MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY

THE TRIUMPHS AND PITFALLS OF CREATING

AN ONLINE PUBLIC HISTORY PROGRAM:
A STUDY OF SUCCESSFUL EXAMPLES OF THE PAST AND PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

A PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO

THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT AS PART OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE PH.D. IN PUBLIC HISTORY

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

BY

ALBERT C. WHITTENBERG

MURFREESBORO, TENNESSEE
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MAY 2011
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Table of Contents

Tentative Title…………………………………………………………….. 03

Abstract …………………………………………………………….. 03

Topic Overview ………………………………………………………….. 03

Dissertation Outline ………………………………………………….. 11

Working Bibliography ………………………………………………….. 12

Primary Sources …………………………………………………….. 12

Secondary Sources …………………………………………………….. 13

Dissertation Work Schedule …………………………………………… 17

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Abstract

This study intends to investigate the possibilities of converting a graduate public history

program to one partially (or completely) online with the hope of expanding student enrollment

numerically and geographically. To do this, the research will not only focus on traditional

programs in history (and specifically public history) but also successful distance learning

programs for the social sciences. This study will also examine key test cases such as the digital

curation programs at the University of Illinois, the University of North Carolina and the

University of Arizona as well as the Archival Education Collaborative (of which Middle

Tennessee State University is a partner) in hopes of identifying best practices and detailing both

the successes and failures of trying to implement such programs.

Topic Overview

In the spring of 1996, Roane State Community College (where I was employed at the

time as an instructional technologist and webmaster) and three other community colleges created

the Tennessee Online Community College Consortium (TOCCC). Our goal was to create a

complete program to provide an eventual online degree. The cost of cutting edge hardware,

software and training was impractical for four small schools acting independently, but for

schools functioning as a unit, production and development expenses could become more

reasonable. By learning from each other's mistakes, the trials and tribulations of each individual

school should have built a stronger, more experienced base for future development. The TOCCC

was replaced a few years later by the even larger Regents Online Degree Program (RODP)

which built upon that model even more by enlisting all the 45 institutions that comprise the

Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) to produce several completely online degree programs. As

one of these early pioneers, I remember all too well those first days when five instructors came
 Whittenberg 5

into the lab at Roane State for online course training. After an entire day of HTML coding, three

of the five instructors had successfully created their first electronic syllabus. It was not long,

however, that feelings of accomplishment faded in the light of the enormous tasks ahead.

Comments like "I should’ve started last summer…" and "how will I have time to create my

entire curriculum…" created an overall atmosphere of anxiety. While times have certainly

changed (and perhaps improved), these feelings of anxiety remain far too common for faculty,

administrators and IT professionals. With this in mind, this study will investigate the pros and

cons of creating an online program (whether completely online or hybrid) in the field of public

history.

Why public history (besides the obvious assumption that is my chosen field of study)?

There are two primary reasons for my focus on this. One, I have had the opportunity to take

several classes under the Archival Education Collaborative (AEC), which will be one of my case

studies, and I have seen the possibilities that such a collaboration can bring to the table. The

second and most personal to me was to merge what I have learned with the profession I have

been engaged in for over a decade. In 1986 when I was a senior at Cumberland County High

School and extremely wet behind the ears, my father sat down with me and asked that most

dreaded question of “what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” I remember looking

into those dark blue eyes and saying probably more meekly than I remember that I wanted to be

a historian. My dad was a manager of machinists and mechanics; he was someone used to

working with his hands and comfortable with whatever new machinery was tossed his way. He

was not a scholar or a great speaker so he busted my balloon when he replied merely “to forget

the past and focus on a job for the future.” My plans changed that day despite my love of the

past and I focused first on computer programming, then web programming and eventually
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instructional technology. While my father’s advice did not make me happy, it did always supply

me with a job and the eventual chance to move into higher education and work with many

faculty. Thankfully, those jobs also allowed the chance to return to school and get two masters

degrees and finally enroll in the public history program at Middle Tennessee State University.

From the beginning, I was determined to somehow bridge the gap between the profession I did

currently and the one I wished to do after I graduated. When I was approached about

helping/researching possibilities for the program to expand to the online arena, my goal suddenly

seemed more realistic.

Why online learning? In a 2010 study by the Sloan Consortium, a survey of over 2,500

colleges found that over five million students were enrolled in online courses in 2009. Along

with this, the study concluded four other main points:

1. Almost two-thirds of for-profit institutions now say that online learning is a

critical part of their long term strategy.

2. The 21 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 2 percent
growth in the overall higher education student population.

3. Nearly one-half of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased
demand for face-to-face courses and programs.

4. Three-quarters of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased

demand for online courses and programs.1

These findings are not unusual. For my proposed research, I will not only do a review of how

the online arena has grown in the past 10 to 15 years but its continued entry into graduate

programs. While undergraduate online courses (and even programs) have become more

common place, the graduate world (with the possible exception of MBA programs) has been

1
I. Elain Allen and Jeff Seaman, “Class Differences: Online Education in the United States, 2010,” The Sloan
Consortium. Available at http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/class_differences.pdf. Retrieved
November 2010.
 Whittenberg 7

slower to jump on the online bandwagon. Recent findings over the past five years have shown

that this is changing.

Middle Tennessee State University is not unusual then in attempting to expand to the

online world. However, this goes beyond just putting some classes online but fundamentally

changing how we look at graduate education and specifically in public history. To ensure that

this research has the strongest possible foundation, I will begin not with just recent online

examples but chapters dedicated to the history of graduate education, public history programs

and also distance education (in general). Finally, I hope to narrow the focus to specific programs

in archives or (a fairly recent player) digital curation.

As I mentioned before, one of these test cases will be the schools of the Archival

Education Collaborative (AEC). I have had the opportunity both to take classes as well as teach

the History of Archives course for AEC using video conferencing. A brief history of the

collaborative is found on their website:

The AEC started as the SAEC, a pedagogical experiment. Four universities in the
Southeastern United States offering archival training came together to address one
glaring fact: Schools of library and information science (LIS) today educate two-
thirds of the new archivists in the United States, but most LIS schools do not have
the resources to provide the comprehensive program of professional education
recommended by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The partner schools
proposed to combine the specializations and expertise of their faculties through
distance-education delivered by video conference transmitted over Internet 2.2

While definitely a synchronous solution, the universities involved consider these courses as

online. Recent conversations from member schools have approached the idea of offering more

asynchronous content, but this is still in the beginnings of discussion. Interestingly enough, two

2
Elizabeth Dow, Archival Education Collaborative Website: About Us. Available at
http://www.archiveseducation.info/about.html. Retrieved November 2010.
 Whittenberg 8

of the AEC schools offer interesting (and differing) opinions to study. The University of

Wisconsin has openly embraced asynchronous learning and offers their entire curriculum

through a course management system, Desire2Learn. However, Indiana University has been

very resistant to this type of courses in the past and even struggles with video courses offered

through the AEC. Both are very successful and profitable programs, and I look forward to

exploring these cultural differences more with my interviews with Director and Archives

Program Coordinator, Amy Cooper Cary (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Associate

Professor and Director of Archives Specialization, Philip Bantin (Indiana University).

During one of my past courses, I also had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Richard Pearce-

Moses (formerly of the University of Arizona). One of his major successes at that institution

was the online digital curation graduate certificate program (or DigIn as it is called at Arizona).

All coursework is online and may be completed in 15 to 27 months. The certificate program was

founded in 2006 with a grant by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and was

developed in cooperation with The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.3 It is

also my intention to contact him again as well and hopefully get an even more detailed interview

as well as statistics regarding the program since its creation in 2006. Since Dr. Pearce-Moses is

no longer at Arizona, he might not be able to get me this information but can perhaps introduce

me to someone else at UA that could. Along with this digital curation program, I also want to

look at two others that have also been proven successful: the University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill’s Digital Curation Curriculum Project (DigCCurr) and the University of Illinois’

Master of Science in Data Curation Education Program (DCEP). Since all of these programs are

through library sciences departments, I also intend to continue to investigate the possibility of

3
The University of Arizona Digital Information Management Certificate Website: Welcome to DigIn. Available at
http://digin.arizona.edu/. Retrieved November 2010.
 Whittenberg 9

another program based within a history department. Perhaps my contacts with people from these

programs will yield that information.

Finally, I intend to bring my study closer to home dealing with history faculty

experiences at Middle Tennessee State University. I was fortunate in my residency to have the

opportunity to teach both the AEC History of Archives course (HIST 6620) and the Essentials of

Archival Management course (HIST 6615). Working with Dr. Ellen Garrison, who has taught

both for numerous semesters, and Dr. Dianna Rust, who is an authority on online learning and

specifically distance learning models, I added several online components to both courses. I was

somewhat limited in what I could do with the 6620 course since the AEC has very specific

guidelines (classes must meet at the specified times for instance). With the 6620 course being

taught in Spring 2011, I have considerable more freedom and intend on using the Morrison, Ross

and Kemp model (MRK) as detailed in the classic Designing Effective Instruction. This model

breaks the process into a number of steps:

1. Identify instructional problems, and specify goals for designing an instructional

program.

2. Examine learner characteristics that should receive attention during planning.

3. Identify subject content, and analyze task components related to stated goals and
purposes.

4. State instructional objectives for the learner.

5. Sequence content within each instructional unit for logical learning.

6. Design instructional strategies so that each learner can master the objectives.

7. Plan the instructional message and delivery.

8. Develop evaluation instruments to assess objectives.

 Whittenberg 10

9. Select resources to support instruction and learning activities.4

Along with this model, the AEC has also redefined what needs to be taught in this course and

their other partner schools. Calling it Archives 101, I intend to use these new guidelines along

with the MRK to develop a hybrid course with several key components being online including

using the recently purchased Elluminate software package. Elluminate is a virtual learning space

that allows students to connect remotely using a microphone or webcam (or both). It allows the

instructor to display video, audio, their computer desktop, website and any number of items.

MTSU history faculty have been experimenting with this package this fall and will be in spring

as well. I hope to not only have some very positive experiences with my course but also

interview the faculty using Elluminate to see if they found the product useful and whether it fits

the future goals of some sort of online program. Along with this, I also hope to work with Dr.

Rust to get access to any current data that University College (Distance Education) has in terms

of online course satisfaction in the past (whether history or other social sciences). I also hope to

use my contacts at RODP (now ROCC) to hopefully access info from them as an institution

(which will reflect schools from all across Tennessee).

With a solid foundation in the history of graduate education, distance education and

education programs for public history along with the information from these test cases, I intend

to either prove the usefulness or futility in establishing an online program such at a location like

Middle Tennessee State University. While I am obviously passionate about online learning, I am

also realistic that some schools are not good fits. I also want to be very open about exploring

other schools that have implemented such programs. I may feel the need to expand my test cases

(or possibly drop one) as the research progresses. I have not listed any costs as I feel most of this

4
G. R. Morrison, S. M. Ross & J. E. Kemp, Designing Effective Instruction (4th Edition), (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc., 2004), 7.
 Whittenberg 11

work can be done electronically or over the phone with little need for travel. However, this is

always a possibility if visiting an institution would give me access to greater resources.

In creating this proposal and looking at the guidelines given in the student handbook, it is

easy to realize that this is not a traditional proposal for this degree. While I intend to focus some

on the history of both graduate and online education (and specifically graduate programs in

public history), this is not a typical historiography, and there is probably very little research by

exclusively historians. However, I think the possible benefits of this study are great. One, this

could help Middle Tennessee State University and the history department by giving a working

model for online courses to be developed for the future. Second, it is relatively new research for

this field and could potentially contribute to the overall learning model for historian and

primarily public historians in other institutions and programs. Third, it may show an even

greater trend (or evolution) in the theory and practice in archives education, public history,

history or even just graduate studies. When I first approached my chair, Dr. Lisa Pruitt, about

this research, she was very encouraging that this would be something new and would certainly

add to the overall body of research for public history. I know it will be very exciting to work

with her as well as Dr. Rust, Dr. Martin and Dr. Garrison in this. All of them bring such a wealth

of knowledge and experience that I know I will benefit greatly. The rest of this document

contains a first draft of the dissertation outline, my work schedule and also my working

bibliography (which I know will continue to grow and evolve). It is my hope that you will

accept this proposal and give me the opportunity to finish this quest I started so long ago at

Roane State.
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Dissertation Outline

I. Introduction

II. Background Information of Both Graduate and Distance Education Programs

a. History/Philosophy of Graduate Education

b. History/Philosophy of Distance Education

c. Distance Education for Graduate Programs (Primary Focus on Social Sciences)

III. Traditional Education Programs for Public History (and specifically Archives)

IV. Distance Education Programs for Public History (and specifically Archives)

V. Library Sciences Versus History Ownership of Archives Education

(How This has Affected Programs Move to Online Environment)

VI. Specific Case Studies

a. Online Digital Curation Programs

i. University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign

ii. University of Arizona
iii. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

b. SAEC/AEC (Archives)

i. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

ii. Indiana University
iii. Middle Tennessee State University
iv. Louisiana State University

c. Middle Tennessee State University

i. Personal Experiences 2010/2011

ii. Public History Faculty Experiences
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iii. Distance Education (University College)

iv. Regents Online Degree Program (RODP/ROCC)

VII. Conclusion

Working Bibliography

Primary Sources

Interview with Director and Archives Program Coordinator, Amy Cooper Cary, of the
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

Enrollment, Graduation & Student Evaluation Date from Online Archival Program at the
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

Interview with Associate Professor and Director of Archives Specialization, Philip

Bantin, of Indiana University.

Interview with Associate Professor and Director of the Archival Education Collaborate
(AEC), Elizabeth Dow, of Louisiana State University.

Semester by Semester AEC (and previously SAEC) Enrollment Records.

Interview with Richard Pearce-Moses (formerly of the University of Arizona and

cofounder of the Digital Curation program at Arizona).

Interviews with current and past MTSU History faculty using Elluminate for their
courses.

Interviews with current and past MTSU History faculty using online video conferencing
as needed for SAEC and now AEC courses.

Current and past student evaluation and success rate data from MTSU’s University
College (Distance Education).
 Whittenberg 14

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 Whittenberg 18

Dissertation Work Schedule

May/June 2011

Conduct a series of IRB approved interviews with Amy Cooper Cary, Philip Bantin,
Elizabeth Dow, Richard Pearce-Moses and any MTSU Public History faculty that used
Elluminate in the their Fall 2010 or Spring 2011 classes.

Accumulate updated enrollment and student satisfaction data from SAEC schools along
with all distance learning courses at MTSU (I currently have access to all past years
records and intend to focus specifically on online Social Science courses).

Begin and intend to finish chapters I and II along with continuing research.

Late June/July 2011

Begin chapters 3-5. Submit chapters I and II to Dr. Pruitt and the committee for
review/comments. Continue research as needed.

August 2011

Begin chapters 6-7. Again submit continued work to committee for review. If any
rewrites have been given, work on those as well.

September 2011

Assume that the start of the semester may slow down the process somewhat. Hopefully
start section eight which should prove to be the largest of the chapters (may have to split
up if gets too overwhelming). Also, work on rewrites as needed.

October 2011/November 2011

Turn chapter 8 as well as conclusions to Dr. Pruitt and work on rewrites/corrections/edits

when returned. By end of the month, should hopefully have dissertation completed,
submitted and schedule defense for December if possible.

December 2011

Defend and potentially turn completed dissertation into Graduate Office.