Active learning, experiential learning, engagement, hands on are central concepts to the most recent literature on college pedagogy. History professors embrace active learning, engagement, hands on work in our classrooms and assignments. Yet history is by definition the study of things that are past and cannot easily be experienced directly. This panel explores ways assignments and teaching methods engage students through experiences - imagined, historical, or concrete – in learning about the past. We see this increase over-all engagement and learning. By linking experiences we set the scene for to the course material and creating both the opportunities and incentives for self-directed, student-centered learning, these methods draw students into a deeper understanding and appreciation of the past. Experience-based learning also provides a framework within which more traditional modes of pedagogy, like lecture, reading, and individual research take on new depth and meaning for students.

The panelists will explore role playing, historical fiction, experimental archaeology, and public history, respectively, as ways of creating experiences in the classroom and assignments that link with the experiences of the past. They will consider the practical issues of creating effective assignments, and evaluating students' learning in an experience-based model. In addition, we explore matching teaching experiential methods to the academic demands of the courses we teach. The panel will also address the larger theoretical issues that arise from approaching the study of history hands-on: the interplay of small-scale and large-scale histories, perils of the counterfactual and presentist, and the decentering of pedagogical power in an experience-based classroom.

The panelists will present pedagogical strategies of experience from a broad variety of time frames and geography: Ancient Rome and Egypt, Europe from the Viking age to World War II, as well as public history in modern Canada. Any college or university professor interested in experiential teaching or immersive learning will find the panel of interest.

The pedagogical approach pf experience-centered learning is growing in the discipline. In the October issue of Perspectives 2013, Kathryn Ciancia and Edith Sheffer emphasize the importance of entering “the minds of the people we study and understand why the world looked so radically different through their eyes” to preface their description of the “fictional characters in the History Classroom.” (32) Ciancia and Sheffer offered a way of teaching that link students' experiences with historical experiences which in turn help us to reach across this chasm through creating characters whose fictional lives they examined in a specific time and place. The results were encouraging when it came to understanding the past, students learning about themselves, and avoiding presentism.