21st-Century Pedagogies: Using Digital Historical Walking Tours to Teach Urban History

Saturday, January 7, 2023
Franklin Hall Prefunction (Philadelphia Marriott Downtown)
Cacee Hoyer, University of Southern Indiana
Creating digital historical walking tours is an excellent method for students to engage with specific historical themes, moments, and spaces in an innovative and useful way. The digital shift as a result of COVID has resulted in many historical institutions moving towards digital walking tours, and thus this project is not only novel and engaging but practical for post- COVID realities. This presentation shares my method of implementing a Digital Historical Walking Tour project into an Urban History classroom.

The poster will include the student learning goals and scaffolded assignments to support student learning throughout the project. Student learning goals for this methodology include a critical analysis of the event/location, an in-depth examination of the impact of the event/location on the development of urban space, and to make connections to change over time. Students are required to provide detailed descriptions for ten sites on their walking tour. Each site must include a historical explanation of the importance of the site and include images or videos from the location. The final step for this project is a reflection paper which requires students to evaluate what they have learned from the project and explain how it relates to what they have learned in the course.

The visual aesthetic of a poster session provides a rich venue for communicating this methodology, because participants are able to see real student outcomes and products. Additionally, all handouts, directions, rubrics, and guidelines for the assignment will be available to participants during the poster session.

See more of: Poster Session #1
See more of: AHA Sessions