Information on Historical
Units
What is a Historical Unit?
- A historical unit is a ready-made history course work package
which covers in detail a given period of history by making use of both traditional and
modern instructional methods. It integrates extensive classroom educational materials, in
both paper and electronic formats, for both teachers and students, with a detailed
state-of-the-art computer laboratory session which reinforces the lessons taught in the
classroom by giving the students actual hands-on experience with the historical concepts
covered in the unit.
Who are these units designed for?
- Suitable for undergraduate history survey courses, junior
college, or advanced high school history courses, units are designed for any educator
desiring a comprehensive historical instructional package providing them with the means to
give their students a new way to experience the lessons of history through the use of
modern computer technology.
What impact do these units have upon the students?
- Students taught history in this manner view history not as the
rote memorization of names and dates but as a dynamic living process which stimulates the
students’ interest in the subject and motivates them to enjoy learning history.
What are the components of a unit?
A unit contains:
- A detailed historical text to be assigned as required reading
for the students and to be used by the teachers as a basis for planning their lectures.
- Extensive flow charts which map out all of the unit's text in
a clear, concise, and easy-to-follow fashion which allows the students to see at a glance
both the importance of each historical force and how the cause-and-effect models behind
every historical force influence and drive the flow of history.
- Ready-made classroom notes for the instructors' use which
follow the content of the texts and the flow charts and provide both hints for how to
organize the class lecture as well as interesting historical trivia for the teacher to use
to stimulate the class's interest in the topics being covered.
- A comprehensive historical computer simulation covering all
the main topics presented in the unit which provides the student with a historical
laboratory session in which they are allowed to freely experiment with each lesson covered
in class thereby allowing the students to see first-hand the actual impact of each
historical force.
- An electronic multimedia computer program* for the student's
use which integrates the historical text, flowcharts, and simulations with detailed
graphics and reference materials all designed to provide the student with yet another
means to increase his or her understanding of the topics covered by the unit.
- Instructional guidebooks* providing a detailed explanation of
how each component of a unit integrates with and complements the others and how to
effectively utilize any or all of the parts of a unit in a classroom setting.
*Currently under development.
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This document was created by Paul Marty (p-marty@uiuc.edu),
and formatted by Peter Folk (pfolk@uni.uiuc.edu)