Education

Degrees: B.S. (1962) and M.S. (1963) in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ph.D. in history (1971) at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Thesis: “Regionalism and the Revolutionary Movement in North Carolina, 1765-1776: The Administrations of Governor William Tryon and Governor Josiah Martin"

Dissertation: “The Antifederalist Ideology in Virginia, 1787-1788"

Editorial responsibilities

Associate Editor for History, Social Science Computer Review, Sage Publications, 2003-present. Prepared a special issue for the Summer of 2005 on the state of the art in using computers for teaching and researching history.

H-Survey List Editor, an H-Net listserv focusing on the American history survey course, 2003-present.

Editor, History Computer Review, 1985-2003. Founding editor of this international journal on computer-assisted history education for college and secondary school teachers.

Editor, The Midwest Quarterly, 1981-present.

Graduate program

Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department since the 1970s.  P.S.U. became the first Master’s program in the country to provide all applicants, not just a select group, an advanced graduate degree in history.

Book

Teaching History With a Computer: A Complete Guide for College Professors (Chicago, Illinois: Lyceum Books, 1990).

Selected articles

 “Coming of Age in Computing,” Social Science Computer Review, 23:2 (Summer 2005), 143-51.  For this special issue I gathered historians worldwide to assess of academic computing in history in the Americas, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United States.

“Historical Choices REVISITED,” History Computer Review, 19 (Spring 2003), 121-36.

“Designing Interactive Courseware: Creating an Electronic Edition of the Notes of Debates in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787,” History Computer Review, 18:2 (Fall 2002), 49-68.

“Online History Textbooks: Breaking the Mold,” History Computer Review, 17:2 (Fall 2001), 25-47.

“Interaction: Examples and Possibilities,” History Computer Review, 16:2 (Fall 2000), 15-42.

“Building a Better ‘Mouse’ Trap: Schick's Taxonomy of Interactivity,” History Computer Review, 16:1 (Spring 2000), 15-28.

“Building a Better History Web Site,” History Computer Review, 13:2 (Fall 1997), 11-33.

“On Being Interactive: Rethinking the Learning Equation,” History Microcomputer Review, 11:1 (Spring 1995), 9-25.

“The Decision to Use a Computer Simulation,” The History Teacher, November 1993.

“The E Pluribus Unum Simulation: Recreating the Philadelphia Convention and Ratification Struggle, 1787-1788,” Academic Computing, February 1990.

 “John Smith's Bill: Then & Now,” American Heritage, November 1989. This has been made the basis for a lesson plan and reprinted in .PDF format: http://www.mainesfirstship.org/edunit.resources/JSmith.pdf. It has also been mentioned in the Colonial Williamsburg Journal for Summer 2002: http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Summer02/money2.cfm.

“What Will the Historian of 2001 be Like? What Will the History Survey Class of 2001 be Like?,” Organization of American Historians Council of Chairs Newsletter, October 1988.

“Historical Choices,” History Microcomputer Review, 4:1 (Spring 1988), 21-35, reprinted 19 (Spring 2003), 121-36.
 
(with Robert K. Ratzlaff) “The Early American Republic Revisited: Textbook Perceptions of American History, 1789-1848,” Journal of the Early Republic, 1:2, Summer 1981.

“Using the Virginia Gazette in the Classroom,” The History Teacher, 1980.

 “Vehicular Religion and the Gasoline Service Station,” The Midwest Quarterly, 1977.

“Microfilmed Newspapers in the Classroom,” Masthead: A Journal for Teaching History with Old Newspapers, No. 4, 1977.

(with David A. Hackett and Fred B. Misse) “‘The Future as History’: An Experimental Approach to Introductory History for the General Student,” The History Teacher, 1974.

Selected articles in books

“The Future of the Survey Course in American History,” the lead essay in Information Technology and the Teaching of History: International Perspectives, edited by Allan Martin, Lez Smart, and David Yeomans (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pages 13-28.

 “The Midwife’s Tale,” in Michael Thomas, Thomas Sechrest, and Nolan Estes, EDS., Deciding Our Future: Technological Imperatives for Education: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Technology and Education, Volume 1, 1994.

“Information Transfer and Interactive Media in Education: Rethinking the Learning Equation,” Storia & Multimedia: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress, Association for History & Computing, 1994.

“Constructing an Interactive Tutorial: The Boston Massacre,” Histoire et Informatique, Acts du 5e Congres International de l'Association pour l'Histoire et Informatique (Association for History and Computing Conference), edited by Josef Smets, Montpellier, France, 1992.

“Using Historical Microcomputer Simulations: Teaching Survival in Early Virginia,” Proceedings and Papers of the Georgia Association of Historians, VI (1985 [actually 1986]).

Selected workshops and papers
(paper) “Designing Interactive Courseware: Creating an Electronic Edition of the Notes of Debates in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787,” for the Sixth International Conference on Computers in the History Classroom, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, June-July 1999.

(paper) “Multimedia: What, Why, and Why Not?,” for the Fourth International Conference on Computers in the History Classroom, Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, April 1995.

(workshop) 1994 Annual Conference of the Atlantic Association of Historians hosted by the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, October 1994.

(paper) “The Midwife’s Tale,” The Eleventh International Conference on Technology and Education, London, March 1994.

(paper) “Where Do We Go From Here With Computer-Assisted History Education?, Roundtable on Computer-Assisted History Education,” Organization of American Historians, Anaheim, California, April 1993.

(paper) “Information Transfer and Interactive Media in Education: Rethinking the Learning Equation,” International Conference of the Association for History and Computing, Bologna, Italy, September 1992.

(paper) (with Martin Campion) “Computer Simulations in History: Theory and Practice,” North American Simulation and Gaming Association, Spokane, Washington, October 1991.

(workshop) “Using Computers to Teach History,” Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, July 1991.

(paper) “Constructing an Interactive Tutorial: Boston Massacre,” Le 5e Congress International de l'Association pour l'Histoire et Informatique (Association for History and Computing Conference), Montpellier, France, September 1990.

(workshop) National University of Singapore, July 21-26, 1989.

(paper) “Historical Simulations: Some Examples from the American Experience,” International Amsterdam Conference on History and Computing, The Netherlands, June 1989.

(paper) “Using Computers to Teach History,” Organization of American Historians Annual Convention, St. Louis, April 1989.

(paper) “An Issue/Interest-Based Simulation of the Philadelphia Convention and the Ratification Process,” Missouri Valley History Conference, March 1988.

(workshop) Two-day workshops for the Organization of American Historians/Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education on “Teaching History with Microcomputers” at the following: University of North Carolina at Charlotte, February 1987; Plymouth State College, New Hampshire, March 1987; and Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C., May 1987.
 
(workshop) One-day version of OAH/FIPSE workshop on “Teaching History with Microcomputers” at Drexel Institute of Technology, Philadelphia, April 1987.

(paper) “Using Historical Simulations: Teaching Survival in Early Virginia,” Georgia Association of Historians, Athens, Georgia, April 1985.

(paper) “When The Needle Showed Empty or Faith is Where You Find It,” Society for Commercial Archeology, Philadelphia, November 1980.

Grant

From the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution in Washington, D.C., a $10,000 grant in 1987 to create a simulation of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention and the ratification process, 1787-1788. This resulted in the development of the eight-part E PLURIBUS UNUM simulation.

Educational software developed

E Pluribus Unum (creating and ratifying the Constitution), James Towne in Virginia (becoming John Smith), Boston Merchant (maritime commerce in the 18th century), and dozens more.

Courses taught (selected)

The American Revolution

Colonial America

The Future as History

History:  Special Topics (Watergate and the Modern Presidency” [twice], “American Popular Culture in the 50s, 60s, and 70s” [once], “Your Family in History” [once as a Special Topic; it was then added to the class list of the Department], Historical What-ifs” [twice], “The American Presidency” [three times], and “History in Film, Fiction, and Media”)

Seminar in American History 813 (among the topics:  the Early Colonies from 1607-1640, Slavery, Life in 18th-century Virginia, the American Revolution, Historical What-ifs, the Spanish Conquest, the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Presidency, Using “The Great American History Game” Database of U.S. Census and Election Returns, Early 19th-century Politics, and the War for Independence)

History Club

Sponsor of the History Club since 1972.  Among its highlights were winning the “Most Improved Student Organization” award for 1996-1997 from the Student Activities Board, presenting the style show and artifact exhibition titled “From History’s Closet,” placing first in the Phonathan, entering floats in the Homecoming parade, and sponsoring trips to the Yucatán to see ancient Maya sites and to Chicago to visit museums and other historical landmarks.