Using Social Media to Teach History

Andrew was hired by the UK charity Brilliant Club’s “Scholar’s Programme” to develop digital humanities courses for university bound students in Key Stages 3, 4 and 5. The goal was to introduce the students to the latest research in the field of digital humanities and to utilize heuristic methods to integrate traditional humanities concepts with social media in particular. Additionally, Andrew received a grant from King’s College London to observe the effectiveness of social media as a heuristic teaching tool. The results were generally favorable with student feedback emphasising the benefit of skills based learning rather than content mastery. The relevance of the course was also highly regarded by observers at the Brilliant Club.

Included here is the handbook developed for the course that contains the relevant readings, assignments, and feedback forms for students to fill out. It represents the structure and intended impact of the course work. 

The results were presented at the 2017 Community Colleges Association Annual Conference in Baltimore, MD USA.