Historical Thinking with Avatars in an Undergraduate Course on Early Christianity

Abstract

<jats:p>History simulations have been shown to promote student learning in classrooms throughout higher education. In an undergraduate course on the New Testament and early Christianity, we sought to foster student learning by having students participate in history simulations that involved the use of fictitious personas known as avatars. In this paper we describe the avatar activities in these simulations, and we examine the effects of our simulations on students’ abilities in “historical thinking”: that is, engaging in the interpretive practices that historians use to reconstruct the past. We argue that our avatar simulations helped our students build upon, refine, and deepen their abilities in historical thinking in small but perceptible ways. We end by noting the extent to which our findings align with research on the use of history simulations and by identifying ways to develop our project moving forward.</jats:p>

Editors Note

“…At the top of the table of contents we feature three articles that together canvas a broad variety of teaching contexts and purposes. There's an article on using avatars in an undergraduate course on Early Christianity (by Laura Dingeldein, Jeffrey Wheatley, and Lily Stewart [2020]). There's an article on teaching information literacy, co-authored by a professor and librarian (Marianne Delaporte Kabir and Sanjyot Pia Walawalkar [2020]), applying a theory of "metaliteracy" that views students as creators as well as consumers of information.…”