Collaborative Web-Based Curricular Units and Latin American History

Latin American Studies Collaborative Web-Based Curricular Units Since the summer of 2006, Latin Americanist faculty from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater and the University Wisconsin -- Eau Claire have worked to create almost two dozen on-line curricular units that are available to instructors on our campuses (and most recently to six additional campuses in the state). Participating faculty were asked to design short curriculum around an important topic that they teach particularly well. These units, mainly in history and literature, present disciplinary-based questions, sources for students to analyze, and exercises which students can access on-line and can prepare for later in-class discussions. History units, for instance, examine with Spanish conquest of Mexico, using Spanish and native accounts, structured around a "trial" of who was to blame for the Tlaxcala massacre; another uses Peronist speeches and songs to analyze 20th century populism. This presentation will review how these shared curricular units have been used by history instructors to have students engage in significant historical question outside of class though the internet units and then practice historical analysis in the class discussions which build upon their encounter with different kinds of historical evidence.