Teaching Hidden History: Creating An Effective Multi-Campus, Hybrid Graduate Course
Mark V. Barrow, Jr., Regan Shelton, Alison Hight, and Faith Skiles, Department of History, Virginia Tech
Kelly Schrum, Celeste Sharpe, and Nathan Slate, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University
Abstract: Digital technology has come to play an increasingly visible role in higher education,
especially in STEM-H classes at the undergraduate level. This session examines an experiment in
designing and offering a successful hybrid online/videopresence graduate course in the
humanities. “Teaching Hidden History,” a collaborative effort involving teams from the
Department of History at Virginia Tech and the Center for History and New Media at George
Mason University, is an inquiry-based, active learning course designed to strengthen research,
historical thinking, and digital skills in history and social studies education graduate students.
Funded by 4-VA, a statewide initiative dedicated to promoting inter-university collaborations that
leverage the strengths of each partner institution, the course carefully guides students through the
process of developing a digital history module focused on learning through ordinary objects.
Literature Review
Once promoted as a panacea for many challenges facing higher education, online course delivery has garnered
increasing scrutiny over the years, even as the number of web-based courses continues to proliferate.
Disproportionate withdrawal rates, a lack of academic rigor, inadequate student-to-student and student-to-instructor
interaction, and a failure to promote student engagement, critical thinking, and active learning are some of the
concerns raised about online courses (Samuels, 2015; Xu and Jaggers, 2011; but see also, Nguyen 2015). Innovative
teachers, especially those delivering online undergraduate instruction in STEM fields, have found numerous fruitful
ways to address these concerns, but there has been much less focus on finding effective means to foster active
learning, critical thinking, collaboration, and student engagement in graduate courses in the humanities (Kushner
and Berry, 2014). Carefully constructed hybrid courses, which combine the accessibility, convenience, and
flexibility of online courses with the many time-proven benefits of face-to-face meetings, are one approach gaining
increasing attention and interest (Ilgu and Gahren, 2015; Lamport and Hill, 2012; Hall and Villareal, 2015; Kim and
Bonk, 2006).
Goals and Objectives for the Practice Session
This practice session will focus on the design and implementation for “Teaching Hidden History,” a graduate hybrid
course that teams from the Department of History at Virginia Tech and the Center for History and New Media at
George Mason University offered collaboratively during the summer of 2015. Funded by grants from 4-VA offices
at both institutions, this eight-week course relied on a combination of three asynchronous online sessions and five
class meetings using a state-of-the-art Cisco Telepresence technology, which allowed discussion involving faculty
and students at both institutions. Instructors also provided regular feedback on student assignments, both written
and in individual meetings in the telepresence room, and the course required student collaboration, including peer
evaluation, at various appropriate points throughout the term. Nine history and social studies education graduate
students from George Mason and six graduate students in history, social studies education, and material culture and
public humanities at Virginia Tech participated in this hybrid course.
Each graduate student enrolled in “Teaching Hidden History” researched, developed, and built an online learning
module designed not only to teach historical content but also make visible how historians approach evidence and to
show how everyday objects—like a Ferris wheel, a rusty piece of barbed wire or an old tin can—can illuminate
important themes in history. A carefully selected main object provides the entry point for the module, and module
users are asked to consider the object and form a hypothesis about how it might relate to larger trends in history. A
series of 10-12 primary sources—maps, photographs, prints, posters, handbills, letters, songs, diary entries, and the
like—which model how historical narratives are constructed, follow the main object, with a paragraph explaining
each one. After viewing these sources and considering the accompanying text, module users are presented with the
main object again along with their original hypothesis and then asked to reflect on how their encounter with the
sources informed their understanding or changed their thinking. The hope is not only to promote the use of nontraditional primary sources but also to encourage awareness of how interpretation changes when historians are faced
with new evidence. Finally, a 300-500-word Connections Essay provides an overview of the historical topic and
how the main object relates to this history. Module users can then compare their own newly developed
understanding of the topic with that of the expert researcher who constructed the module.
This session will provide participants with a sense of how the teams at Virginia Tech and George Mason University
collaborated to design and implement their hybrid graduate course, the models and previous experiments that
informed the course design, the many challenges and institutional hurdles they had to overcome to pull off the
experiment successfully, and the lessons learned along the way. Part of the session will also explore the innovative
approach of using ordinary objects to teach history, which is the central principal behind the learning modules the
students in “Teaching Hidden History” produced in the course. Presenters include not only the faculty and doctoral
students who designed and offered “Teaching Hidden History,” but also two of the graduate students who completed
the course.
Description of Practice to Be Modeled
In addition to strongly encouraging audience questions, comments, and feedback throughout the session, a portion of
it will be specifically devoted to an audience participation exercise designed to show how the use of ordinary objects
can be an effective means to promote student engagement and understanding about how history is constructed.
Discussion
While the potential benefits of hybrid graduate courses in the humanities are many, including offering flexibility and
convenience to students as well as varied opportunities for collaboration and interaction, to date that potential
remains only partially realized. Our recent positive experience with this pedagogical approach is consistent with
that found in the literature. The hope is that participants in this session will gain a sense of the opportunities and
challenges associated with a collaboratively taught, hybrid graduate course in the humanities and be inspired to
emulate the experiment.
References
Hall, Sarah and Villareal, Donna. (2015). The hybrid advantage: Graduate student perspectives of hybrid education
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Ilgu, Aliye Karabulut and Jahren, Charles T. (2015). Faculty benefits and challenges of hybrid learning. Proceedings
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Kim, Kyong-Jee and Bonk, Curtis J. (2006). The future of online teaching and learning in higher education: The
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Kushner, Lena Paulo and Berry, Kenneth C. (2014). Inside, outside, upside down: New directions in online teaching
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Lamport, M. A. and Hill, R. J. (2012). Impact of hybrid instruction on student achievement in post-secondary
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Samuels, Bob. (2013). Being Present. Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/
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Xu, Di and Jaggars, Shanna Smith (2011). Online and hybrid course enrollment and performance in Washington
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