Katie Clary, Coastal Carolina University

Proposal Type

Workshop

Seeking
  • Seeking Additional Presenters
  • Seeking General Feedback and Interest
Related Topics
  • Material Culture
  • Museums/Exhibits
  • Public Engagement
  • Teaching and Training
Abstract

Reacting to the Past (RTTP) is an innovative pedagogy used in college classrooms across disciplines. Begun as a way to teach students about history through immersive simulations of historical events, RTTP has expanded to include multiple fields of study. RTTP can expand through Public History as a public engagement tool for public historians, museum professionals, and programming specialists. This workshop will explain the process of running a game, provide a simulation of a mini-game with participants taking on roles, and opportunity for participants to engage in a Q&A with RTTP Veterans.

Description

Looking for information from educators, program specialists, etc. about how this can be tweaked to be more helpful. Also looking for a potential headcount of how many people would be interested in participating. Any RTTP Veterans who wants to help or attend the session, please get in touch! So far I have myself and 2 other college educators interested in working on this.

Working description:

Reacting to the Past (RTTP) is an innovative pedagogy used in college classrooms across disciplines. Begun as a way to teach students about history through immersive simulations of historical events, RTTP has expanded to include multiple fields of study from science and math to sociology and philosophy. Games revolve around key moments in history such as the trial of Galileo, Athens on the threshold of democracy, and the French Revolution, just to name a few.

A natural progression of the evolution of RTTP is with Public History. Games about cultural heritage issues, such as the Elgin Marbles and NAGPRA, are in development for use in Public History and traditional history classes. There are 1-hour games called “Bomb the Church” about a monuments men-type scenario, and also one called “Writing History” about how sources are analyzed to create a narrative. RTTP is also a way of learning and engaging audiences that could be of great interest to public historians, museum professionals, and programming specialists.

This workshop will explain the process of setting up and running a game, provide a simulation of a mini-game with participants taking on roles, and provide opportunity for participants to engage in a Q&A on the practicalities of this pedagogy with RTTP Veterans. Participants will each receive a brief introduction of the topic of the game, then they will be given a role sheet. We will then begin running the game as we would with a general audience or classroom.

Participants will gain understanding of the RTTP principles and practices through this workshop. Materials for participants to run their own games will be provided, and we will have a discussion about the possible applications of RTTP to public programming and engagement.


If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Katie Clary, [email protected].

All feedback and offers of assistance should be submitted by July 1, 2018. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.

Discussion

1 comment
  1. Cathy Stanton says:

    Hi Katie – The radio silence here makes me wonder whether there’s enough resonance between what you’re proposing and who our core audience will likely be at the conference. My hunch is that public historians may be much more interested in the processes of learning to create this kind of role-play-based experience than in learning to run the games per se, although I could well be wrong about that. I would definitely think about how to emphasize public rather than classroom settings and examples in your proposal, and perhaps also build in some consideration of the kinds of issues or challenges that are likely to arise in those specifically public settings, which is a set of questions that public historians tend to pay close attention to!

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