Typical 100 level history courses survey a broad spectrum of time, but this is not the case with History 104 – Topics in World History: Cultures in Contact. Instead of the traditional overview of the last 1000 years, students of History 104 will immerse themselves in a series of case studies where different cultures meet. Sometimes these cultures meet peacefully; but, often times these cultures meet under unequal and violent circumstances which create challenges that transform each culture in a variety of ways. Joy Dixon, the course instructor for History 104, believes the “course helps put our [human civilization] experience of a globalized world in a longer historical perspective”. While “what happens” over the course of history is an important feature of this course, it also delves into the approaches and techniques historians themselves use to understand the contact and exchange between cultures, specifically through online media.
History 104 is designed to give the student an introduction to historical sources as well as techniques for interpreting evidence based from both historical academic and historical references. Since the course is online, it gives students the opportunity to investigate rich historical resources available on the Internet. Students can hone their research techniques over the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, which provides detailed information on over 35,000 slaving voyages from the 16th to the 19th century. Students can also view the original handwritten Canadian census enumeration forms from the 1911 Census. With the course instructional designer, Afsaneh Sharif, Dixon has created an interactive learning environment where students can explore detailed high resolution digital copies of maps which give new insights into how the people of the past imagined their world.
The course is separated into several online modules where students touch on topics such as mapping the medieval world, Columbus and the discovery of New Worlds, the slave trade, contact in the Pacific North West, and decolonization. In the online course, assignments will consist of short written précis and a research paper. The research paper is linked to a group project where students will produce a wiki related to the themes of cultural contact and cultural exchange over time. Students are encouraged to use the virtual learning environment to think critically about online resources and to explore the material from libraries and archives from other parts of the world which have been digitalized. Through the group project and class discussion boards, History 104 creates an online community for students to explore primary and secondary historical resources, and encourages students to critically apply the resources to their academic studies.