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HIST 1111 & HIST 1112 - World History (OER)

Central (Thematic) Organizing Questions for the Modules

Module 1:  What is World History?

  • Central Question: 
  • Key Topics
    • World History as a Discipline
    • Historical Thinking Skills
    • Historiography

Module 2: Pre-History, History, and Ways of Knowing

  • Central Question: How did humans progress from scattered hunter-gatherers to the first organized civilizations?
  • Key Topics
    • Pre-History & Geologic Time
    • Paleolithic Era
    • Neolithic Revolution

Module 3: The Human Web Widens

  • Central Question: What key innovations allowed early civilizations to emerge and interact with each other, creating an interconnected human web?
  • Key Topics:
    • The Origins of Civilization
    • Earliest Civilizations (West Asia & the Levant, North Africa, India, and China)
    • Key Developments in World History & Diffusion of ideas

Module 4: The Classical World System

  • Central Question: How did classical civilizations across Eurasia and the Mediterranean interconnect to form an ancient world system?
  • Key Topics:
    • Classical West
      • Hellenic Greece
      • Achaemenid Persia
      • Hellenistic Empire)
      • Classical Rome
    • Classical East
      • Mauryan India
      • Han China
    • Silk Road

Module 5: Retraction & Expansion in the Post-Classical World

  • Central Question: How did the decline of classical empires lead to decentralization, the diffusion of culture and religion, and the development of new regional powers?
  • Key Topics
    • Islam & the Islamic World
    • Byzantine Empire & Orthodox Christianity
    • Medieval Europe
    • Crusades

Module 6: Trade & the Old World System

  • Central Question: How did the expansion of trade networks during the 13th and 14th centuries foster greater interconnection in the Old World System, even amidst economic, social, and political turmoil?
  • Key Topics
    • Mongols
    • Sea Road, Sand Road, Silk Road
    • Pre-Modern World Systems (Janet Abu-Lughod)

Module 7: Colliding Worlds

  • Central Question: How did trade networks stimulate cross-cultural exchange and begin linking the Eastern and Western hemispheres?
  • Key Topics:
    • Mesoamerica
    • Changing Role of Africa 
    • European Expansion
    • The Columbian Exchange

Teaching & Learning Activities

Course Materials

The following resources are built to support the video lectures found at the following site:

World Civilizations Video Textbook, Vol 1 (to 1500)

This page hosts the new materials created using an Affordable Learning Georgia Continuous Improvement Grant (round 22), which concluded in December 2023. 

The terms of the grant proposal called for the creation of the following resources:

  • Central (Thematic) Organizing Questions -  The revision will include news central questions for each week or module of materials that provide cohesive themes and overarching questions to guide the general direction of both learning and instruction. 
     
  • Teaching & Learning Activities -  we plan to develop a number of assignments and activities based on primary historical documents and short secondary sources such as academic journal articles. These assignments and activities include short answer document-based questions, group discussion questions and think, pair, share activities for face-to-face classes, discussion questions for online classes, and short writing assignments. These materials will be organized into online packets that are ready-made for eight-week classes.
     
  • Primary Source Packets - We will create primary source packets to accompany the teaching and learning activities described above.
     
  • New Test Bank - Revision & expansion of the multiple-choice questions currently used in the quizzes and exams of our four main survey classes. Our revision efforts along these lines will strive to test higher-order thinking instead of merely testing students’ abilities to recall basic historical facts. We will revise existing questions and write new multiple-choice questions such that we have questions that fit into categories such as Chronology, Historical Thinking, Data Analysis, and Source Application. This will create a broad pool of higher-quality questions that will sharpen the critical thinking skills and historical knowledge of our students and serve instructors of our survey courses well for years to come. There will be fewer "Google-able" questions based on rote memorization. 

Resources are available below.

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