Katherine Hijar received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University and is presently Assistant Professor of History at California State University, San Marcos, where she specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. social and cultural history. Dr. Hijar's scholarship incorporates insights from a variety of disciplines, including cultural and visual culture studies. Her scholarly work centers on histories of women, race, masculinity, the ideological meanings of print and visual forms, and social relations of power in urban and intimate settings. She has received funding for her research from various private and public organizations, and awards include a year-long curatorial fellowship at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Title
Escape to Freedom StoryMap
Goal
For students to complete and end-of-semester Digital History guided research project where students conduct research using archives related to slavery in the United States, analyze data, and use StoryMap JS to complete their projects.
Lesson Plans
Outcome/Examples
Reflection
I believe that this guided research project helped students learn the material more deeply because it requires (and rewards) close engagement, independent thinking, and creative decision making about how to present the evidence. Although not everything went perfectly, I enjoyed the process of experimentation, and I think that digital tools can really help students develop more sophisticated thinking skills and understanding of course material. I plan to build on my Spring 2016 to create a first-year U.S. History course that is entirely based on research.