Increasing Student Engagement with Free eTextbooks in a History Proseminar

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  HIST 5840 - Proseminar: Theorizing Colonial Imperialism in Africa
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a History course for undergraduate or graduate students by Dr. Tiffany F. Jones at CSU San Bernardino. The course provides all textbooks through ebooks freely available in the campus library. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to ensure quick accessibility and increase student engagement. 

Course Title and Number - HIST 5849 Proseminar - Theorizing Colonial Imperialism in Africa
Brief Description of course highlights:  This is a capstone course required by all history majors to take before they graduate.   It focuses on intense debate and discussion on historiography of a given topic. https://catalog.csusb.edu/coursesaz/hist/ 

Quarter Prerequisite: HIST 394 or consent of instructor
Historiographical seminar introducing advanced junior-level students to a specific topic or sub-field of history. Provides training and introduction to historical argumentation and criticism with an emphasis on secondary works and contrasting interpretations. Department consent required. Formerly HIST 494. 

Student population: 
-  Course is offered numerous times a semester and a requirement for every history student before graduation
-  Usual enrollment: 15 senior students in each section

Learning or student outcomes: 
1.  Knowledge Skills:
1.1 Students will demonstrate knowledge of relevant historical facts and context about the history of colonialism
1.2 Students will demonstrate the ability to frame historical questions regarding the history of colonialism
1.3  Students will demonstrate an awareness of historical interpretative differences (i.e. critically assess the historical debates concerning the history of colonialism in Africa and obtain an understanding of the various debates concerning Africa’s history and how it has been related at various points throughout history)

2. Research Skills:
2.1 Students will demonstrate the ability to thoroughly use a broad range of historical sources for their research papers
2.2 Students will demonstrate the ability to evaluate and analyze primary historical sources
2.3  Students will demonstrate the ability to develop an historical interpretation based on evidence

3. Communication Skills
3.1 Students will demonstrate the ability to write clearly
3.2  Students will demonstrate the ability to speak clearly

Key challenges faced and how resolved: The biggest challenge in the past was ensuring students had the textbooks in order to be able to engage in the discussion. Students run discussions on the texts, thus it is vital that they have read the texts. The introduction of these free texts has increased student access and most have come ready to discuss and debate in each class.

Syllabus from the course or the adoption.  HIST 5840 Syllabus (Fall 2022).docxJones AL$ Showcase 2022_3.pptx

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: 

Brief Description: This course focuses on intensive reading and historiography and examines the ways in which historians research, write, debate, and contextualize history of colonial encounters and imperialism in Africa. Students examine key issues/themes in history through the historiography of colonialism in Africa (and the world) and obtain intensive skills in the way in which history is constructed, manipulated, and defined. It relies on students reading about half to one book a week. This means that students need access to the books easily. Each of these books are books that are central to the debates about imperialism in Africa and encourage intensive debate and discussion.

Resources used:  

1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006) https://csu-sb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_USB/6rdjcv/alma991006127159702916
2.  Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Inventions (Harvard University Press, 1998) https://csu-sb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_USB/6rdjcv/alma991075644625102901
3. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press, 1996)
4. Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 1994 https://csu-sb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_USB/6rdjcv/alma991011249547802916
5. Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (University of California Press, 2000) https://csu-sb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_USB/6rdjcv/alma991067595357202901

Student access:  All are available as ebooks through the campus library 

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  Zero cost to students, with approximately $119.17 in savings.

License:  All books are licensed through our campus library. 

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option.  To save students money, and give students more readily access to course materials.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course?  Read peer reviews and the texts themselves.

Sharing Best Practices: Most course textbooks are now available in ebook form in campus libraries.  Peruse the campus library to see what is available and see if they work with your course.  

Share any curricular or pedagogical changes that you made as part of the Textbook/OER/Low Cost Adoption.  The previous texts I used were as follows:

• JA Hobson, Imperialism: A Study of the History, Politics and Economic of the Colonial Powers in Europe and America (2018)
• Robert O. Collins, Problems in African History
• Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
• Ann McClintock, Imperial Leather
• Excerpts from other texts - did not assign full texts to try keep costs low.

Now I’m assigning texts that are readily available and assigning full texts.  

Tiffany Jones 
Professor of African History
California State University, San Bernardino

https://www.csusb.edu/profile/tjones

Describe your teaching philosophy and courses you teach.  Dr. Tiffany Jones is dedicated to High Impact Practices (HIPs) and experiments often with different teaching techniques in her classes, while maintaining academic rigor. She encourages students to become active participants in their own learning. This means seeing students not as objects of knowledge, but encouraging them to become the source of that knowledge as well.  She believes that students need to be engaged in their learning and feel that their studies are relevant to their own lives.  She teaches the following courses:

SSCI 1110 - Reacting to the Past - Collapse of Apartheid
HIST 3790 - A History of Madness
HIST 3850 - Africa to 1500
HIST 3860 - Africa 1500 to 1870
HIST 3870 - Africa 1870 to Present
HIST 3880 - The Rise, Decline and Legacy of Apartheid
HIST 3890 - Images of Africa: Cultural Constructions of the African Continent
HIST 4490 - Gender and Development in Africa
HIST 4500 - History of Southern Africa
HIST 4510 - History of Health and Medicine in Africa
HIST 5250 - Editing and Publishing in History
SSCI 3160 - Race and Racism (for South Africa Study Abroad)
HIST6002 - Topics in Global/World History