Active Learning in U.S. History Courses

We teach lower-division United States history courses fulfilling the CSU’s American Institutions Requirement that every single graduate of our public university system should be able to describe the origins and practice of representative democratic government. Our small department enrolls more than 2,000 students every year in these courses, mostly in "mega-sections" with approximately 120 students. Because of these great student numbers and the widespread reach of our courses among native freshmen and sophomores, we believe we can play a critical role in improving the university’s retention and graduation rates. To redesign our courses, we undertook three major changes. We reconceived our courses as: 1) a critical college “gateway” experience rather than as separate stand-alone classes; 2) an exciting laboratory for the face-to-face practice of democracy; and 3) an active learning opportunity, defined by team-based classroom strategies for student debate and complex problem solving.