IU researchers awarded NSF grant to enhance student learning in humanities with digital tools | IU Newsroom

"Learning history at the college level involves not just memorizing facts but making and defending arguments about historical events and their causes and results. But how can students develop those skills as they encounter new material in large lecture classes?" explains Steve Hinnefeld, News & Media Specialist. 

A cross-disciplinary team of Indiana University Bloomington faculty members is tackling the challenge by creating a software tool that will help students make and analyze historical connections as they work through readings and assignments. Funded with a two-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the Net.Create project will develop ways to use network analysis to support learning in the humanities.

"These methods can increase student engagement and provide the rigorous disciplinary training that faculty want our students to experience," said Kalani Craig, clinical assistant professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences and principal investigator for the project.

Craig is also co-director of IU Bloomington's Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities. Also working on the project are Joshua Danish, associate professor of learning sciences, and Cindy Hmelo-Silver, the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair and professor of learning sciences, both in the School of Education; and Ann McCranie, assistant director of research administration in the IU Network Science Institute.

The project will use software to help students engage with books and articles so they can identify historical significance and make arguments about relationships and causes in historical events.
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Source: IU Newsroom