About This Course

This Lumen Learning Waymaker U.S. History course aims to help students use historical thinking skills to describe, compare, contextualize, and construct historical arguments about major events in American history from 1877 to the present day. The course covers the chronological history of the United States from Reconstruction through the beginning of the twenty-first century and introduces key forces and major developments that together form the U.S. experience. It provides a balanced approach that considers the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top-down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom-up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience), with particular attention paid to issues of race, class, and gender.

Primary course goals include the following:

  • Describe key historical trends, events, and figures in modern American history
  • Examine historical figures and events from multiple, diverse perspectives, recognizing how American history is influenced by race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, etc.
  • Think like a historian; make historical connections by studying historical narratives and arguments, analyzing documents, synthesizing information, evaluating cause and effect, and studying how things change over time.

This course will guide students through a wealth of primary sources, readings, and videos tied to clear learning objectives designed to improve their critical thinking skills. Sample discussions and assignments are included. Key topics include westward expansion, industrialization and urbanization, imperialism, progressivism, WWI, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, political storms, civil rights movements, culture wars, and more.

The initial foundation for this text comes from OpenStax U.S. History, and The American Yawp Reader, though this new text has been extensively revised, enhanced, and embellished.

Course Highlights

The course includes additional narratives, practice questions, videos, quizzes, discussions, assignments, and slides. Other key course features include:

  • A greater emphasis on historical connections and significance
    • Every module begins with a “Why It Matters” and concludes with a “Putting It Together” page that introduce students to the content and provide relevance.
    • More special features and sections are included to create a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of history, as seen through multiple perspectives, recognizing how American history is influenced by race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, etc.
  • Practice and interactivity
    • Practice questions are included for every learning outcome. Primary source documents are included and interpreted throughout the text, and interactive exercises allow students to reflect on the content.
  • “Historical Hacks” sections in every module
    • These small tutorials help students to learn and apply historical thinking skills. These hacks are broken down into understandable chunks and give students an opportunity to practice important skills, such as interpreting primary source documents, creating thesis statements, comparing perspectives, developing empathy, recognizing bias, evaluating sources, determining cause and effect, describing historical significance, understanding historical context, and learning about civil disagreement.

Some of the materials inspiring the organization, content, and approach to pedagogy in the Waymaker U.S. History course include the following:

Course Improvements

We believe in making continuous improvements to our courses in order to enhance and facilitate student learning. This newest version of the course includes a vast number of data-driven improvements to assessment questions and text content in order to better illustrate, clarify, and evaluate concepts.

Contributors

This course was developed by Lumen Learning with significant contributions by:

Primary Content Authors

  • Lillian Wills, Saint Leo University
  • Mark Lempke, SUNY Buffalo
  • Megan Coplen, Contributor
  • Zeb Larson, Contributor
  • Josie Jones, Contributor
  • Erica Holland, Contributor
  • Wes Helbling, Contributor
  • Samantha Maier, Contributor
  • Sudina Paungpetch, Contributor
  • CJ McClung, Contributor
  • Benjamin Lawson, Contributor
  • Jonathan Roach, Contributor
  • Caileigh Abente, Contributor
  • Scott Barr, Contributor
  • Kaitlyn Connell, Contributor
  • Yasmin Forbes, Contributor
  • Nikki Winans, Contributor
  • Heather Bennett, Contributor

About Lumen

Lumen Learning courseware is based on open educational resources (OER). When we can find well-designed, effective OER that are appropriately licensed, we use them in our courseware. When we can’t find pre-existing OER, we create original content and license it as OER (under a Creative Commons Attribution license).

Lumen’s authoring process doesn’t end when our courseware is released. Our choice to adopt open educational resources means that we have the copyright permissions necessary to engage in continuous improvement of our learning content. Consequently, our courses are continually being revised and updated. Errata reported for our courseware are fixed in a matter of days, as opposed to the traditional model in which errors persist until the next “edition” is printed (often a year or more). Students and faculty can suggest improvements to our courses directly from within the courseware as they use it. And we conduct regular analyses to determine where students are struggling the most in our courseware, and make improvements that specifically target these areas.

Given our unique approach, our list of authors and other contributors may look different than the lists you are used to seeing. We provide both a list of the primary content authors (the people involved in the initial creation of the course) and a list of everyone who has contributed suggestions and other improvements to the course since it was first released. We invite you to join us as we create courseware that supports student learning more effectively each semester.

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.

You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.