IU SBC Fellows: Good Practices

Good Practice from Joanne Meyerowitz, IU Bloomington

Title	Template for Creating New Installments of American History Web Site
Course or Project	US History Scholarship via Online Lesson Plans
Audience	Continuing education students
Active	2001, still active
Background Information	We created a Web site, now titled "Teaching the Journal of American History," which uses online tools to bridge the gap between the latest scholarly research in US history and the practice of classroom teaching. The Web site is intended for history instructors who teach the US history survey course. Each biannual package features one article from the Journal of American History (JAH), with author's comments on how to teach the article, primary source documents, lists of additional readings, and links to additional Web sites. Our "good practice" was to create a flexible template for the first installment, which allowed us to archive older installments when new ones went online and to accommodate the particular needs of our individual authors.
Teaching Challenge	We wanted to create a series of installments, which were roughly similar in design but unique in content. We needed a template that would work for all the installments but permitted us to address the unique sources and needs of each.
Good Practice	Our initial installment provided the basic model, which had separate Web pages for the featured article, the author's comments on how to teach the article, the primary source documents, the lists of additional readings, and the links to additional Web sites. The template was identical for each of the subsequent three installments, but we had to modify the technology for the primary source documents, which differed in each installment. For the first installment, for example, we used cartoons, images, and diagrams as the primary sources. For the second installment, we used streamed video clips as well as images and texts. For the fourth installment, we created interactive exercises. Thus, we had flexibility to accommodate the different needs of each installment, but we maintained the same basic template.
Impact	The "good practice" enabled us to develop new and creative installments without redoing the basic design.

Keywords	Encouraging creativity, visualizing concepts, Web site design
Technical Format	Streaming video, digital stills, slide and print conversions
Relevant URLs	http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/teaching/

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