La integración de la tecnología multimedia en el Curriculum de Historiaejemplos prácticos y consideraciones pedagógicas

Resumo

Over the past two years, faculty in the History Department at UQAM have been involved in several projects of WWW multimedia technology integration into some of the core activities of the undergraduate history programme. Three experiences will be summarized and defined by their differing pedagogical objectives. The three experiences include a self-teaching Web-based package on bibliographical research in history, the creation of Web sites as a form of 'term paper' in a historical methods course, and a course offered exclusively on the Internet. In each case, specific pedagogical objectives favoured the integration of multimedia technology into the curriculum. In the first instance, similarities of objectives and contents in the introductory methodology courses in three universities, the lack of sufficient time in these courses for a full introduction to the methods of bibliographical research, and the abundance of bibliographical resources available to History undergraduates made it attractive to pool resources from three institutions and create a multimedia learning environment, replacing paper-based documentation with a much larger range of information organized such as not to overwhelm the novice. In the second instance, the aim was to acquaint students with historical resources available in museums and archives and to select a number of them to illustrate specific historical themes. The accent was put on the students' ability to organize historical information and present it in an appealing way to a broad public. Instead of a traditional dissertation, we opted for the creation of a Web site, as a modern equivalent to a museum exhibition outline. The fact that the resulting student work would be 'published' was a strong motivator, as was the opportunity to become acquainted with an important new means of disseminating historical knowledge. In the third instance, a complete course was designed to be taught exclusively through electronic means (Web, email, electronic conferences, radio), in order to provide an alternative learning environment for students unable on unwilling to come to campus and who are able to manage their own learning time. The format also allowed the use of a greater range of pedagogical material than could be deployed by conventional means. The paper will briefly summarize each of these experiments and will argue for the need to set clear pedagogical objectives for the integration of multimedia technology into an undergraduate History programme.