American Historical Association

Thanks to funding from the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching the American Historical Association is able to present sample portfolios. The portfolios by William Cutler, Temple University, and T. Mills Kelly, George Mason University, provide models of how a teaching portfolio might be prepared. The Association thanks Professors Cutler and Kelly for sharing their work.

Introduction to the History Course Portfolio (from November 1997 Perspectives)
      by William Cutler

History 67, The United States to 1877
A Course Portfolio 1996 and 1997
William Cutler

Between the spring semester, 1997 and the spring semester, 2000 Professor Cutler modified his version of History 67, the U.S. History survey to 1877, with the help of a fellowship from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement for Teaching. He designed a new, online syllabus and linked it to a set of primary sources housed on many Web sites, including American Memory and Making of America. He also built in a feature allowing students to post work weekly online. To see for yourself how the course changed, begin with the portfolio for 1996-1997, then read the course portfolio narrative for 2000, and finally sample some of the online student reports.

Course Portfolio Narrative, Spring 2000

• History 67, Syllabus, Spring 2000
• Student Reports for History 67

Western Civilization:
A Course Portfolio
T. Mills Kelly

During the 1999-2000 academic year, Professor Kelly recreated his Western Civilization course with support from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement for Teaching. The new version of the course then became the laboratory for his investigation of how student learning is transformed (or not) by the use of online source materials. He taught two sections of the course each semester, one of which acquired all their source materials online and the other of which received them in a printed course pack. Professor Kelly then compared student results in the "wired" and print versions of the course and the results of that comparison are presented here, along with the course syllabus, samples of student work, student and peer evaluations, and the comments of visitors to the portfolio site. >>

Additional Resources:
The Knowledge Media Laboratory (KML) of the Carnegie Foundation

The Center for Problem-Based Learning at Samford University