Online Digital Pedagogy and the Database of Religious History

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the last decade, scholars in the fields of archaeology and history have come to appreciate the potential of digital tools for transforming how we excavate, organize data, and share it with the world. As these various approaches become more integral to these disciplines, instructors have also been working on improving the digital literacy of their students. There is therefore a need for accessible, online pedagogy tools, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, scholars have also noted that students in the humanities and social sciences experience discomfort when asked to work with digital, data driven projects. In this paper, I explore the pedagogy opportunities offered through the Database of Religious History (DRH). The DRH has created a number of free, online teaching packages to help students at the undergraduate and graduate level become more comfortable exploring and manipulating data in online databases. These projects also help students better understand the process of knowledge production and interpretation, while learning about ancient and modern religious concepts, monuments, and artifacts. Short group activities are designed to introduce the students to these tools, while more in-depth projects can then be assigned once students have become comfortable working with this resource.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32692