Teaching Methods in Teaching Methods

.01. Introduction

The University of Bergen has offered a course in History and Computing for a few years now; the course uses computers both in historical research and in the dissemination of historical knowledge. This paper deals with the problems, or challenges, a tutor meets when teaching students with no or very limited background in quantitative methods, databases concepts, and computers in general. While most of our students are interested in history and have an educational background in the humanities, many have a phobic relationship to numbers and maths and have consciously avoided natural science in their studies. In addition, the students who have experience with computers (normally limited to text-processors with some web authoring tools) do not know database or calculation or presentation software. Our students, therefore, feel more of a challenge when they use a computers as a research tool rather than as a dissemination tool. The tutor's pedagogical challenge is: to bringing the students across the threshold of quantitative methods and theoretical concepts by giving them an understanding in how these computing tools can enhance their historical knowledge. The paper will discuss our experiences, and it will suggest how we faced the challenges.

.02. The History and Computing Course

With the increasing emphasis on instructional technology in school, at least in theory, the History and Computing Course, which started in the spring of 1997, had two incarnations: one addressed the need to upgrade existing teachers and the other was a full-time course for regular students. For reasons I will return to later, we now only offer a full-time course over one term for regular students.

The course has two main parts. The first part is theoretical and offers exercises in database management, typertext, etc. The second part is practical and applied – a project. For each term we select a historical topic, sometimes a wide topic other times narrow, on which the students have to complete a project. The topics have been urbanisation, emigration, and, last term, it was American history. The students present the project as a hypertext essay on the web. We base evaluation and grading of the project on the web-application; we take into account first of all the historical contents but also how well they have solved the problems of presenting an essay in hyper-text. In addition to the project, the students also have an oral exam. We test them in the shared theory curriculum which they have chosen for the project as well as their practical mastery of the different software used. The final grade is the average of the oral exam and the project.

Thus, the teaching is threefold. First, we teach theory in a classroom: what is a database, hypertext, network, etc. Second, we have practical exercises with computers: we teach them how to utilise the Internet, WWW mostly, how to produce web pages, give lessons in Microsoft Access, and Excel and other similar programs. We also give lessons in how to use audio on the web for dissemination and documentation of historical knowledge. Finally, we supervise and tutor students individually in their projects.

In order to take on a major in history, the students need 80 credit points all together; 30 of these have to be in history. These 30 points consist of three one-term courses: one term of Norwegian history, one term of World History, and finally, one term where the students elaborate on a specific topic and are expected to be a little more advanced. Before a student can take on the last course, he needs to have finished the two basic courses. The first two courses give a general background in history, and the last term is a preparation for the research they have to do in their major. The History and Computing Couse fits into this scheme by being equivalent to the third term in history. The students can study History and Computing instead of the traditional third year course and still major in history. This has repercussions on the teaching of the course. No one can take the course without having studied history for a year. Our students are interested in history, not just in computers. The fact that the students have already studied both Norwegian and World History is naturally beneficial for us. We do not have to teach them the basics; we can choose almost any historical topic, Norwegian or not, as the subject for the term.

Thus, we can concentrate the teaching on what we really want: teach methods, how to interpret sources, how to deal with large scale material such as censuses, how to use tools, how to put it all on the web. On the other hand, as the equivalent to the third term in history, there is a limitation on what we can teach. Our course cannot differ too much from the traditional courses; we have to have a firm component of history. Half the total curriculum is now history textbooks connected to the historical topic; the other half theory in history and computing. Of course, this limits our emphasis on computing and how advanced we can get. Since the teachers are first of all historians, we want a strong history component in the course. The computers and different software are all just tools in the research and/or dissemination of historical knowledge. It is more or less a prerequisite for the course that it allows students to proceed with their majors in history. It is also essential for recruiting students to the course itself, especially non-history majors in information technology. If the traditional history course was the only entry-ticket to a major in history, we would probably not have had a single major student in history with background in history and computing. Now, we are pleased to see an influx of students continuing with history and computing in their history major theses.

.03. The challenge in teaching History and Computing

Having put the course in a context, I will return to the problems I outlined in the Introduction. Teaching History and Computing can be a challenge, first of all because the students normally have a very limited experience with computers and quantitative methods. After the first year at High School the pupils specialise, they choose two majors. This could be social science, economics, language or maths, physics, chemistry. The students that later continue taking university-courses in humanities, definitely tend to major in humanity-courses in High School. Though they have had maths up until first year in High School, they have very limited skills, partly because many of them never really succeeded in mathematics and feel insecure, and partly because they just didn't like it. We have had students that don't know how to calculate percentage, despite they have had this in school long before before High School. Naturally, the students have not had any courses in quantitative methods prior to university. Students taking natural science and even social science at the university need to take a compulsory course in quantitative methods. The students in humanities need to take a compulsory course in the history of the humanities or in linguistics, depending on which subject they plan to study later on.

The students' skills in computers and handling software may differ enormously, from the computer illiterate to fairly advanced user. The average student, however, are familiar with computers, but on a limited level. They know how to produce a document in a text-processor, surf the Internet, and using e-mail. Some students can make web pages, but students with experience in database management systems or even worksheets are still rare.

So, laying it on a little bit thick here, our students "cannot count." Only a few have any idea what a variable, field, record, standard deviation is, or how to perform simple calculations. Is it possible to teach students with this background history and computing, and even make them able to integrate this in a hypertext history project during one term? The answer is a slightly hesitating "yes." Most make a lot of progress and demonstrate satisfactory skills at the end of the term. Some fail to pull themselves up to a satisfactory level. We would like to see the students gain skills beyond what we have defined as "satisfactory". This is difficult, however: their backgrounds, limited time, and complicated software and statistical calculations. Nevertheless, though we aim to improve the course and make the students more advanced, we are quite satisfied with the results. I believe three factors are important for achieving this: teaching in small groups, intensive teaching, and specially developed teaching material.

.04. Teaching in small groups

The maximum number of students we accept for the course each term is ten. We offer individual tutoring in connection with the project, and, more importantly, they all need access to computers and necessary software throughout the week and term. We one computer for each two student, a very generous offer compared to most similar course I expect. Teaching small and intimate groups like this has its advantages. The teacher gets to know each student and can follow every student's progress, either in the computer-lab exercises or individually in the office. Equally important, the students get to know each other, work together on the same historical problems, and share a computer-lab. This facilitates cooperation. They teach each other, solve problems together, and challenge each other. Every university cannot teaching in such small groups; we overcame scarce resources through a governmental grant designed to up-grade teachers.

.05. Intensive teaching

The course is taught both intensive and extensive. Theory classes are taught extensively, normally once a week. Supervision on the projects is done extensively in the beginning of the term. The problem with extensive lab-teaching is that this has meant taking an unavoidable step back before we can progress two steps ahead. The students forget skills from one week to the next and need to repeat a few things in the beginning of every lesson. This is annoying for the teacher, and probably also somewhat frustrating for the students, and consumes more of the lesson than is desirable.

This is also the reason why we do not offer the History and Computing as an up-grading course anymore. The participants of this course were, I believe, all teachers dispersed around the country. They came to Bergen a weekend every second month or so and had lessons in theory and practical lab-exercises. This was an inadequate frequency of courses, and we found them generally making little progress between the gatherings. As full-time teachers, they had difficulties finding time-slots for studies on their own. The teachers simply didn't do their homework! The lack of contact with the students made it difficult to monitor the progress, and the result was an enormous difference in skills which increased for each gathering. As we moved beyond the basics and students had to start utilising their skills, we lost students. From 20 participants, only four of the upgrade-students actually graduated! At the same time, all of the regular local students who started graduated. Though the teaching was not as intensive as we do now, it was more intensive than for the up-grading students; being able to monitor and follow up their progress is key to succcess.

Our experience from intensive lab-teaching derives mainly from an international Summer School in history we teach every September, alternating between Bergen and Salzburg in Austria in the beginning and now with Groningen in the Netherlands. Over about ten days, different courses in historical informatics are taught to both Norwegian students as well as students from elsewhere in Europe. The courses may differ from year to year, but examples of courses we have offered are "How to Manage Large Scale Web Projects," "Image Processing," "Databases on the web," etc. The course is taught from nine in the morning to about four in the afternoon, for ten days. It's a lot of hard work for both teacher and students, but also a lot of fun and the results have been very good. Students with no former experience master html and graphics quite remarkably; other course report the same.

The intensity of the teaching cannot be overemphasised. Working day after day, hour after hour, individually and in cooperation, with the teacher always available–they are not allowed to forget the advances they make. They keep taking those two steps forward, and rarely any steps back. And again, all benefit from the close cooperation. The students who solve a problem, consolidate their knowledge by teaching others. Intensive teaching, along with the social gatherings during the evenings, enhance the overall quality of the course.

We have decided to extend the intensive lab-teaching to the rest of the course, and offer something of the same introductory course in html for the students taking the course in the spring. All the lab-teaching in Microsoft Access has been done during one week. The intensive database training has produced results better than we expected. The students have covered more than ever before and have mastered skills we did not even teach.

A prerequisite for intensive teaching–one not available to all who teach similar courses–is the students' full attention during the whole term. The course is full tim; they do not take any other courses. In Norway, at least in humanities, it is the norm to control the students' time and concentration in this manner. In less focused settings, digressions are inevitable. Teaching such courses without the students' full attention is far from favourable; we have traveled that road.

.06. Developing teaching material

We use standard textbooks in the theory of historical informatics. Examples of material we use are Databases in Historical Research by Charles Harvey and Jon Press, and A Historian's Guide to Computing by Daniel Greenstein. For the computer exercises, however, we have found it necessary to develop our own teaching material.

Standard teaching material available for the major commercial software does not use history as examples. Business is the target for those books, and they also teach you how to utilise the software in your business. Text-books in Microsoft Access teach you how to make address-lists, customer-, products- and order- databases; books in Excel teach you how to calculate your taxes, how to present your quarterly sales in a nice figure. All of this is very useful and even quite similar to how we utilise the same products in history.

The problem, however, is two-fold: the books are too comprehensive, and the examples confuse the students. Due to the limited time, we must focus quickly and lower the threshold. We think this is best achieved by transforming the examples into history. The students need to see the immediate usefulness of the tools in history; history has to be brought into the computing part as soon as possible. Conclusions from calculations need to have accompanying historical statements which bring forth meaning. It is an enormous incentive to them to comprehend how tables and figures can be more than just boring numbers, how they can reveal information about people and society. Using local historical material further enhances this. While most of the material we use is from Bergen, some of the exercises can be done by using Internet-available local material from anywhere in Norway. Thus, the students can do research on their home counties as well. Students begin to understand that computing and quantitative methods are merely tools, but useful tool.

Teaching materials are available in both paper and web versions. With the web material, additional material such as sources can be linked with hypertext. The teaching material is partly linear, i.e., we explain the concepts and ask students to perform some tasks with only limited hints as to how to do them. More elaborate hints and even detailed explanations can be retrieved in separate windows from links within the assignments.

In some assignments, students have to start from scratch: do data modelling, build a database, and enter data. In other assignments, they download databases from our servers and perform queries and calculations them present the results in tables and graphics. Also, there is an ever increasing amount of historical data available on the Internet. The Digital Archive in Norway provides a vast quantitative historical material covering the whole country; tools are provided. On American material, we have used the United States Historical Census Data Browser at the University of Michigan, both for teaching and student projects.

.07. Conclusions

In our History and Computing course, many students are entering an unknown landscape, one that is not exactly like the "the green, green grass of home." This is a challenge for teachers. From our experience, a two-fold approach seems fruitful in dealing with this. First, build an infrastructure, in labs and pedagogical style that allows intensive contact. Second, merge the computing experience with real historical material as soon as possible through specifically developed materials. After all, we want to teach them how to be historians; the computers are just tools.