I’m interested in possibly being an instructor someday, whether that’s as a college professor or museum educator. As such, I was interested in looking at digital tools that can be used to convey information about the humanities. I wanted to find something interactive for students that could be used for a wide range of different topics in the humanities. In doing research for this project, I learned an incredible amount about both the tool Explain Everything and interactivity in the classroom. More broadly, I learned more about constructivist pedagogy in the humanities, which I feel Explain Everything supports.
Though most professors now seem to operate from a general philosophy of constructivism or at least incorporate some of its ideas in their teaching, I had been unfamiliar with the concept of “constructivism” itself. In essence, constructive pedagogy is student-centered and places more responsibility on students for what/how they learn. Of course, the professor is still the one who sets the parameters and expectations of the course, but there is often more freedom in how students can fulfill the requirements of an assignment. Classes are collaborative, with everyone having extensive discussions about the readings and building on each other’s ideas, as well as using digital tools in class together. In short, rather than a one-way flow of information from professor to students (though the professor is, of course, still the authority), it’s a collaborative process that motivates students to take initiative in theirs and their classmates’ learning by giving them opportunities to contribute to discussion, seek information based on their own inquiries, and help each other learn. Basically, it’s the philosophy from which the idea of active learning emerges. To quote one article, “Constructivism learning theory holds that learners construct knowledge as they reflect on and interpret their own experiences” (Allen, 1). Constructivism is particularly well-suited to the humanities, then, where a core aspect is the scholar’s interpretation. As such, I strongly feel that interactivity in the classroom is an incredibly useful tool in teaching subjects such as history. Technology such as interactive whiteboards, and more specifically tools such as Explain Everything can be utilized for this purpose.
For the past thirty-odd years, Interactive Whiteboard Technology (IWT) has helped expand how educators, instructors and students conceive of interactive, student-centered classroom instruction. IWT is, in essence, digital whiteboards that were invented in the 1990s (Akbas and Pektas, 3). Their main feature is, as the name suggests, their interactivity—the teacher’s/students’ ability to manipulate and annotate multimedia material on the board during instruction. This sort of teaching is incredibly conducive to student-centered teaching. As another article states, “The capacity of the IWB (Interactive Whiteboard) to help the teacher illustrate and explain is very powerful, but it should be remembered that it also provides pupils with the opportunity to undertake the same processes. Such a relatively simple change in pedagogy can have quite a profound impact on pupils’ self-confidence and their perception of themselves as a learner” (Beauchamp and Parkinson, 101).
It’s been interesting for me to consider the different ways IWT, specifically Explain Everything, could be used for humanities instruction. Though much of the literature surrounding the topic focused on IWTs in science and math education, there was still some research on other topics. A literature review on the subject discussed one study from England which found that students using IWTs in the classroom were 2.5 months ahead in literacy of their peers without IWTs. That study concluded that “interactive whiteboards were particularly useful in teaching abstract, difficult and complex topics” (Akbas and Pektas, 4-5). In the example I provided in my tutorial, I attached a slightly annotated letter from an African American teacher during Reconstruction and a related image of a Freedmen’s Bureau school elsewhere in the South to give more visual context. The idea is that one would be able to put primary sources like the letter on their Explain Everything board, and the class can annotate it together in real time. The desired result would be similar to a class discussion on a primary source, with everyone pointing out different aspects of the source that they noticed. I’ve always found these sorts of class discussions to be really engaging and enlightening, with students bringing attention to parts of a source that others might not have registered as important. Basically, it’s a collaborative way for students to practice analyzing and interpreting primary sources, enhanced by the ability to annotate as a class and include related images or audio. I remember, when I gave a lecture in my queer history class last semester, I used a PowerPoint that included a video. However, the video took too long to load, wouldn’t load on the slide right, etc. etc. In the end, I played the audio alone, which was still effective, but lacked the visual component. Being able to literally embed the video on the projected whiteboard is an effective way to avoid this sort of issue when lecturing.
There were several other uses I thought of for Explain Everything related to teaching the humanities. One was, as I also demonstrated in class, using the whiteboard to compare propaganda side by side and point out different visual elements, maybe incorporating video propaganda as well. Another was projecting historical maps and tracing the movements of people, families, armies, etc. as one is lecturing. This could be especially useful in history courses on various conflicts, as it helps the students better visualize the movements of troops, especially in more complicated conflicts.
On the topic of universal design, Explain Everything provides greater accessibility to students through several different ways. The recording feature allows for lectures to be recorded and saved by students to watch later or just watch again before exams. This is incredibly helpful to students with cognitive disorders such as autism and ADHD, who may have issues with attention or audio processing, as well as students who may have higher rates of absence due to disability or other extenuating circumstances. As noted by one study on IWT’s effect on students with emotional and behavioral disorders, for students who learn more easily in “non-school environments”, being able to attend a course in a “safe” environment with asynchronous lectures can open new opportunities to learn. Also, for students who have ADHD or other cognitive disabilities that make focusing on lectures more difficult, being more actively engaged in the lesson can lead to better focus on the material. In the same study that noted these benefits, Explain Everything is listed as one of the digital tools that can facilitate direct instruction with students (Cumming, 23).
Being able to record and post lectures also makes lessons more accessible for all students generally. The pedagogy textbookTools for Teaching says of recorded lectures, “Research shows that students are most likely to view a webcast right after a lecture or right before an exam. They do not watch the entire lecture but use search tools to locate particular topics. Lecture capture has not depressed attendance and has not shown a measurable effect on students ’ grades. Lecture capture does seem to encourage extra review activities, and students value and appreciate this resource.” Basically, being able to go back over lecture material to prepare for exams or papers is beneficial to all students. This is especially helpful in classes with large attendance, where the ability to review material with students individually may be limited (Davis, 136).
Other general advantages of IWT reported in the article “Teachers’ Belief and Use of Interactive Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning” include “Collaborate writing, shared reading, peer-teaching…zoom feature for visually impaired students…Facilitated learning and remembering using visual media” (Turel and Johnson, 382). One thing that I found interesting throughout much of the literature was the emphasis on combining pedagogical training with the use of IWTs rather than assuming that the use of the technology will lead to improved teaching (Turel and Johnson 392). As one article states, “teachers should not be seeking to interact with the technology, but rather to use the technology as another medium (besides themselves) to interact with the class, as well as allowing the class to interact with each other, in mutually developing new teaching and learning strategies” (Beauchamp and Parkinson, 103). It resonated with what I feel like has been a big theme of this class, which is that the application of technology rather than technology itself is what’s more important in digital humanities. While it’s the digital tools that help us to do better research, present more dynamic lectures, visualize research findings, analyze text, and more, it’s still up to the scholar/educator at the end of the day to do the hard work of developing research inquiries, applying pedagogical teachings, and effectively conveying information with these tools.
A final reflection in this essay: Teaching myself in order to “teach” the class how to use Explain Everything was a really interesting and eye-opening experience. Teaching myself a digital tool rather than having a class guide to follow felt very different; I had to seek and choose which articles to read from Explain Everything’s Help Center and blog posts to teach myself different features and limitations of the tool. I’ve heard before that teaching something to someone else is the best way to learn something thoroughly, and while I wouldn’t say I gave the class an exhaustive training on Explain Everything, learning the tool in preparation to present on it was a really engaging way to teach it to myself. It was also, quite honestly, difficult to figure out how to explain a digital tool step by step! It was its own challenge to figure out how to visualize certain steps, such as whether to use a screen recording, screenshot, arrow, etc. There were several moments where I found myself a little stumped. For example, I wasn’t sure how to effectively label the toolbox screenshot on Google Docs. What I finally ended up doing was creating a text box on the whiteboard itself and filling it in with labels for each component. Teaching myself to use Explain Everything definitely forced me to troubleshoot, which seems like good practice for future digital humanities projects.
In conclusion, I learned a great deal about the digital tool Explain Everything, as well as Interactive Whiteboard Technology in general. More broadly, I learned about their application in constructivist teaching, and imagined ways to utilize it in the future when teaching different humanities, specifically historical, concepts.
References:
Akbas, Oktay, and Huseyin Mirac Pektas. “The Effects of Using an Interactive Whiteboard on the Academic Achievement of University Students.” Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching 12, no. 2 (2011).
Allen, Andrew. “An Introduction to Constructivism: Its Theoretical Roots and Impact on Contemporary Education.” Jounral of Learning Design and Leadership 1, no. 1 (2022): 1–11.
Beauchamp, Gary, and John Parkinson. “Beyond the ‘wow’ Factor: Developing Interactivity with the Interactive Whiteboard.” School Science Review 86, no. 316 (2005): 97–104.
Cumming, Therese M. “Mobile Learning as a Tool for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: Combining Evidence-Based Practice with New Technology.” Beyond Behavior 23, no. 1(2013): 23–29.
Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for Teaching. Second. The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. Jossey-Bass, 2009.
Turel, Yalin Kilic, and Tristan E. Johnson. “Teachers’ Belief and Use of Interactive Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning.” Journal of Educational Technology & Society 15, no. 1 (2012): 381– 94.
Explain Everything Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fy_Kh8OPRXFsQWjinlr4Cr4L6aX_q08e5WE5hIQv8-k/edit?usp=sharing