identification of geographic regions. Largely this was due to the difficulty of creating interactive quiz applications.

Student responses to other questions on the e-mail survey suggested that they were likely to use only those materials that they found immediately relevant to exams and papers. For example, each unit of the course had a section of web resources for "further exploration." Faculty carefully screened these resources so as to ensure quality. In an e-mail survey the author conducted, fourteen students responded to a question about whether they ever used the resources for further exploration. Of those students, only two said they explored the list of links when faculty did not require them for assignments. The other twelve said they rarely if ever explored the links unless a specific graded assignment demanded it. These results correlate with those of other historians who have conducted studies of the efficacy of their web sites. T. Mills Kelly, for example, has recently shown that while students are more likely to go back and review primary sources on the web than in hard copy texts, they also rarely explore web materials not provided for them on a course web site.²³ The author's students frequently did not visit sites, even those provided for further exploration, unless they were specifically required for course work.

Student responses to the eCore® e-mail survey indicated that the course required so much writing and other work that there was rarely time to explore other resources. Ironically, faculty offered the course on the web but did not succeed in opening up new worlds for student exploration except where directly relevant to assignments. The flaws here may be the same as those of traditional classes. Time constraints and the need for instructors to cover a set of common goals set by a department, for example, often interfere with the kind of contemplative time students need to digest resources or explore other areas. Studies also suggest student learning is driven largely by the need to perform on graded exams and quizzes. This is, unfortunately, no less true of the online environment than of the traditional classroom.

Conclusions

Faculty who create online courses or other extensive electronic materials can expect to devote large amounts of time to writing text and designing innovative learning applications. Historians who are used to doing solo research must learn to be team players and to collaborate with technical specialists, and this often means less control over the final product. Teaching these courses is also very time consuming. Despite these issues, the computer revolution will profoundly affect the way we teach history. Whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay. Given this fact, the quality of the online teaching and learning environment becomes crucial. While the marriage of history and technology in the University System of Georgia eCore® courses has had some successes in promoting student learning, there are clearly areas where improvement is needed. However this initial study of learning in the eCore® World Civilization to 1500 C.E. course during its first semester suggests that online interactions between students and faculty may enhance levels of participation and self-sufficiency, and that students can, in fact, perform at very high analytical levels within these courses. As with traditional courses, however, students tend to respond primarily to those aspects of the course that require them to demonstrate mastery for grades. Educators not only need to clearly link interactive resources to concrete outcomes and assessment measures, but to find better ways to capitalize on the opportunities for interaction that the online environment offers. Just because faculty provide technological applications does not mean that students will use them. Students need to know what the payoff is if ever we are to convince them that our most elaborate uses of educational technology represent anything more than optional playtime.

Notes

^1. The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia authorized a "concentrated development period" in May 1999 leading to the creation of the eCore® project. This was to be a team effort. The directors of the project, housed in the Board of Regents Office of Information and Instructional Technology, issued a call for faculty throughout the system to design and to write the content for the courses, while appointing technical specialists to create the actual applications. Another technical specialist supervised the entire process, serving as a liaison between the faculty and the technical personnel. News Release, University System of Georgia, August 11, 2000. Available online at http://www.usg.edu/news/2000/8.11.00.html.

^2. Between the fall of 2000 and spring term 2003, 374 students completed the eCore® U.S. History I survey. Thirty-three students enrolled in the initial offering of the World Civ I eCore® course during the fall 2002. A total of 2,774 students have enrolled in all fourteen eCore® courses from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2003, increasing from an initial enrollment of only 58 students to 784 students in the spring of 2003. Advanced Learning Technologies, Office of Information and Instructional Technologies, University System of Georgia Board of Regents, "eCore® Enrollment Data Graphs." Available online at http://alt.usg.edu. In the author's fall 2002 World Civilization to 1500 C.E. eCore® course, one student had completed nine eCore® courses, and another had completed the entire core history requirement through eCore® courses. By contrast, there were 116, 652 students enrolled in lower level courses on the campuses of the thirty-four institutions of the university system in the spring 2003 and 277,661 full-time students in the system. Data from the USG Office of Strategic Research and Analysis, Term Enrollment reports, available online at http://www.usg.edu/admin/sra/students/enroll/fy2003/.

^3. The eCore® project presently includes two core level history courses, U.S. History to 1865 and World Civilization to 1500 C.E. The author was one of six faculty members from institutions in the University System of Georgia who wrote the content for the HIST 2111 U.S. History course and was also the sole content specialist for the World Civilization HIST 1111 course.

^4. See the Dearing Report on "Academic staff in higher education: their experiences and expectations," where 40 to 50 per cent of academics said they made use of multimedia because "the technology was available. Fewer than 30 percent said the main reason was that it would bring benefits to students." Quoted in Pauline McCormack, "Virtually History: The Use of On-line Communications in Higher Education," in Journal of the Association of History and Computing vol II no.1 (April 1999). Available online at http://www.mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCII1/ARTICLESII1/McCormack/mccormac.htm. See also Kenneth C. Green, "High Tech vs. High Touch: The Potential Promise and Probable Limits of Technology-Based Education and Training on Campuses," in Nevzar G. Stacey, ed., Competence Without Credentials (U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement, March 1999). Available online at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Competence/section4.html.

^5. David Noble, Digital Diploma Mills: the Automation of Higher Education, in First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet vol. 3 no. 1 (1998). Available online at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/.

^6. Dennis Trinkle, "Technology and the History Classroom: Where are we? Where are we headed?" in Trinkle, ed., History.edu: Essays on teaching with Technology (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), xii.

^7. For a discussion of some of the profound intellectual challenges involved in making the leap to the use of the computer as a cognitive tool, see Sharon Gray, "Training Teachers, Faculty, and Staff," in Badrul H. Khan , ed., Web-Based Instruction (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications, 1997): 329–331.

^8. Jeffery G. Barlow, "Historical Research and Electronic Evidence: Problems and Promises," in Dennis A. Trinkle, ed., Writing, Teaching, and Researching History in the Electronic Age (Armonck, New York: M.E.Sharpe, 1998), 205.

^9. Readers may explore sample virtual tours through the author's Medieval Monasticism web site at http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/ids/medieval/tours.html.

^10. Readers can explore these panoramas through the author's World Civ Virtual Library web site at http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/ids/amtours/ocmulgee400X200/400X200S/ocmwciv.htm.

^11. Readers may explore some of this discussion through the author's web site at http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/ids/fap/michel.htm.

^12. Role-playing assignments help to develop Robin Collingwood's notion of entering into the minds of people of the past. They also highlight the difficulties of this position. For a discussion of the historiographical basis of role-playing assignments, see the author's article, "Creative Writing and the Historian: An Active Learning Model for Teaching the Craft of History," in The History Teacher (November 1996), 43–55; abstract reprinted in a special issue of The History Teacher (January 1997).

^13. HIST 1111 World Civilization eCore® course (University System of Georgia Board of Regents, 2002), message no. 621 on Sun Sep 15, 2002 12:19.

^14.Ibid., Message no. 2418 on Thu Oct 17, 2002 16:14.

^15.Ibid., Message no. 2416 on Thu Oct 17, 2002 16:10

^16.Ibid., Message no. 2411 on Thu Oct 17, 2002 15:20.

^17. Despite their tendency to consult each other, students and the instructor exchanged 3,284 e-mails in the fall 2002. Students often asked questions about assignments and often vigorously challenged responses from the automated quizzes with solid historical arguments.

^18. In contrast, the average age of students in the core on the author's home campus was 19.93, while the average age of the entire student body was 22.04.

^19. According to data from Advanced Learning Technologies, fifty percent of the students in eCore® courses are married and ten to twelve percent are separated or divorced. Sixty-three percent work forty or more hours a week; another seventeen percent work between twenty-one to thirty-nine hours per week. Advanced Learning Technologies, Office of Information and Instructional Technologies, University System of Georgia Board of Regents, "eCore Enrollment Data Graphs." Available online at http://alt.usg.edu.

^20. HIST 1111 World Civilization to 1500 C.E. course, Message no. 2265 on Mon., Oct. 14, 2002 18:15. According to Kristina Brantley, the registrar for the eCore® courses, the drop rate is extraordinarily high, usually around forty-five percent. Students who complete these courses are very self-motivated; their high average on assignments reflects the fact that those who survive in the course are likely the better students.

^21. This appeared to be just as equally true of the narrative content pages in the course. The WEBCT tracking tool showed 22,947 hits on the content pages at the end of the fall 2002 semester. Students spent an average of less than two minutes per hit, suggesting that most download the text rather than read it online.

^22. Deborah L. Vess, "Socrates On-line: A Multimedia Tool for the Development of Critical Thought," in Proteus: A Journal of Ideas. Special Issue on Technology in Education (March 1997): 13–22.

^23. T. Mills Kelly, "For Better or Worse? The Marriage of the Web and Classroom," in The Journal of the Association for History and Computing vol. III no. 2 (August 2000). Available online at http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCIII2/ARTICLES/kelly/kelly.html.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.