Eastern Michigan University’s History Department is trying out a new way to teach history. Reacting to the Past is an academic role-playing game where students have to stay in character as historical figures and re-enact moments in history.
The program, created by Mark C. Carnes of Barnard College in New York, N.Y., was conceptualized in the mid-nineties and has been a success from the start.
Mark Higbee, one of EMU’s professors of history, supported the use of Reacting to the Past at EMU. By making the students characters in a scene set in the past, Reacting to the Past adds context to the history lesson and allows students to learn interactively.
Reacting to the Past offers an alternative to traditional lecture based learning. According to Higbee, the program has been popular at EMU.
“Many hundreds of EMU students have played Reacting to the Past in class and they reacted overwhelmingly that they’re fun, they’re a lot of work, they learn a lot and they get to know their classmates, which is rare in a college class,” Higbee said.
All of these games are elaborately designed to include context, background and lots of information about what happened. While it is a more engaging way of learning about the past, Higbee admitted that there are flaws.
“It only works when you’re talking about a pivotal moment of history with two conflicting sides,” Higbee said.
Higbee said the program isn’t designed to replace traditional history lectures.
The program has seen success at EMU and elsewhere. According to Barnard College’s website, Reacting to the Past has been implemented in more than 300 colleges and universies around the world.
“Reacting was completely unique in my college experience,” Amanda Houle, a Barnard College alumna, said on the school’s website. “In playing these games, the words of Gandhi, Socrates and other historical figures became mine, transcending the academic distance to which I had become accustomed … their thoughts, their histories, their biographies are real and alive in my mind.”
Reacting to the Past has been a hit with faculty as well, including Larry Carver of the University of Texas at Austin.
“I have never seen the students this engaged,” Carver said, on the Barnard website. “They write more than the assignments require; everyone, shy or not, participates vigorously in the debates. They read important texts with real understanding, making complex arguments and ideas their own.”
Reacting to the Past has been integrated at EMU into the first-year seminar and living/learning community program.
For a list of Reacting to the Past courses and upcoming events, visit the program’s website, www.emich.edu/rttp/.
