The Keys to Understanding History: Unlocking Digital Timelines

Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Erika Bsumek

This project started out with a simple idea: From my original proposal, we noted that “Current historical timelines are not interactive, nor do they enable students to understand connections between different events. They are good at showing chronology, but are not good at illustrating how specific events are influenced by a whole host of different historical factors.”

The final product of my PTF was a prototype of a now robust online platform called ClioVis that has since been used by over 6,000 students across the United States, including UT-Austin, UT-San Antonio, UT-Rio Grande Valley, University of Michigan, Boston College, Stanford and beyond.

In the current version of the software, students not only build interactive “connecting” timelines, the software also functions as an online learning platform, where users can communicate, present, and collaborate on classroom projects virtually. The platform has been used disciplines from ranging from STEM (where it’s been used to created “pathways” instead of timelines) to disciplines across the Humanities (history, literature, anthropology) as well as in the School of Architecture, School of Communications, and College of Fine Arts. Students can embed their timelines in websites to create public facing projects or use them to study course content.

Public facing timelines that students have created have been featured by Not Even Past and Digital Humanities Now. For instance, the Black Lives Matter Timeline (above link) has been made available to educators across the nation, who use it with their students to better understand the historical context for the summer 2020. We’ve also applied for grants and additional funding to keep this project moving forward.