Teaching History in the Digital Age

Many of us have examined the Who Killed William Robinson website to see the way a real murder mystery from the 19^th century is being used to introduce students to the practice of historical research. What many may not know is that that site is only one part of a much larger initiative involving five other sites and a series of smaller exercises. They are all part of a website called Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History.

The William Robinson site was the first in this series created in 1997. Additional mysteries were added in 2003 and 2005. A fourth phase of work for the site was just approved in June of this year. The project is currently housed at the University of Victoria and receives funding from the Department Canadian Heritage.

The sites use “document-centered-learning” which, as utilized on these sites, seeks to introduce students to studying history on four levels. First the site seeks to introduce students to the use of primary sources. As they review historic documents related to the mysteries they begin to understand how events occurred in the past while they are exposed to various types of sources. The second level of learning comes from their exposure to different cultural values, social violence, family relations, and economic change. The third level involves the students actually doing historical analysis as they take the materials and create a narrative that they feel best explains what really happened. They are synthesizing the evidence which they can then discuss with their peers. A fourth level is sometimes achieved by older students wherein they see some of the theoretical issues historians have to deal with when trying to piece together past events. They understand the inability to completely “know” what happened and how history can be subject to different interpretations

Rather than just presenting six versions of the same type of investigation the creators of the site have selected mysteries that cover a wide range of themes including slavery, aboriginal issues, disease, vigilante rule, family violence, terrorism, and religious dissent. In addition the stories cover different time periods and geographic locations. All of these stories are meant to encourage students to practice and study of history by tapping in to what they suggest is a universal attraction to the morbid and to injustice.

An additional section was added to the website called Mystery Quest which is divided up into three age groups the youngest being 11 to 14. These mini quests pose different types of historical questions that can be answered by looking at suggested documents culled from the different archives that are part of each murder mystery site. This provides a wider range of uses for the archives collected for these projects.

All of these projects have teacher guides available that help set the stage for any age group. They have distributed over 500 of them and in 2005 the websites received over 12 million hits. While the amount of effort that goes into these sites is impressive I did not see any analysis that suggests how successful it is in teaching historical thinking. Used properly, however, I can see how this site would in fact both teach and attract students to historical inquiry. The stories are varied and dramatic from the murder of a young girl through an explosion on a train in the Canadian west. The only other drawback that I can see is that like the William Robinson murder there is no right answer at the end which may actually discourage some budding historians. Again, some studies on the out come of work on these sites would be helpful.

(so would a link to the site I’m reviewing… http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/indexen.html  )