T he National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to San Diego State University in collaboration with the National Center for History in the Schools to develop a Web-based model curriculum for world history. The project will assist educators in middle and high schools nation-wide to improve instruction in world history. Titled An Architecture for World History, the eighteen-month project will be based in the Departments of History and Educational Technology at SDSU. The Project Director is Ross E. Dunn, Professor of History at SDSU, and Director of World History Projects at the NCHS.

In recent years a growing number of state education agencies and local school districts have implemented curriculum for global-scale world history. This project aims to provide history and social studies teachers with a comprehensive conceptual and pedagogical model for world history instruction that is integrated, intellectually challenging, and engaging for students.

The model curriculum will be made available to educators on a new Web site based at SDSU. It will be designed as a one-year course primarily for ninth and tenth grade classrooms. The project leaders, however, intend the site to be exceptionally flexible and content rich. Therefore, it will be useful to history and social studies educators at all levels.

Two teams will work closely together to develop and disseminate the site. The world history research team is made up of project leaders and a task force of experienced middle and high school history teachers from around the country. The Web site team consists of project leaders plus specialists in computer design, programming, and graphic art. The project will get underway in July 2001 with a three-week meeting of the research team on the SDSU campus.

When the Web site becomes operational, the model curriculum will be disseminated through professional associations, teacher training programs, and the Internet. The project leaders expect to see the site continue to expand and improve over the next several years.

Collaborating in the project, the National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS) has since its founding in 1988 produced twenty-two primary source-based teaching units for world history. Many of these will be incorporated into the new Web-based model curriculum. Gary B. Nash, NCHS Director, and David Vigilante, Associate Director, will advise the project.

Heading the Web site team is Stuart Grossman, an experienced interactive multimedia designer. He is lead designer and project manager of the San Diego Sandbox, a consulting center within SDSU's Ed Tech Department. Dr. Robert Hoffman, Associate Professor in Educational Technology, will advise the Web site team on aspects of design and engineering.

Edmund Burke III, Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will join the research team in July as summer co-director. Dr. Burke is a specialist in Middle Eastern and world history.

Dr. David Christian, who joined SDSU's history department as Associate Professor in January 2001, will serve as the project's associate director. He taught formerly at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He specializes in environmental history, Russian history, and, more recently, interdisciplinary approaches to world history.

Sharla Hilburn, an MA candidate in History at SDSU, is the project's administrative assistant. Michael Hawkins, also a graduate student in History, will help develop the Web site's content.

Two of the eight veteran K-12 educators on the project's research team teach history in Southern California. Irene Segade teaches at Scripps High School in the San Diego Unified School District. Mira Cohen teaches at Beverly Hills High School. The other participating K-12 educators are Dr. Anne Chapman, retired Academic Dean of Western Reserve Academy in Ohio; Susan Douglass, principal writer for the Council on Islamic Education; Felicia Eppley, teacher at Lamar High School in Houston, Texas; Ellen Pike, teacher at Lancaster Country Day School in Pennsylvania, and Ernest O'Roark and Eileen Wood, both at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Germantown, Maryland.

Ross Dunn, the project's director, serves part time as Director of World History Projects for the NCHS. He is a past-president of the World History Association.