Professor Leah Murray at Weber State got students to actually read primary documents

Getting students to read, let alone make meaningful connections with the material, has always been one of the primary challenges of teaching introductory courses. And when you’re teaching primary documents from centuries ago, the added barrier of archaic language doesn’t make it any easier to engage students.

To see how educators are overcoming this hurdle, we reached out to Professor Leah Murray at Weber State University. Leah recently adopted our Civics Reader webtext, which helps students navigate foundational texts from the Constitution to the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

When looking at the data, we noticed that Leah’s students had especially high active times. Analytics (a tool available to all Soomo instructors) clearly showed that her students were doing the work.

We invited her to a webinar with author Jocelyn Evans to share why she chose Civics Reader and how she’s incorporating the webtext into her course so effectively.

The goal: Get students to do text-based inquiry

Leah describes herself as “a theorist at heart” and someone who has been teaching introductory American government “since the 1900s.” For her, the goal is to get students to practice text-based inquiry, a form of “inquiry-based learning” that encourages students to engage deeply with primary sources. 

When you do text-based inquiry, it makes all of the conversations come to life. It forces students to grapple with the why.

Rather than simply reading or memorizing details, students are guided to actively interact with the text. Students approach each primary document with a specific question that Leah sometimes provides and sometimes asks students to find for themselves.

These are open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no, which push students to reflect, ask their own questions, and connect historical material to ongoing civic conversations—all key skills in developing critical thinking and information literacy.

This approach, which emphasizes the why behind the documents, is what initially drew her to Civics Reader. 

I was totally drawn to an approach that was like, let’s center the primary documents in a text inquiry kind of way. It’s not like, here’s this PDF of Federalist 10. Good luck.

Through this deeper level of engagement, Leah notes that students are learning that we haven’t actually settled any of the debates yet. The conversation that Brutus was having with James Madison 200 and some odd years ago is still a conversation today.

And with a text-inquiry approach, students can have the conversation with Madison and Brutus. In a classroom setting, students can work together to discover the evidence of what the authors were saying, and then they are having the conversation with each other. This brings the documents to life as well as the very current questions.

The challenge: Students struggle with the language, context, and relevance of primary sources

Like many instructors, Leah faced a familiar gap between intention and reality. Assigning meaningful reading doesn’t guarantee students will actually do it. Primary sources, in particular, present unique challenges.

It’s not just the dense, outdated language that can make these documents intimidating. Students often lack the historical context. They’re not familiar with who the authors were, the political debates they were participating in, and the history and cultural moments that shaped their writing. 

Without that background, foundational documents often feel abstract, disconnected, or even irrelevant. Leah jokes that, left on their own, students facing these documents will “fall asleep four seconds in.” Plus, “the point is about the conversation and the question, not proving that you can read back in the 1700s kind of English.”

Leah also teaches a diverse group of learners, including many nontraditional students juggling work, family, and other commitments. That makes time more critical and flexibility essential. Students need to be supported.

How the webtext helped: It adds structure to primary sources

What made the difference for Leah was how Civics Reader structures the reading experience.

Instead of overwhelming students, the webtext takes a 4-step approach. The webtext:

1. situates each document in its historical context with brief introductions and interactive timelines,
2. starts each document with a guiding question to focus student reading,
3. breaks primary documents into manageable “chunks” with embedded multiple-choice questions between them, and 
4. prompts students to complete writing reflections on every page. 

This approach, combined with LMS integration, allows her to assign reading for credit while giving students support as they move through the material.

I’m not trying to assess how they read. I’m trying to get them to read the material—and the way this works gets them to read the material.

Equally important, Civics Reader gives instructors the flexibility to remove or rearrange chapters so that the custom table of contents matches their syllabus.

Leah organizes her course thematically. One of the units in her course focuses on deliberation, the vital role that conversation has in our democracy, especially as it relates to ongoing debate and competing viewpoints. In this unit, she pairs “Federalist 10” with “Brutus 1” from the webtext, which helps students see that debate between factions has been foundational to the nation and remains a key aspect of civic participation. 

Similarly, during the portion of her course focused on protest and participation, Leah pairs her material with “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a more modern primary source but nonetheless foundational and relevant.

Impact: Students started reading

The most immediate shift was simple but significant: Students actually started engaging with the reading. 

Analytics shows that, across Leah’s class, students spent an average of 6 hours and 19 minutes actively working in the webtext. The most popular primary source? The U.S. Constitution, which students spent an average of 1 hour and 44 minutes on. Close behind is the Articles of Confederation with an hour of active engagement. 

Bringing the webtext into the classroom

This was driven in part by how Leah used the webtext in class. She carved out dedicated time during class for students to work through the primary documents together.

The result: Leah noticed students connecting ideas across documents and contexts, drawing on one text to inform understanding of another, and even referencing material in conversations outside the assigned readings. 

I'm 100% sure that has never happened before, where the documents come to life for them and that they have brought up, ‘Didn’t Madison say...’ And every single document we’ve read, they have mentioned in some other class, in some other way, in some other context.

As students practice text-based inquiry and engage more directly with primary sources, they begin to see the human side of political ideas and their relevance today.

Leah told us that teaching “Letter from Birmingham Jail” has sparked deep conversations in her classroom about protest and civic action. Students see the careful reasoning behind nonviolent civil disobedience and the real-world consequences of standing up for justice. 

They see the humans in the conversation … and then they connect because they are humans today who have worries. 

By understanding the impact of these documents and the human stories behind them, students can begin to see their own role in shaping the conversations that continue today.

Takeaways for faculty

Leah’s experience points to a few practical takeaways for professors teaching foundational documents.

• Structure matters: Breaking reading into smaller, guided steps helps students stay with challenging material.
• Accountability is key: Assigning reading for credit through LMS integration dramatically increases the likelihood that students will complete the work.
• Flexibility is necessary: Instructors can and should adapt content to fit their course.
• Time is essential: Reviewing the material and having discussions with students reinforces its importance.

Want to learn more? You can watch the full webinar with Leah here. And if you’d like to explore Civics Reader, you can preview the webtext on your own by clicking “Request educator access” on the catalog page.