Project Lead: Sara Ann Knutson, History/ Medieval Studies
Project Description
This project generates pedagogical engagements with the global past by activating multi-sensory learning. In particular, it assesses the transformative potential of engaging with a diversity of sensory information on students’ ability to (1) access more inclusive (including anti-colonial and anti-racist) perspectives from the non-Euro-western past; (2) destabilize dominant academic conventions in engaging a greater range of historical materials beyond textual sources; (3) critically apply their learning to evaluate new information based on their multi-sensory learning experiences. Ultimately, the project aims to better support the embodied experience of learning and foster applications of critical thinking and cultural sensitivity.
Research Questions
How do multi-sensory interventions in the classroom and project-based learning impact students’ ability to (1) construct and learn information and (2) critically evaluate multimodal information?
How does multi-sensory learning change how students engage and interpret the non-Euro-western past? To what extent does multi-sensory learning encourage student critical thinking and understandings of how power dynamics and positionality inform our ways of knowing the past, present, and future?