The AHA Sponsors Seminar on Quantification, Computers, and Teaching History

Twenty-one participants assembled at Amherst College, November 15-17, in response to invitations from the Ameri­can Historical Association’s Committee on Quantitative Research in History to hear presentations and discuss topics relevant to the theme “Quantification, Computers, and Teaching History.” The seminar, sponsored by the Ameri­can Historical Association and support­ed by a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation, attempted to identify and address issues that have arisen as a con­sequence of the increasing availability of powerful, inexpensive and easy to use microcomputers for instructional as well as research uses in history.

Discussion in the seminar made it clear that computers mean much more to history in 1984 than they did a mere decade ago. In the view of most partici­pants the new technology challenges fundamental aspects of history as a mode of inquiry and raises serious questions about the kind of resources history teachers can and should make available to students in introductory and ad­vanced topics courses. Participants shared a sense of urgency that now is the time to interact critically with emerging information technology, be­fore the logic of the mature technology constrains attempts to bend it toward humane pedagogical applications.

Participants were also in agreement that whereas ten years ago the influ­ences driving the profession toward the computer came from above (i.e., from the graduate schools), now the impulse comes from below, from increasing numbers of high school and college stu­dents familiar with noninstructional uses of the computer as word processor, super-calculator and tutorial aid. This competency offers a challenge and an opportunity for history teachers. By adapting the computer’s capabilities in data manipulation, simulation and map­ping to existing courses, increasing numbers of students can be attracted to history to help them improve their skills in analysis and synthesis, narrative and presentation. It was pointed out that terms like “more,” “less,” and “develop­ment,” frequently used in narrative his­tory, are basically quantitative terms. If this is kept in mind, integration rather than fragmentation of the discipline could result from the introduction of formal quantitative logic and computer assisted teaching into history curricula. It was also remarked at several junc­tures that as a profession, historians can play a leading role in demonstrating how the humanities can make intelligent use of computers in research and teach­ing and figure strongly in computer literacy projects on college campuses. But before this can be done the re­sources of the technology as well as the resources of the profession and the discipline must be carefully assessed.

In six of eight sessions, seminar par­ticipants listened to presentations which reflected three major areas of concern: institutional, pedagogical and theoreti­cal.

Institutional concerns. Formal re­marks and reports from seminar partici­pants made it clear that uneven devel­opment is the key concept to under­standing the state of institutional integration of quantitative conceptual­ization and computer resources into his­tory or general curricula. Even within given institutions hardware resources and teaching applications are not fully coordinated, with hardware often being the more developed resource. The question was raised: Where does the historian turn for advice when an insti­tution or a department receives a gift or grant for establishing a microcomputing facility? Choices, in the end, will be institutionally specific; but at the moment there is no effective means of learning about working models for com­puter development in history. It was agreed that better communication is ur­gently needed if institutions prefer not to reinvent the wheel, perfect or imperfect. The Inter-University Consortium for Educational Computing was  sug­gested as one resource that could coor­dinate information about models of in­stitutional computer development. Re­gional weekend workshops for historians, to acquaint them with state of the art hardware and provide them with help in intelligently evaluating their personal and institutional computing needs would be another solution.

At another level, discussion focused on the need to promote institutional support for the development of courses, course modules, data sets, software pro­grams and the like by historians. Few institutions are aware of the time costs involved in designing and teaching courses in quantitative history. The question was posed whether American Historical Association support for mechanisms that could provide grants for such purposes would help bring them into being; or whether the AHA could find ways to communicate about their problem to institutions.

Pedagogical concerns. Four sessions of the seminar dealt directly with peda­gogy and the computer. Because of the great range in classroom settings and because of the individual nature of instruction, no universal solutions were found to many urgent questions raised about pedagogy. Lively debate flowed out of two questions posed by several participants. To what extent and in what ways should historians become in­volved in the diffusion of computer lit­eracy and numeracy among undergrad­uate students; to what extent should they devote their efforts to courses of­fered primarily to impart knowledge of a tropical nature? Opinions occasionally varied sharply over these issues, al­though some presentations illustrated that these approaches need not be mu­tually exclusive. It was suggested that teaching computer literacy in history courses might serve to introduce historical methods and raise more general historical issues and at the same time develop an interested clientele for other history courses and for quantitative history in particular.

Another question debated was: To what extent and at what level of sophis­tication can history courses provide in­struction in quantitative reasoning, de­scriptive statistics or higher level statisti­cal methods? Several presentations demonstrated that elementary quantitative logic and simple descriptive statistics can be easily integrated into the subject matter of undergraduate history courses, especially when students are provided with prepared darn sets and have access to computer facilities, The seminar did not deal extensively with higher level statistics, which were pre­sumed to be of less interest to a general audience than more widely applicable simple statistical techniques.

Models for applying quantitative logic and computers in teaching presented at the seminar, displayed a wide range of approaches, from highly structured exercises based on prepared data sets to more open-ended, individualized exer­cises. Whether structured or open-end­ed, all the models were related to the research interests of their authors or designed to meet specific institutional or curricular needs, It was pointed out by more than one participant that specifi­cally designed packages are more likely to develop constructive powers of imagi­nation in students than one or another stock exercises, which are likely to achieve the opposite. This observation carried implications for the kind of training offered in-service teachers, which were considered in the final ses­sion of the seminar. A note struck fre­quently in the sessions was that computer  technology and statistics should not be allowed to dominate the effort of historians interested in applying quanti­tative methods in the classroom. They must remain the means to a more important purpose—teaching students to think.

A further session concerned with practical applications was devoted to demonstrations of available teaching materials. These included prepared data sets and analysis programs de­signed to run on mainframe as well as microcomputers. American and Euro­pean census data, information on Dutch immigration to the United States and French cahiers de doleances provided the basis for some of the materials demon­strated. Many of the participants indi­cated that exposure to these materials encouraged them and would aid them in the design of teaching materials suit­ed to their own needs.

Theoretical considerations. A part of the seminar’s liveliest discussions con­cerned intellectual assaults and defenses of quantitative history. The issues raised cut across ideological frontiers as well as disciplinary subfields. The need for his­torians to improve their knowledge of social science analysis, the demand for precision in conceptualization and re­search design, the role of theory in historical inquiry and scientific method were some of the problems addressed in one or another session. Neither the questions nor the answers set out in these sessions were new, but the persis­tence of these issues throughout the seminar signals their crucial role in any strategy of critical interaction with in­formation technology. Some of the dif­ferences which developed were related to disagreement over the issue of scien­tific method, which the participants nev­er directly addressed. It was agreed, however, that critical components of the logic of historical inquiry do not involve computers or quantification. But that some historians are hostile to either or both does not obviate the need to intro­duce undergraduates to scientific inqui­ry (which depends on quantification) and to the use of computers (which makes quantification easier).

Recommendations. The concluding session of the seminar, devoted to deter­mining whether clear recommendations to the AHA could be formulated, produced a surprising degree of consensus. It was agreed that historians must pre­pare themselves to teach a generation of students who will come to college history courses already at ease with the computer. The success of such prepara­tion will depend upon the training of teachers, the development of materials to assist the integration of computers into history curricula, and the establish­ment of a nation-wide network to dis­seminate information and coordinate activities of historians across the coun­try. The participants urged the AHA to consider sponsorship of a summer training institute that would have sever­al goals:

1. To enhance historians’ ability to understand and carry out basic quantitative data analysis using computer software packages.
2. To acquaint historians with the newest in computing hardware and software, including the com­puter’s ability to allow students to build interesting data sets, run map graphics, and run statistical analysis packages.
3. To assist historians assemble indi­vidual teaching packages based on their own research materials or readily available computerized data.
4. To organize an effective means to have institute participants share their new found skills with their colleagues as well as other stu­dents.

It was recognized, however, that a training institute could reach each year only a fraction of the historians who are interested in learning more about the use of computers in their courses. The Association was urged, therefore, to consider as well the need for written material to guide teachers in the devel­opment of syllabi; the need for comput­erized data bases suitable for use in courses, and also the need for an insti­tutionalized network to disseminate in­ formation about what is being done in this area. These efforts will assist not only those who know nothing about computers, but also those colleagues who now use computers but require assistance in the difficult task of inte­grating computers into their courses.

Participants

Paul Abrahams, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Marc Baer, Hope College
Lawrence Beaber, Educational Testing Service
Paul A. Beck, Florida State University
Katherine A. Biddick, University of Notre Dame
John H. Comsworth, University of Chicago
*Peter Czap, Jr., Amherst College
David Fischer, Brandeis University
Nancy Fitch, Hampshire College
Richard Jensen, University of Illinois-Chicago
R. Burr Litchfield, Brown University
Katherine A. Lynch, Carnegie-Mellon University
Marilyn S, Mavrinac, Colby College
Robert McCaa, University of Minnesota
Eric H. Monkkoncn, University of California-Los Angeles
Marjorie Murphy, Swarthmore College
Steven Rappaport, Rutgers University
*Janice Reiff, Northwestern University
Robert Schwartz, Mount Holyoke College
Charles Stephenson, University of New Hampshire
*Maris A. Vinovskis, University of Michigan

*Committee on Research in Quantitative History