The House the West Built
A Multimedia Presentation by Students in Western Civilization
This article originally appeared in Perspectives:
American Historical Association Newsletter, 35.2, Feb 1997. Some of the features
described below have since changed.
I teach the honors section
of the two-semester sequence in Western civilization for the Department of History and the University Honors Program at the University
of South Dakota. Nearly all of the fine students in this course take both semesters
with me and grow accustomed to the unusual problems I set them. In the spring of 1996 I
had them develop a multimedia project entitled "The House the West Built."
Working in groups of about five persons each, the students selected and researched some
aspect of Western Civilization and presented their results on the World Wide Web. They
used text, graphics, sound, and video coded in hypertext markup language (HTML) readable
by common browsers such as Netscape, Mosaic, and Internet Explorer. Thanks to the
ingenuity and hard work of my students, this project succeeded in presenting the fruits of
traditional historical reflection in innovative ways by using existing and developing
computer- and Internet-related technologies. Other educators may find my model useful in
working with their own students.
The January 1996 issue of Perspectives carried a series of articles about multimedia
presentations in the history classroom, the nature of the World Wide Web, and historical
resources on the Web. Some of these articles also explain how to browse the web and create
web pages. In what follows I shall assume the reader's familiarity with the concepts and
tools described there. Most educators will be able to consult their local computer experts
for further assistance, and many university web sites include pages of instruction about
establishing web sites on the local network (see USD's at http://www.usd.edu/heidi/howtomk.html or http://www.usd.edu/intec/publish.html). I
also recommend as a starting point "New
Tools for Teaching" by James J O'Donnell, a pioneer of cyberspace technology in
education.
As I browsed the web in preparation for writing this article, I searched
for similar student history projects. Most of the information on instructional
technology--and there is a great deal of it--concerns ways for teachers to use the web. I
was surprised to find very few projects that students prepared, and all of those
originated in composition courses. For a fine example of a class project go to"Once Upon a Time in the
Eighties," with reflections by the instructor, Matthew G Kirschenbaum, and links
to other projects; see also the index of student writing for the web at "Writing for the World." I
know of no history projects by students on the World Wide Web. (George P. Landow created a
site, "The
Victorian Web," which has a counterpart in Brown University's Storyspace Cluster,
a collection of hypertext documents not yet accessible on the Web. I understand that this
counterpart contains material generated by Landow's students.)
The Assignment
The assignment under discussion constituted one of the four projects my
students did in the spring term (the others were traditional papers; see the syllabus). I divided the students
randomly into nine groups of four or five members each. Each group developed a theme that
treated some aspect of Western Civilization. I encouraged the students to use any material
they could write, scan, record, photograph, or videotape. I told them to have fun with the
project. But I warned them that its purpose was not to dazzle visitors to the site with
technological bells and whistles but to develop a cogent and elegant critique of some
aspect of their culture. The students received the assignment at the beginning of the term
(11 January 1996) and submitted their projects 12 April. We launched the various projects
over the next few days, and the completed web site was up and running for USD's spring
festival IdeaFest, where the students demonstrated it in the showcase for undergraduate
research the week of 22-26 April.
Purpose
My purpose in setting this assignment for my students was to go beyond
using computer and Internet technology as a tool for my own teaching and research and make
it a resource for my students and a vehicle for them to present their work. The
fastest-growing, most universally accessible medium of communicating ideas that humanists
have ever enjoyed, the World Wide Web requires new ways of formulating intellectual
problems as well as presenting their solutions, and the medium itself entails new sorts of
problems that probe the impact of computer and communications technology on human life and
thought. I further expected this project to excite the interest of the students, as in
fact it did. Finally, I wanted my students to have the experience of working within groups
on complex problems.
Implementation
When I first met with the class in the fall of 1995, I told the students
that they would have to procure handouts such as syllabi, study questions, and documents
from my home page (whose address or URL is http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann),
whence they could also follow links to sites of related interest around the world. I wrote
the URL on the board and asked the forty-three students whether anyone understood what it
was. A few students raised their hands. In fact, only three or four knew how to gain
access to the World Wide Web, so I gave the entire class a brief lesson about using a Web
browser. Several students came to my office for further help. By the end of the year only
one student--someone who joined the sequence at semester break and who depended on his
fellow students for this assignment--had not learned how to browse the web. Students can
pick up the requisite skills quickly on their own and by helping each other; they do not
need much formal training.
I presented the multimedia assignment to the students at the beginning of
the spring term and established the nine groups in the second week. I told them that they
were responsible for establishing the content of their projects and assigning
responsibilities within the groups but that I would work closely with them to turn
digitized text, images, sound, and video into the final presentation--in effect, that I
would mark up their projects in HTML. I had secured production assistance from an
institute in USD's School of Education, InTEC
(Interactive Technologies in Education and Corporations), whose director gave an
introductory lecture on multimedia production to my class and helped individual groups to
prepare storyboards, or series of rough sketches of their ideas, scan images, and digitize
video. I had already acquired proficiency in HTML editing and so decided to produce the
projects directly in HTML, sometimes using Microsoft Word's free HTML add-on, Internet
Assistant. One could also use the presentation software described in the January 1997 Perspectives
either to create multimedia presentations directly in HTML for posting on the Internet or
in proprietary formats readable by browsers with the appropriate add-ons (for further
information consult InTEC's page on
educational technology).
Students at USD have ready access to relatively new machines running
Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 and to Macintosh computers. On these machines the students can
prepare the textual material for their presentations. Students have access to additional
equipment at InTEC, including Macintosh Quadra 950 and PowerMac 8500 computers, Hewlett
Packard and Apple scanners, equipment for video capture, and a QuickTake digitizing
camera, as well as DeskScan, Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere software. Most of these
machines and sites have direct connections to the university's research and education
network, COYOTENet. I did the HTML editing on my desktop, a 90 MHz Pentium multimedia
computer with a direct connection to COYOTENet.
Through February and March we took occasional class time for the groups to
meet briefly while I circulated among them in order to check their progress. I warned the
students that they would have to start early and meet often because they could not get a
group of several people together and consult the staff at InTEC the eve of the due date. I
suggested that they take some time to browse the web and see what sort of things others
had done, and I pointed out that people who visited their web sites would not linger on a
page with nothing but great expanses of text. That is, the projects had to take a
multimedia approach, and that approach would affect choice of topic and character of
presentation. I insisted that each group have a topic selected and a rough idea about how
the presentation would look before midterm break at the beginning of March. By the first
two weeks of April I was spending several hours a week outside class with the students. To
encourage cooperation within each group, I built a component of peer evaluation into the
grading of the assignment (60% my evaluation, 40% fellow students'); however, I found no
significant problems with each student doing his or her share of the work.
I instructed the students to submit their completed and digitized
materials to me by 12 April in DOS file format and with a storyboard. I expected to spend
the following days coding, assembling, and launching the projects. One of the students had
already written web pages, and she launched her group's site. Students in two other groups
became excited enough about web-authoring that they learned HTML and launched their own
sites. In the end, I had to mark up only six of the projects. Even so, I spent much more
time than I had expected, primarily for two reasons. Some groups had not adequately and
concretely thought out how they wanted their presentations to appear and so did not give
me enough information to turn their disks readily into web sites. I resolved this problem
by conceptualizing the presentations myself and then having the respective group vet what
I had done. Some groups gave me files that were not compatible with my PC; in such cases I
sent the files back to their computers to be converted to the proper format. I spent six
to eight hours marking up each project. By 15 April the site was substantially complete,
and I launched it--transferred it to the university's server so that it was readable to
the world. The next day we met in a computer lab, and each group presented its site to the
entire class. To our relief and delight, almost everything worked.
Until now only my students have known how to access "The House the
West Built." Therefore copyright issues did not arise. I think that, within the
context of a course, the fair use clause of US Copyright Law permits students to
incorporate copyrighted items into their projects (InTEC has a useful collection of documents and links on
the issue of copyright and the World Wide Web). Before making the site available to the
world, however, I felt obligated to secure permission to use copyrighted objects. This
process proved far more time-consuming than launching the site. Responses from copyright
holders who had posted images on the web came quickly and almost always positively. I
found it much more difficult to secure permissions from copyright holders via the mail,
who have tended to respond negatively or simply not at all. Such images I have deleted or
substituted with an equivalent for which I could secure permission. Therefore current
visitors to the site will not see exactly what my students planned. In addition, sites
move or disappear over time, and not all links that worked in May 96 will continue to work
in the coming months.
The Project
Visitors to "The House the West Built" first arrive at an
introductory screen that presents the project and makes acknowledgments. Visitors click on
the openings in the façade of an historic building on USD's campus in order to visit the
individual projects. If one clicks on the doorway at the bottom of the picture, for
example, "The Evolution
of Philosophy" comes up. Its main page has decorative elements, a picture of the
authors, a list of linked sites elsewhere on the web, a bibliography, and text that
explains the purpose of the site. Within that text one can click on key phrases or links
that go to secondary pages on Greek and Roman Philosophers, Rationalism and Empiricism,
Existentialism, Political Philosophers, and Socio-economic Theories. Each of these pages
has pictures of the relevant philosophers. 
The students who authored this site gave me a carefully prepared storyboard
(see figure) that showed me exactly how to assemble each of the files on their disks into
the completed site. They also gave me hard copy indicating the location within the texts
of pictures and links to other sites on the web. I had only to convert their texts to HTML
documents, insert photographs, and establish the hypertext links from one document to the
next. I did not edit the texts themselves except in a few egregious instances. Seven
months of writing papers for me had already inculcated a certain consistency of style
among the students.
The other projects survey the impact of religion on art
via an auction of selected works, complete with the auctioneer's chant (as background
sound, which currently works only on Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Windows 95 as far
as I know); visit Renaissance
Florence (this site includes a video taken from the top of Brunelleschi's dome), some British colonies, or Medieval England; offer a
whimsical tour of world
architecture; explore the Museum
of Western Civilization (you could hear excerpts from classical music if not for
copyright restrictions); and study mythology or the education of women.
Results and the Next Project
When we started, the students faced the assignment with some trepidation
but great excitement. The course evaluations, in the end, indicate an overwhelmingly
positive response to the project: it was fun to do, interesting, valuable for learning
about the Internet and about working with other people. Some students objected to the
group experience, wishing they had selected their own groups or worked alone. A few wished
that they had had more technical instruction, and one said that it was not an appropriate
project as this was not a class in computer science. Several concluded like this: "I
hated the multimedia project at first but when it was done I liked [it]."
Next year I plan to set my students a similar project, with a focus on
revolutions and the utopias they aim for. This time I shall begin to introduce
HTML-editing and other technical aspects of web-authoring in the fall term and require the
students to have written their own home pages before I set the multimedia assignment in
January. And this time, because I expect to make the project accessible to the world as
soon as I launch it, I shall require the students to secure permission to use copyrighted
items. One can watch the progress of the new project by occasionally visiting my home page. I am always willing to respond to
questions or comments; e-mail me at clehmann@charlie.usd.edu.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my colleagues Dale McFarland, Michael Hoadley, and Don
Pryce and to my student Tara Leigh Lursen for reading and commenting on this article and
to the editor, Jan Reiff, for her suggestions.
© 1997 American Historical Association
Prepared for posting on the World Wide Web by Clayton Miles Lehmann, February 1997