Digital History: Ethics, Citations, and Copyright

In this blog I want to discuss the ethical issues and copyright issues associated with digital history to ensure that instructors follow ethical guidelines for their profession, and copy right laws when teaching history in an online classroom. Online history teachers can enliven their online classrooms or social media postings with rich visual imagery in the form of digital pictures, digitized documents, or maps.

Historical images and digital imagery are easily accessible on the internet and use of digital files posted to an online classroom discussion can be a powerful way to reach students, to capture their interests, and can lead to engaging discussions. Garza (2009) discussed the need for colleges to have policies and a keen understanding of the laws and policies that govern use of online materials and sources. While the author may have been referring to course syllabi or student data or other resources, the notion of awareness relating to legal issues and copyrights are important for history faculty.

The following statement on honesty and integrity if from the Organization of American Historians:” Honesty and integrity should undergird the work of all historians. Historians seek truth about the past in an effort to better understand historical developments and how they relate to the present and future (OAH, 2002)”.

While this statement does not deal directly with ethics, online teaching and copyright issues, it speaks to the heart of the matter about the important role history instructors have in modeling honesty and integrity in their research and teaching practice. Teaching history online may involve an instructor posting historical documents and digital images to engage students in online discussions.

Historians may not often face copyright issues when posting digital documents since many documents are in the past and may be in the public domain. However, there are modern history documents and digital images that will be protected by new copyright laws (Coen & Rosenzweig, 2015). It would be wise for historians to know the cut off dates of public domain for published and unpublished works. However, it would be even better if historians just got in the practice of adding citations for every image or document as good practice to model ethical standards of the historian.

References

Coen, D.J. & Rosenzweig, R. (2015). Digital History: A guide to sharing, preserving, and presenting the past on the web. Retrieved from
http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/3.php

Garza, M. R. ( 2009). Ethics in an online environment. New Directions for Community Colleges, (148), 63–70.

Organization of American Historians (2002). OAH statement on honesty and integrity. Retrieved from http://www.oah.org/about/reports/reports-statements/professional-integrity-and-the-oah/

Teaching with Technology: Using Technology to Foster and Assess Student Learning
Sid Meier’s Civilization Video Game to Teach History

In this blog I want to discuss how to use the video game Civilization to engage students, foster learning, and ways to asses learning in a college history courses. Sid Meier’s Civilization or Civ as it is called, is one of many in a series of award winning historical based civilization building games first released in 1991 on a PC platform (Civilization, 2015). The version of the game selected can be closely matched to the type of history course taught as Civ offers many versions of their games. I would also tie the use of Civ technologies to building class wiki pages or building on official Civ Wikia pages.
Civilization has a big community of followers with various groups, including an official Wiki pages that could be an asset to the teaching history with Civilization (Civ Wikia, 2015).

Sid Meir’s Civ is the game I would select for teaching courses like World History, Ancient History, or Western Civilization at the college level. Civ I is an earlier version of Civ so it may cost as low as $10- $25, the investment is far less than a typical college text book. The way Civ works is that students would be building their societies, on various layers and learning about history and the development of societies as they go along.

Civ does not follow any particular historical narrative, not history told from a perspective or voice of the dominant culture. It is more of a game where societies are built along how humans developed and aligned with technological advances (Cruzan, 2015).
What makes Civ idea from my viewpoint is that it helps students understand history, which if far more important than memorizing a bunch of things they could easily look up online later. Students get to engage with the game and each other and as they build their societies, they learn to understand why things happened, what worked and did not work and route memorization is out the window.

Student’s could play the game on their own, or online, in teams to encourage collaboration. I would post a weekly discussion prompt or assign a short essay where students discuss historical accuracy; we could also engage in critical debate about an actual historical event and why it happened the way it did. Perhaps a student tried to change the way a society grew and developed in their game; we could discuss how that alternate history could affect other histories into the future or what really happened in that society and why changing the outcome in the game, wouldn’t change actual historical processes.

We could use our findings to build a class wiki page about our game and world history and what we found out. Alexander (2014) used Civ 5 to teach his Ancient history class and found that the game was useful in teaching broad historical developments over time. Students were required to play the game and most enjoyed it; they were assessed at 15% of their course grade (Alexander, 2014). I would consider making that 25% of the grade, because I would try to incorporate the game into the class more and not try to tie it to a lecture as Alexander (2014) had done. I would likely engage the students in weekly discussions, assign essays so they could and also credit for contributions to the wiki page. I also give great weight to the development of historical thinking and historical literacy and I believe the game would help convey these concepts and help students build these skills.

Video games were once considered to have only entertainment value; an d in many cases dismissed due to the violent themes and activities, however, in recent years we have come to understand how they can improve memory, aid in cognitive function, and problem solving skills (Mendez & Moral, 2015). It is important to match the correct game with the course, the objectives of the course and create appropriate assessments and then ask for and listen to student feedback to improve the course and be creative with revisions and innovative ways to use the game, meet course objectives and engage the students.

References

Alexander, J. (2013.) Civilization and enlightenment: A study in computer gaming and History education, surveying student-players of Civilization IV. The Middle Ground Journal, 6, 1-26. Retrieved from http://resources.css.edu/academics/HIS/MiddleGround/articles/alexander.pdf

Civilization (2015). Sid Meier’s Civilization: Games: Retrieved from http://www.civilization.com/en/games/civilization-i/

Civilization: Official Wikia (2015). Games: Category Page. Retrieved from http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Games

Cruzan, N. (2015). How to play Sid Meier’s Civilization. Personal communication on Nov. 11, 2015, Bellingham WA.

Mendez, L & Moral, E. (2015). Research and educational innovation with video games. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 13(2), 211-218.

In a recent conversation on Facebook, a well known author I follow posted suggestions for high school teachers to prevent students from using their cell phones in class because they are distracting at best and can lead to explosive disruptions. They had suggested that teachers create ‘cubbies” and each student would be required to deposit their cell phone into these cubbies when they entered the classroom. I was surprised at the large number of people that overwhelming agreed; many were educators with many years teaching experience, although a few disagreed, citing school safety issues and the rise in campus violence.

I was the lone dissenter, I argued that “cubbies are for toddlers” and that requirement would not be an age appropriate or respectful way to treat high school students or adult college students. In fact, this act of taking the phones away could contribute to more defiance and lead to further problems. Although the discussion originally centered on high school students, it is not a huge leap to take this discussion and ideas and see how they apply to college learning environments.

Most of the questions related to cell phones in the classroom are framed around the negative: how to minimize cell phone disruption in this classroom. A few educators however, are approaching this from a positive angle and are examining ways to utilize cell phones and mobile devices to maximize learning. I stated that teachers could positively harness student’s natural interest in their cell phones and they could be used as an educational tool, instead of being viewed as a disruptive device.

If teachers are tired of telling students to put away their phones and find that many students are not complying anyway. The teachers could turn their classroom into a technology friendly environment and create classroom activates and assessments around the technology. Students can use their cell phones (or tablets and lap tops) pairing up if necessary, to study their subject. There are simple ways to ensure students are working, instead of socializing on phone. One instructor got rid of the lecture dynamic with teacher at the front of the class; they circulate around the room to check on and give feedback to the students while they work (Gram, n.d.).

This is an excellent solution that addresses the concerns about students ability to process information and multitask if they sue their cell phones during lecture – just drop lecture during the cell phone class segment (Anastasia, 2011). Establish a policy that phones are not out during opening lecture and introduction to class learning activities for the day. Which brings us to another reason for not banning cell phones; instructors will miss the opportunity to instruct in proper usage and appropriate times for using their cell phone and that their phone can be a technological tool (Sterner, 2015). The phones can be used to post questions, discussions and digital images to class social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, there are apps on phones that could be accessed to create lessons and further classroom activities. Tessier (2013) reported positive student reactions to cell phone use in class; the students reported that their phones helped them learn, to enjoy learning, to be more successful and also “marginally improved their attendance” (Tessier, 2013, p. 25).

Instructors who choose to adopt mobile learning and permit the use of cell phones in classes will have to stay on top of it; they will need to be creative, and innovative to sustain learning opportunities through mobile devices. For the instructor, this means staying up to date with current trends and research related to mobile technology; reading tech reports, currently scholarly research, visiting blogs of other educators and applying new ideas to current practice. However, innovation should be encouraged and supported by the institution in terms of financial and technical support as well as creating a culture and community that recognizes and rewards innovation (Nworie, 2014). This could include creating a web based campus repository of ideas and successful innovations in various courses, instructors can provide examples, share what they are doing, what worked and what did not work and encourage collaboration. Recognizing and rewarding innovation are important efforts “towards developing and sustaining successful instructional innovations are influenced by personal, pedagogical, curricular, and institutional cultures and factors” (Nworie, 2014, p. 12). To this end, the intuition plays a large role in supporting the faculty innovation and sustaining technology in the classroom and the use of cell phones or other mobile technology.

References

Anastasia, D. (2013). College students’ cell phone use, beliefs, and effects on their learning. College Student Journal , 47 (4), 585-592. Retrieved from Walden Library databases.

Gram, E. (n.d.). Using Smartphones in the Classroom. National Educational Association. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/tools/56274.htm

Nworie, J. (2014). Developing and sustaining instructional and technological innovations in teaching and learning. Journal of Applied Learning Technology, 4 (4), 5-14. Retrieved from Walden Library databases.

Sterner, R. (2015). 4 Things You’ll Miss by Banning Cell Phones in Your Classroom. Education Digest, 81 (2), 56-58. Retrieved from Walden Library databases.

Tessier, J. (2013). Student impressions of academic cell phone use in the classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching, 43 (1), 25-29. Retrieved from Walden Library databases.