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Using XR in Your Classroom: Three Focused Inquiry Design Models

Below, we present three focused Inquiry Design Models(IDM’s); two utilize VR experiences and one uses an AR experience. Each of these XR sources are freely accessible and available. Ready-to-use, printable worksheets can be downloaded as PDFs from each IDM page. Our article in the April 2021 issue of Social Education goes into the use of these IDM’s in more depth. Our presentation from NCSS 2020 includes examples of teaching history at the middle school level, using XR, from the perspectives of the teachers themselves.

A Framework for Treating Historical Extended Reality as Sources

It is important for students to learn to be aware of what XR experiences can and cannot provide and how they can work as possible sources within an historical inquiry. Developing such a level of awareness can begin with scaffolding questions that help students not only interrogate the content of the source but also examine the nature, nuance, and provenance of these representations, while simultaneously providing a structured experiential inquiry. The two question frames that follow are intended to help students to examine XR’s burden of representation and to engage with XR as a historical source like any other.

The questions that follow are designed to help teachers and students interrogate XR experiences as sources and representations within and through an inquiry. The questions are organized into three primary groups to help students consider (1) the creation and production of the experiences, (2) the degree to which the experience felt real/credible, and (3) reflect upon their learning. Not all questions can or need to be answered as part of the analysis or investigation.

Production and Purpose
  • Who created the (VR or AR) representation?
  • Why do you think they created it? (educational, game, commercial, personal / professional sharing)
  • What can you find out about who was involved in its design, creation and making? (artists, educators, historians, companies, organizations)
  • What ideas, understandings, messages do you think the experience is designed to give you?
Plausibility and Place Illusion and Credibility
  • To what extent did your experience give you a sense that you were in a different time and place? Why and how? 
  • What was “real” about the experience? The visuals? The sounds? The characters? The character’s actions? The accuracy of the history?
  • What types of actions – movements, language, interactions – are you allowed to do in the experience? How real do they feel? 
  • Did the actions and perspectives of the individuals involved make sense within the context that was represented?
  • How accurate do you think these representations are? Why or why not?
  • At what point, if any, did the feeling of “being there” end or get interrupted?
Reflections/Reactions on and “Reading” of the Experience
  • How did your experiences enhance your understanding of an event, period, person, or idea? 
  • How does this experience push against what you are willing to accept and agree to in terms of what you believe and think you know about this topic?
  • Based on what you have already learned in class, or already knew, what is missing in this representation?
  • How did participating in this experience affect your understanding of the perspectives of other people and contexts within which they lived? 
  • How did your experiences provide you with an understanding of how the individuals or groups represented felt, made decisions, acted, and dealt with the consequences of those decisions?

Summarizing

  • What specific information details and /or perspectives does the source provide?
  • What are the subject and purpose of the source?
  • What representations and interactions have been created?
  • What types of events, people, places are you interacting with?

Contextualizing

  • When and where was the source produced?
  • Why was the source produced?
  • What period, places and events are being represented within the source?
  • What else do you know about this time/place/person?

Inferring

  • What are your interactions within the experience designed to tell/suggest to you?
  • To what extent did your experiences provide you with a sense of understanding of how the individual groups represented felt, made decisions, acted, and dealt with the consequences of those decisions?
  • What perspectives and viewpoints are missing or omitted in the experience?
  • How did your experiences shape your understanding of past events in terms of social, political economic, technological moral and ethical issues and questions?

Monitoring

  • What ideas, images, points of view need further defining?
  • What questions do you have of the source/experience?
  • How useful or significant is the source for its purpose in answering the inquiry?
  • To what extent did your experience give you a sense that you were in a different time and place? Why and how?

Corroboration

  • What similarities and differences exist between the sources?
  • What factors account for the similarities and difference?
  • What conclusions can be drawn from the accumulated interpretations?
  • What additional information or sources are necessary to answer your historical question more fully?
Supporting Links

The following list comprises links to sources we have listed on this page as well as others we find helpful in implementing Inquiry Design Models with XR. General links are provided in the first tab, with links specific to each of the IDMs above provided in their respective tabs.

XR Sources:

  1. Anne Frank House
  2. Auschwitz-Birkenau: 360-Video

Additional Sources

Source 1: Animated Map of Jewish Resistance

CASE 1: Resistance in the Ghetto

Source 2: Vilna Ghetto Manifesto

Source 3: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

CASE 2: Uprisings in Camps

Source 4: 360-Video of Auschwitz

Source 5: Oral Histories of Uprisings in Sobibor

CASE 3: Partisan Fighting

Source 6: Overview of Partisan Fighting

Source 7: Oral History of Partisan Fighting

CASE 4: Spiritual and Cultural Resistance

Source 8: Clandestine Schools

Source 9: Warsaw Archive

Source 10: VR of Anne Frank’s House, produced by the Anne Frank House

XR Sources:

Google Expedition AR tours: Greek Mythology (Hercules, Zeus, Medusa, Poseidon, Prometheus, Mt. Olympus) and,
Greek Mythology: Gods and Goddesses (Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Medusa, Hermes, Poseidon, Zeus, Greek Temple)

Additional Sources

Source 1: Background on Gods and Goddesses

Source 2: D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths (Available online through Google Books

Source 3: Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton While we recommend these sources, there are numerous other sources that include Ancient Greek myths.  Teachers should feel free to use what sources they have available to provide myths for the students.

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