When Laura Cruz, history professor at Western Carolina University, began putting together a western civilization course for the first time at a community college, her top concerns were designing the course to meet the abilities of a wide range of students and minimizing the possibilities of plagiarism. “A lot of my colleagues, particularly those who taught U.S. history, did a lot of active learning projects, particularly getting students out into the community. But that’s tricky when teaching western civ. So I tried to think of something similar that would compel students to do actual original research that they would enjoy,” Cruz says.