Timelines

Learn about Timelines

Timelines are great research tools and perfect for the classroom.

Learn how to make a timeline

Creating a timeline is easy. It can be done quite quickly and the tool is available to any member of SCLCR. Just follow these steps.

When you start a timeline you only need to include two things: a short title and a description. The title should be no more than a few words long. The description can be up to 2,000 characters long and should provide some context as to the subject and goals of the timelines.

After creating the timeline you will be able to add as many items as you want. You can create items yourself including: people, events, and citations for published works. You can also use any timeline item already in the database. To search for more items, just type in a few keywords and hit search.

Checkboxes will appear next to each search results. Check the box for any items you wish to include in your timeline and press the Add button at the bottom.

Creating timelines is that easy. You can come back and edit your timelines at any point and your work is always automatically saved so you can't lose your work.

Using timelines in the classroom

If you are an instructor and you want to teach a concept, what better way to present the concept's intricate history than with a timeline?

  • You could assign concepts to your students and have them each produce a timeline highlighting events leading up to our current understanding.
  • Students could convert a literature review into a more interactive format to share with other students.
  • For a more in depth view of a prominent communication researcher, their history could be visualized by including events, publications, and concepts relevant to his or her work.
  • Working in groups, students can collaborate on a more comprehensive timeline cover a range of communication topics drawn from coursework.
  • Textbooks can come alive and be more useful if students take material they read and convert it to the timeline format.

These and many other approaches force students to think in more than one dimension and will help make the learning process fun.

When they are done, the timelines will stand as finished products attributed to the students by name and can be shared as part of a portfolio or professional preparation.

Take a look at some featured timelines

Here are a few timelines that might interesting or of use:

Create and Share

Creating and editing timelines is a simple process. It's quick and fun.

Create a new timeline
Continue editing your timelines
Share your timelines with others

View and Search

Browse timelines by title or search for specific topics.

Browse timelines
Search for timelines
View Timeline by ID: