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HIST 2154 - Minorities in US History (OER): Home

This guide is designed to share teaching resources and OER materials for HIST 2154: MInorities in US History, created under an ALG Continuous Improvement Grant

HIST 2154: Minorities in US History

In this LibGuide, you will find instructional resources designed to facilitate the use of primary sources and open educational resources in the teaching of HIST 2154: Minorities in American History.  This compilation of existing and new material was funded by an Affordable Learning Georgia grant during AY 2020-2021. The scholars participating in the ALG grant aimed to revive an important course that had not been offered at GHC in more than 5 years, while also bringing that course in line with the American Historical Association's "Tuning Project" and making the course accessible to all students.

HIST 2154, the two courses that make up the American History sequence in the University System of Georgia.  Course redesign (spring, summer 2021) was guided by four primary influences:

  • Building or finding material available under creative commons license, to limit the financial burden felt by students
  • The backward design process in Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses
  • The AHA Tuning Project, which emphasizes historical thinking skills rather than content memorization in the teaching of history courses
  • Inserting a diverse group of voices into the American history narrative

The course was piloted during the fall semester of 2021.  The redesigned course text and resources were taught across 4 physical campuses (plus 3 online sections) and used by more than 350 students. Students and instructors were asked to provide feedback on their experience with the resources, providing quantitative and qualitative data that was used to improve the quality of the resources offered.

We are opening these resources to other HIST 2154 instructors, in hopes that more students can benefit from these open educational resources.

HIST 2154 is a course designed to explore the role of minority/subordinate groups in American history, to emphasize the diversity of American experiences in the past, and to bring students to a better awareness of their own place in American culture. Minority groups who make up the bulk of the course study are Native/Indigenous Americans, African Americans, Latinx Americans, Asian Americans, and women. This list is obviously not exhaustive, and other groups can easily be added following the same model.

Course Objectives

The purpose of this course is to allow students to:

  1. Explore the history of minorities in U.S. History over time within a loosely guided framework from European colonization to contemporary questions and issues, with a focus on the voices of Native American Indians, African Americans, Latinx Americans, Asian Americans, and Women.
     
  2. Research, analyze, and interpret a variety of primary and secondary sources across a variety of online resources to uncover and understand these minority voices while also gaining an appreciation for the complexities of historical inquiry and the profession of historians.
     
  3. Create a final project from semester work (and further research and analysis) that will not only showcase historical thinking skills and lessons learned
     
  4. Engage in open pedagogy to allow students to take ownership of their learning

Student Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, students will be able to:

Understand the complex nature of the historical record:

  • Distinguish between primary and secondary materials and decide when to use each.
  • Identify key events that define change over time in a particular place or region, and identify how change occurs over time.
  • Recognize a range of viewpoints in historical narratives.

Engage in historical inquiry, research, and analysis:

  • Understand the dynamics of change over time.
  • Explore the complexity of the human experience across time and space.
  •  Distinguish between historical facts and historical interpretations.

Generate significant, open-ended questions about the past and devise research strategies to answer them:

  • Seek a variety of sources that provide evidence to support an argument about the past.
  • Develop a methodological practice of gathering, sifting, analyzing, ordering, synthesizing, and interpreting evidence.
  • Evaluate a variety of historical sources for their credibility, position, significance, and perspective.

Contact Information

For questions about this material, please contact:

Course Organization

  • Getting Started: Studying History Through Primary Sources
  • Module 1: European Colonization & the British Colonial Era, 1607 - 1775
  • Module 2: Revolution & the Republic, 1775 - 1830
  • Module 3: The Age of Expansion and Reform,1830 - 1860
  • Module 4: The Civil War & Reconstruction, 1865 - 1880
  • Module 5: Industrialization & Urbanization, 1880 - 1920
  • Module 6: "Fighting for America": War and Resistance, 1920 - 1970
  • Module 7: Contemporary Issues: the US since 1970
  • Finishing Up: Showing What You've Learned

Course Resources in this LibGuide

Resources for each chapter, which can be found in this LibGuide, include the following:

  • Skills-based student learning outcomes
  • Course Content Outcomes
  • Content
    • Primary Source Sets, arranged chronologically and by topic
    • OER videos & readings to designed to provide historical context for the primary sources
    • Primary Source Activities
    • Sample Lesson Plans for Online & Face-to-Face Use of the Material
  • Student Self Assessments & Study Material
    • Content Knowledge Self Assessments (Pre/Post)
    • Study Guide
  • Options for Graded Assessment
    • Discussion Prompts
    • Summative Assessment Options

Licensing Statement

All resources licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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