{"id":7426,"date":"2020-04-27T13:17:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T17:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=news&#038;p=7426"},"modified":"2020-04-27T13:17:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T17:17:02","slug":"kevin-mercer-viral-history-lesson","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/news\/kevin-mercer-viral-history-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"History class makes news with unique project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Kevin Mercer, an instructor in the History department and double alumnus of UCF, offered his students an extra credit assignment about COVID-19, he figured his students would have creative responses, but he wasn&#8217;t expecting the assignment to go viral. However, when he <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevinIsHistory\/status\/1250572254796296192?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">shared the assignment on Twitter<\/a>, it garnered national attention and he has since been featured in articles in the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/education\/2020\/04\/17\/history-professor-gave-students-an-unusual-assignment-here-are-results\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Washington Post<\/a> <\/em>and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/in-depth\/news\/nation\/2020\/04\/24\/ucf-professors-coronavirus-artifact-assignment-brings-powerful-response\/3017264001\/?fbclid=IwAR08WWqIc6ZMyCdQ8J-116TmEaDa1Y2awzjAfgoE8a2b1VtX-alS9-9zMK8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>USA Today<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em> and has been interviewed on the radio.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The assignment was to select one item that a historian 100 years in the future should feature in an exhibit about COVID-19. They were not permitted to select obvious answers like medical equipment and masks. The students&#8217; answers included glass doors through which students spoke with their grandparents, notes left from a mother who is a nurse and half-used notebooks. Knowing that Mercer has room in his classroom for contrarians, some students also successfully debated that there was only one answer to this question: masks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"History instructor Kevin Mercer is receiving national media attention for his COVID-19-related class assignment. 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