Jonathan S. List is a PhD candidate at North Carolina State University in Curriculum and Instruction. His dissertation research focuses on historical thinking in information rich environments. The goal of this study is to better understand students behavior when engaging in historical inquiry using digital history archives and online search engines.

In the same vein, Jonathan is very interested in the interaction between instructional design and how students learn content. It seems as if instructional design is often abstracted from the content it is designed to teach. Current educational principles view methods and materials as being heavily related to the content being taught, however instructional design principles often seem to be taught independent of curricular goals and objectives.

It is the combination of historical inquiry and instructional design principles that encourages Jonathan to further investigate how students can use technology to learn social studies content. To this end Jonathan has been working on what he calles the Historical Inquiry Web Application. This tool, when completed, will support teachers as they work to help students learn inquiry skills as they are related to history and social studies. The tool is currently in alpha testing, with active development being postponed until after Jonathan successfully defends his dissertation in the spring.