History 12: US History 1865-Present

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  History 12: US History 1865-Present
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Course Title and Number:  History 12: US History 1865-Present
Brief Description of course highlights:  Examines the history of the United States from 1877, looking at the significant events from the end of the Civil War to the present, including the role of major ethnic and social groups in the formation of the American nation. G.E. Breadth D1.

https://www.fresnostate.edu/catalog/courses-by-department/history/
Student population: Prerequisites: A2 (Written Communications). Students tend to be first year or second year students taking the course to satisfy GE Requirements. Students come from a wide-variety of majors given that History 12 is a GE course.
Learning or student outcomes: 

 
Key challenges faced and how resolved: I switched to a zero-cost textbook (Americanyawp.com) and primary source reader. This switch made course material available with no cost while upholding content quality. I wanted to also develop some assignments using zero-cost principles. To do so, I developed a handful of “reading check” quizzes built from a combination of questions I found using the OER commons and student-generated questions. Last, I fine-tuned a previous assignment where students analyze an everyday item from their day-to-day lives using course concepts and themes by developing a way to share their items and analysis in a public way. As such, students will learn how to contribute open source materials in addition to consuming them. 

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: The American Yawp Brief Description: The American Yawp is a collaborative textbook where hundreds of historians with various specialties contribute to any given chapter. The American Yawp as provides a primary source reader where students can read primary sources directly related to the material presented in the textbook. Both the main textbook and primary source reader include guide questions and suggested readings relevant to chapter concepts. I like that the textbook and primary source reader are free; however, I also like the collaborative element as it means that the historical analysis and interpretations are fairly current.
Please provide a link to the resource  https://www.americanyawp.com
Authors:  The textbook is a collaborative effort between hundreds of historians.
Student access:  Students access the material via the americanyawp website. Supplemental resources: Beyond the textbook and primary source reader, I do not use much from the publisher. Rather, I post my own lecture slides to Canvas for students to access. In addition, I post links and/or PDFs to primary sources not included in the American Yawp reader.
Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  Eric Foner’s Give Me Liberty is one of the more popular US History textbooks, it retails from $30 digital to $62 paperback.
License:   The American Yawp has an “Attribution-Sharealike 4.0” license

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. As noted above, I like that the textbooks saves students money; however, I also like the textbook itself as the collaborative element keeps the analysis up-to-date with the field.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course?  I first heard of the American Yawp from graduate school colleagues and then started reading about it more on my own.

Sharing Best Practices:  First, be open to experimentation. It is easy to get locked into the same textbook or other materials but being open to new materials creates opportunities for expansion. Second, I enjoyed the communal aspect of the OER training I did. I was already predisposed to wanting to go down the OER path (even if I did not have the right language to describe that preference); however, being able to see the approach of colleagues across various disciplines provided a good deal of inspiration. In particular, the training provided a good platform to talk about my own experiences and get a sense of what is working and what I can work more on. 

Last, learning about the OER commons and other databases was especially helpful. I had run across the commons a few times in the past but did not really understand exactly what it was. The training helped me understand that there is a broad universe of OER materials that I can access and learn from. In addition, learning about creative commons licensing was also helpful. Before the training I had never seriously thought about publishing materials created in and for the class before. Now, I can see the value both for myself as an educator and for my students. For the latter, encouraging students to license their creations and make them available for the public reinforces my argument that their experiences have historical value.
 

Describe any challenges you experienced, and lessons learned.  I did not have any significant challenges faced during this process, at least nothing specific. Having said that, the broader challenges is figuring out how to replicate the best parts of the training every semester. Specifically, as noted above, I found the communal aspect of the training helpful and enjoyable and would like to see more time and resources in the university dedicated to creating infrastructure to support that type of faculty exchange. As a contingent laborer, I find the full-time/part-time hierarchy generally works against genuine, equal, and sustained exchange with my colleagues; however, it would be nice to have structured time to share and learn about pedagogy from each other and to learn about new tools and approaches being developed beyond our campus. 

Instructor Name:  Sean Slusser
History and Sociology Lecturer, Calif State Univ, Fresno
I regularly teach:
History 12: US History 1865-Present
History 11: US History Origins to 1865
Social Sciences 110: California Studies
History 101: Women in History
Sociology 130W: Contemporary Social Issues (university graduation writing requirement) 

Please provide a link to your university page.
Please describe the courses you teach.  My history courses are built around a “bottom-up” approach to history that tends to balance out “big picture” history with smaller-scale and local history. As such, I teach that everyday actions and individuals have as much historical value as more obvious historical references like political leaders, elites, wars, and high profile movements. In addition, I want students to understand history not just as a series of chronological events but as a living, breathing, contextual structure that changes across time. History helps us understand the present not just as the “end” point of a linear process but because it helps us understand patterns and relationships that shape the way we perceive the world around us. Similarly, my Sociology writing class builds off of the “Sociological Imagination” a theory that argues that to understand any given phenomenon, you need to balance an understanding of broad structural forces and the agency of everyday people and communities. In any of the classes I teach, my goal is for students to walk away empowered to both understand the world around them but to also recognize the power they have to shape that world and make it better.
Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  My teaching and research are rooted in the idea that learning has intrinsic value regardless of the institutions that house it and that all individuals are capable of both consuming and producing knowledge. In terms of the former, my job as an educator is to facilitate the exchange of ideas in a classroom setting while also empowering students to continue that exchange beyond the classroom. In the classroom itself, I keep students actively involved in what they are learning by soliciting their ideas on not just course materials but on how they course concepts and principles applying to their lived realities. To encourage connections outside of the classroom, I like to use assignments/projects that require students to draw off of their own experiences. For example, in my history classes I ask them to write an essay based on a single item and encourage them to use items from their family and/or community. In the process, students often learn more about their family and/or community while also being able to understand that value in historical context. I practice these same principles in my own research on hip-hop culture in the Central Valley. The common denominator is the belief that stories have value regardless of whether or not they are included in academic archives, textbooks, or monographs.