At the moment academia is undergoing a paradigm shift. The pedagogy of history professors is becoming less lecture-based and more centered on student-learning. More and more professors are trying to balance the historical "content" with the "skills" of historical thinking in their courses. Students need to be trained to "think historically," meaning that they need to understand and apply the core components of history: change over time, contingency, cause and effect, historical context, empathy, and the art of argumentation. See the following pages for more.