U.S. History to 1877
Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com
This is a complete course: fifteen instructional weeks and a finals week, every student component, built with The Course Maker and ready to import. Weeks are relative (Week 1 to Week 16); you set the dates when you import it. Browse the whole thing below. Click any piece to read it in full, then click back to return here.
Nothing here is locked behind a signup. The course is the proof.
Download this course
This course is free, complete, and evergreen, and it is yours to keep; free downloads run through June 30, 2028. Students pay $0 for course materials: the readings and videos are links to freely available resources.
Pick the number of instructional weeks in your term; exam weeks sit on top of them. An edition marked “coming soon” is not built yet: asking for it tells us to build it, and we email you when it is ready.
This edition is built and ready to download.
Get the free 15-week pack — by email.
Enter your email address and we will send you a download link for the complete U.S. History to 1877 course: a zip with the course cartridge (.imscc) and the instructor pack. It works once and expires in 24 hours. No account and no password.
Before you import, read the import guide. Every pack is provided under the Sample Course License: use it and change it in any course you teach; do not redistribute it.
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What the paid build adds
This sample is complete and yours to keep. A paid build is the same course made yours in the ways a download cannot be:
- Every date set to your term and your breaks, and re-paced to a second campus calendar at no extra charge.
- Your syllabus, your policies, and your outline of record in the build, with an alignment report that shows which component addresses each objective and SLO, and a Universal design for learning section drawn from the course's own data.
- Your name on every page as the course's creator.
- Kept current every term: fresh assessment variants, every link re-checked and the dead ones replaced, and the subject brought up to date where it has moved.
- The full instructor pack: answer keys and worked solutions, the alignment report, and the UDL map.
- A record for your college's file: the design attestation, a disclosure statement for every edition, and what changed at the end of each term.
Included in every course
ChapterRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Slide deck with speaker notesRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a slide deck with speaker notes, a chapter to read, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Captioned video linksRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — captioned videos, a chapter to read, and a slide deck with speaker notes — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee. We link videos only when a caption track exists (from the creator or generated automatically), and we never host them.
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Policies, schedule, and grading
Assignment groups & weights
Configured in the export — the gradebook is set the moment the course is imported.
| Assignment group | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tutorials & Practice | 10% | |
| Quizzes | 10% | |
| Workshops | 20% | |
| Assignments | 25% | |
| Discussions | 15% | |
| Exams | 20% | |
| Total | 100% | Letter Standard |
What students will be able to do
Practice historical thinking — source, contextualize, closely read, and corroborate primary documents, and reason about causation, change and continuity, periodization, contingency, and significance — to interpret the past from evidence.
Describe the Indigenous societies of the Americas before contact, the motives and methods of European exploration and colonization, and the demographic and ecological consequences of the Columbian Exchange.
Explain how distinct colonial societies and economies developed in British North America and how the Atlantic slave trade and colonial law built a system of hereditary racial slavery.
Analyze the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution and the ideas of the Declaration of Independence, including who the Revolution included and who it left out.
Explain the making of the Constitution and the federal system — the Articles of Confederation and their limits, the Convention's compromises, the ratification debate, and the politics of the new republic.
Analyze the political, economic, and social changes of the early and mid-nineteenth century — Jeffersonian and Jacksonian politics, the market revolution, reform movements, and westward expansion, including Indian removal and the U.S.-Mexican War.
Explain how slavery and its expansion drove the sectional crisis — the cotton economy and the lives of the enslaved, the compromises over the territories, Dred Scott, and the secession of the Deep South.
Analyze the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction — emancipation, the Reconstruction amendments, the struggle over Black freedom and citizenship, and why Reconstruction ended in 1877.
Historical thinking and source analysis — identify a primary source by origin, date, and type; place it in its time; read it closely for what it says and leaves out; and corroborate it against other sources, stating the result in one plain sentence.
Historical argumentation — build and support a claim about the past with evidence from dated sources, quoted accurately, while acknowledging another interpretation and checking any claim about the past, AI output included, against the record.
How this course is built — read this first
Every teaching module carries the same set, in the order a student meets it: a Start Here overview, the chapter (the primary reading), the lecture (titled “Lecture: <module title>”), the slide deck with speaker notes, readings & resources (links only), the lecture tutorial and practice exercises worked with an AI tutor, the quiz, the discussion and the assignment, and the weekly Primary Source Workshop. Exams: the midterm in Week 8 and the final in Week 16, a finals week with no module.
The discussion and the assignment each ship in both formats: the adaptive version is the published, graded item, and its traditional alternative (no AI) is a separate item that ships unpublished beside it. An instructor who prefers the traditional format publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one.
What you see here is every student page. The instructor pack (answer keys and worked solutions, rubric calibration, image prompts, audio-brief scripts, and the alignment report) ships only in the download, never on this site.
Discussions & assignments: both formats in every module
Same learning objective either way; what changes is how the work happens.
Work it through with an approved chatbot
The student does the work in a guided conversation with an approved chatbot, using a copy-paste prompt the course provides. For a discussion, the AI is a Socratic partner that challenges their thinking and never writes the post. For an assignment, the AI is a coach: it asks questions, checks the reasoning shown, and waits for the student to revise. The student submits the chat link with the required summary or report.
The familiar way, one click away
The student does the work themselves and submits it, and the instructor grades it against the rubric. No AI required. It ships unpublished, opening with a one-line note to the instructor; publish it instead of the adaptive version if you prefer.
Every week, every component
Each week is a heading; every component under it links to the full student page. Week 8 is a teaching module that also carries the midterm bundle; Week 16 is the finals week, with the final exam bundle and no module.
Doing History & Worlds Before 1607
Colonization & Empire
Colonial Society & the Origins of Slavery
The Road to Revolution
The American Revolution
Confederation & Constitution
The New Republic
Midterm Review & Exam
The midterm exam bundle