Experiencing Jim Crow

A scenario-driven exercise was developed to explore the effects of segregation laws that restricted the activities of African Americans during the Jim Crow era. The exercises presented students with a set of information drawn from source materials, and then presented scenarios in which the students made a decision. Students learned how each decision would have affected their experience during this era. Built in Perl, the exercises could be authored by the instructor using a simple web interface. The instructor defined situations containing source materials, images, and other information, and then constructed a navigation path by connecting scenarios together. These technologies could be repurposed for other courses with relative ease.