HIST 2154 - Minorities in US History

In this LibGuide, you will find instructional resources designed to facilitate the use of primary sources and open educational resources in the teaching of HIST 2154: Minorities in American History. This compilation of existing and new material was funded by an Affordable Learning Georgia grant during AY 2020-2021. The scholars participating in the ALG grant aimed to revive an important course that had not been offered at GHC in more than 5 years, while also bringing that course in line with the American Historical Association's "Tuning Project" and making the course accessible to all students.

HIST 2154, the two courses that make up the American History sequence in the University System of Georgia. Course redesign (spring, summer 2021) was guided by four primary influences:

Building or finding material available under creative commons license, to limit the financial burden felt by students
The backward design process in Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses
The AHA Tuning Project, which emphasizes historical thinking skills rather than content memorization in the teaching of history courses
Inserting a diverse group of voices into the American history narrative

The course was piloted during the fall semester of 2021. The redesigned course text and resources were taught across 4 physical campuses (plus 3 online sections) and used by more than 350 students. Students and instructors were asked to provide feedback on their experience with the resources, providing quantitative and qualitative data that was used to improve the quality of the resources offered.

We are opening these resources to other HIST 2154 instructors, in hopes that more students can benefit from these open educational resources.

HIST 2154 is a course designed to explore the role of minority/subordinate groups in American history, to emphasize the diversity of American experiences in the past, and to bring students to a better awareness of their own place in American culture. Minority groups who make up the bulk of the course study are Native/Indigenous Americans, African Americans, Latinx Americans, Asian Americans, and women. This list is obviously not exhaustive, and other groups can easily be added following the same model.