Frequently Asked Questions
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Q: WHAT COURSES DO YOU OFFER?
Our first program covers American history in four parts (see the program home page for more details):
- Part 1: To Begin the World Over Again, from the pre-Columbian Americas to the ratification of the Constitution (available now)
- Part 2: The Noise of Democracy, from Washington's presidency to the end of Reconstruction (available now; new units available every 5 weeks)
- Part 3: Monsters to Destroy, from Custer and Crazy Horse to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (available fall 2022)
- Part 4: A Great Consolidation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (available fall 2023)
Our second program will cover world history in four parts:
- Part 1: One Thousand Names of God, to 1 AD (available 2024)
- Part 2: To Enter Paradise, to 1300 AD (available 2025)
- Part 3: From a Very Far Country, to 1800 AD (available 2026)
- Part 4: No Invincible Armies, to the present (available 2027)
In addition to these programs, we will publish an array of more focused courses on a variety of topics from American history, world history, western civilizations, and Asian history. Subscribe to the NP newsletter or follow the NP blog for news about new and upcoming content.
Q: WHAT ARE THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE COURSE AUTHORS?
Briefly, Dr. William Jackson holds a BA in Asian Studies from Brigham Young University, an MA in Humanities from Pennsylvania State University, an MA in History from Syracuse University, and a PhD in History from Syracuse University. He has been teaching as a university professor for almost a decade.
Nate Noorlander holds a BA in philosophy and history teaching from Brigham Young University. He is certified to teach history and English in the state of Utah. He has been teaching high school English, history, and philosophy for eight years in the United States and China.
Q: WHOSE SIDE IS THE NOMADIC PROFESSOR ON?
The short answer is that Nomadic Courses actively avoid ideology and dogma. While we can’t (and don’t want to) escape the narrative we find most convincing, we are forthright with the students: we constantly remind them that they are reading an argument, not an authoritative, voiceless textbook, posing as The Final Answer. Further, we actively and rigorously train them in how to identify evidence and challenge conclusions, even our own evidence and conclusions, while avoiding the unnecessary headache of pretending that “all answers are equally valid.”
The long answer is here, and the student guide is here.
Q: WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR THE NOMADIC PROFESSOR'S COURSES?
The courses are designed to be accessible to a range of students. Dr. Jackson’s content is as rigorous as the college courses he teaches, which makes it appropriate for college students and adult learners.
But we also provide a unique level of support throughout each session and unit, which means our courses are a very good fit for high school students as well. Every session comes with clear expectations, guided notes (with an answer key), vocabulary, guidance in vocabulary retention, and quizzes (with feedback for nearly every question). Every unit also features a document lesson (with an answer key) that comes with video guidance from Nate, where he spends time in the sources with the student, modeling how to read like a historian.
Q: IS OUR CURRICULUM ALIGNED WITH ANY STANDARDIZED TESTS?
Yes. Each unit plan shows how the content in that unit lines up with the CLEP and with Common Core State Standards.
For a sample daily schedule for our Basic, Standard and Advanced tracks see this document.
Q: WHERE DOES THE CURRICULUM COME FROM?
The text and on-location videos in each course were written by the Nomadic Professor. The scaffolding and guidance in the course (handouts, guided notes, quizzes, and document lessons) were developed by Nate Noorlander.
Q: IS THIS A TEXTBOOK?
Not in the usual (or sometimes derogatory) sense. While each course provides a survey-style overview of its subject (American History, World History, Western Civ., etc.), it is different from a textbook in a number of important ways:
- We hope that the on-location mini-lessons and other videos featured throughout each course bring the courses and their various historical settings to life, and give them the same personality and sense of guidance you’d get from a good teacher in a physical classroom
- The on-location mini-lessons are not supplementary, but are an integral part of the course, covering material that is not covered in the text
- The text is also available as an engaging audiobook—either to reinforce what you’re reading, to listen to as you read and follow along, or as a substitute for reading the text/watching the videos on a screen
- Every session includes significant levels of guidance that are critical for the kind of systematic learning facilitated by good high school and college classrooms
- Each course emphasizes historical literacy, or the skills it takes to read (anything and everything) with the discernment of a trained historian and a trained fact checker
- Each course includes training in skills like logic and rhetoric—skills that are vital to developing analytical proficiency; such things aren’t usually covered at length in your typical textbook
- Each course includes critical guidance through the research-paper writing process
Q: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUBSCRIBING TO THE COURSE AND BUYING THE COURSE?
You can purchase any course for a one-time fee, and own the course for life.
Alternatively, we offer three subscription options:
(1) get access to all the Nomadic Professor’s content—past, present, and future courses;
(2) subscribe to Nomad Nation by itself; or
(3) bundle a Nomad Nation subscription with all Nomadic courses.
Q: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
A full course costs $199. The three subscription options break down as follows:
Q: DO THE TEACHERS ENGAGE WITH THE STUDENTS?
The Nomadic Professor and his high school counterpart, Nate Noorlander, engage with the students in a few different ways:
- the videos included in each session provide a valuable sense of teacher-presence and guidance
- a subscription to Nomad Nation includes access to a Q&A forum with the Nomadic Professor and Nate, plus monthly webinars, livestreamed events from all over the world, and even personalized postcards from the Nomadic Professor
- the model answers and answer keys provided throughout the course can mimic some of the guidance that a classroom teacher would provide (indeed, they are specifically designed with this in mind)
- every session in every course ends with a feedback survey should the student want to reach out about a particular element of the content (perhaps something is confusing or unclear, or, conversely, fantastic or inspiring!)
Q: WHAT DOES “ON-LOCATION” MEAN?
Dr. Jackson films his mini-lessons all over the world, rather than from behind a desk or in a classroom. We feel this is one of the great opportunities online learning affords—we don’t necessarily have to be bound by four walls and a ceiling. By delivering his lessons on-location he can bring the setting of important historical events to life for the student, and provide a sense of the sights and sounds of distant parts of the country and world. You can see many examples of his work and follow his wanderings by going to his YouTube channel ("The Nomadic Professor").
Q: WHAT ARE “GUIDED NOTES”?
Guided notes are our method for maintaining a high level of teacher guidance in the online setting. Every session includes a guided notes handout with questions and tables designed around the text and videos for that session. The guided notes look different in every session—sometimes a graphic organizer is the best way to boil the information down to its essentials; sometimes comprehension questions are needed; sometimes the student can watch a whole video without a break, and sometimes the video may be long enough or difficult enough to warrant a pause and instructions on how to organize the information in a meaningful way. You can see samples of a few different pages of guided notes in our pack of free sample materials.
Q: WHAT ARE “DOCUMENT LESSONS”?
In document lessons students are given a set of sources, usually a mix of primary and secondary sources, and challenged to use the evidence they can glean from the sources to answer the day’s guiding question in an original way. In other words, they are challenged to do what historians do: answer historical questions from documentary evidence, or create their own answers to historical questions, rather than learning those answers from someone else. This is where students are given concentrated instruction in historical literacy.
Q: WHAT IS HISTORICAL LITERACY?
A person who is “historically literate” can reliably discern information that is convincing, logical, credible, and fair from information that is not. They can discern bias and agenda, and learn how to navigate through an information space that is rife with misinformation and disinformation.
We develop historical literacy by attending to four discrete skills in different ways throughout the course: Sourcing, Contextualizing, Reading and Inferring, and Corroborating.
Q: WHAT ARE “STRUCTURE TERMS”?
The Nomadic Professor has developed a unique and (based on student reviews) highly effective way for students to organize and retain the vast quantities of information they have to confront in any history course. He provides key terms and their definitions in every session, and students are challenged to use those terms to build a “Structure,” or a network of information and context in their own minds—one that can help them retain new information by connecting it to information they already know. The course includes several help videos in which the Professor demonstrates different ways this can be done using a unique set of 3D-printed blocks and connectors. Students can make their own Structures in a variety of ways—as a Word document, as a corkboard with strings and 3x5 cards, as a mind map on posterboard, as a Photoshop image file, or “blown up” FBI-style, to name a few.
Q: IS THERE A BANK OF TEST QUESTIONS?
Each session ends with a quiz of about ten questions (or twenty, depending on how you count the vocabulary section). All of these questions are also available together as one test, which students can use to assess themselves over time, or prepare for the CLEP, or for some other standardized test. We add to the question bank from time to time to help keep the assessments fresh.
Q: HOW MUCH WRITING IS INVOLVED IN A NOMADIC PROFESSOR COURSE?
Every session involves a range of short answer questions and graphical organization strategies in the guided notes.
The first two courses in every four-part survey series (U.S., World, Western Civilization, and Asia) will also feature comprehensive guidance through all the parts of the research-paper writing process, including coming up with a question, finding good sources, doing research using those sources, writing persuasively and with structure, editing, and citing sources. Course three involves the writing of an actual essay, as does the fourth course. We suggest papers/essays be around 12 double-spaced pages in length.
Q: CAN I TAKE THE COURSE ON MY PHONE?
We don't recommend taking the course on the phone, as it was designed for a bigger screen. That said, virtually the entire course is readable and accessible if accessed via your phone's web browser. Going through the various class sessions on the phone, using the phone's browser and holding the phone horizontally, can actually be quite pleasant!
We don't recommend using the Teachable app, since its HTML capabilities are extremely limited, cutting out most of our course content.
Q: WHAT CREDIT CAN STUDENTS EARN THROUGH THESE COURSES?
Q: HOW MUCH TIME WILL THE COURSE TAKE TO COMPLETE?
Each course contains about fifty sessions, broken up into ten units of about five sessions each. The time it takes to complete a session will vary widely by student, and whether the student is using the guided notes, completing the document lessons, and consistently adding to his/her course Structure. A student doing all of these things (recommended) could probably complete most sessions in 30-90 minutes. You can see a sample schedule for our Basic, Standard and Advanced tracks here.
We publish a new, complete unit of content (i.e. five sessions) every five weeks—since we’re always working on new courses. This may represent a casual pace for students to follow.
Q: HOW DO THE NOMADIC PROFESSOR'S COURSES STACK UP AGAINST THE COMPETITION?
Here is a sampling of how we compare to two other online options, chosen essentially at random.
Q: DO YOU HAVE A SUPPORT EMAIL?
Any questions, comments, or concerns can be directed to [email protected].