At the beginning of this semester, some of the readings dealt with changing the methodology of teaching history from delivering lectures to engaging students in historical thinking through varied means of dissemination. Evolving my teaching project from a completely onsite, hands on and in person elective course to an online, partially hands on and web based course has been a kind of a soul searching experience. I have always liked teaching. To make the transition from always been available and guiding through every process, to being not as easily accessible and definitely not being present in person is a hard choice. Somewhere I have that nagging feeling that what I want to convey may not be fully achievable in a digital format, because of the nature of the course I have chosen to adapt.
For instance, assessing the condition of a building needs astute onsite observations on architectural building drawings. While undertaking these as practicum for students or explaining the methodology to interns and other conservation professionals involved in a conservation project, I have marked these observations with them onsite so as to accurately document these issues and then go on to finding solutions. This was part of the learning process- the building block of a conservation project. Precise recording of structural and aesthetic issues is the backbone for the success of any restoration project, on which rides the analysis of problems affecting the building, writing out recommendations and then going through a tendering process to find an agency to undertake the work. Doing the initial recording in a virtual format convincingly goes against the grain of my fundamental teaching methodology –there is no substitute for onsite field work and no better way of knowledge transfer than being physically present. This was exactly why during the months of lockdown during Covid, I wasn’t able to take on any live projects as I could not undertake site visits to India. And this by far is the biggest challenge that I have faced while designing this specific module in my final digital teaching project. I have yet to come up with a solution. How do I explain identifying building defects to a class of undergraduate students while I was 50,000 miles away on a time zone that was 12 hours behind?
The challenge as history educators lies in changing our approach towards teaching history, especially the digital version. This is particularly valid in the case of my digital teaching project. Here I want to touch upon broad concepts of historic preservation, explain what and how to conserve, provide good examples of restored projects and end with international mechanisms for ensuring long term conservation of historic districts. Digital tools have helped to the extent that these are varied and expansive, providing the possibility of bringing into the classrooms (or home computers) components that are not possible in traditional settings.