Before we start with designing the learning experience, let’s understand that History as a subject involves the concept of time – chronology of events, concept of cause and effect, continuity, change, and connectedness – how an event in the past impacted and shaped the world of today or how multiple historical events spread across the geography are connected.
Having said this, there will be , , , may include , or .
Since the predominant content of History is Fact or Concepts, the content needs to be memorized before the content can be applied in situations. And so, the content requires a lot of engaging elements to be added to make it not just fun but also relatable to the learner’s daily lives or making it relatable to the current events, issues, and practices.
As an ID, make it your purpose to ensure that the learning from History can be easily applied into other interdisciplinary areas.
For example: the creation of timelines to visualize and understand historical events and find connectedness between them can be used in learning advanced or complex processes or procedures too. The understanding of cause and effect and continuity can be used in various situations such as project analysis or production analysis.
Ensure that the learning experience aims to encourage critical thinking and analysis skills to understand bias and multiple perspectives.. Additionally use it to inculcate a sense of social and civic responsibility.
With this background, begin the designing of your learning experience.
Tips:
There could be different situations:
- The modality in which the training has to be created is already decided such as a 4 hour eLearning or a face-to-face/virtual workshop. The duration, learning outcomes, and objectives are already defined. In such situations, ensure you use the right ID Model, apply the appropriate instructional strategy to enhance the learning.
- If you get a green field, where in you decide how and how long you have to design for, then don’t forget to be grateful before you design the learning experience.
Either ways, you begin by choosing the ID Model. It could even be a mix of models. Irrespective of the Model you choose, you begin with analyzing the learner characteristics, their learning needs, content analysis, and framing the learning outcome and objectives.
Identify the duration and the best suitable modality of learning. Define your instructional strategy or incorporate a theme of the learning experience such as every session will have at least 60% of experiential learning component (such as role-playing or inquiry based approach).
A few experiential learning components could be:
- Learners create a diary or write a story to share their firsthand understanding of historical events such as the Dandi March.
- Learners enact a historical event or do a role-play to understand the different bias and perspectives