Introductory world history courses purport to familiarize students with the events and trends of scores of societies/polities/economies, comprising tens of billions of people over either 60,000 (World History 101) or 600 (World History 102) years. It is, of course, an impossible task. The embedded model prioritizes breadth over depth, pays obeisance to the (pedagogic or state-mandated) gods of “coverage,” and goes by the name: “survey.” In designing a course that runs less than 40 classroom hours, instructors must be severely selective or, more likely, rely on textbook authors who have made their own choices.

For instructors who believe that “surveys” don’t serve students well, the prospects of designing an alternative are often daunting. Even the availability of self-contained teaching modules, projects, games, and new media do not translate simply into a course that accommodates the instructor’s pedagogical perspective, university or other coverage requirements, skills scaffolding, and some degree of course coherence and continuity.

This panel will provide four specific examples of how instructors have wrestled with this problem. Each will offer a detailed syllabus and describe their goals, process, and outcomes of their course design. They will discuss the trade-offs they considered, issues of geographic and chronological “balance,” whether to build a course around a theme, whether and how to connect modules, and coverage compliance.