The History Challenge: How Online Communities Reason and Learn when (Re)building the Past

This research deals with historical thinking and historical learning in digital video game form. Video games have become an increasingly large part of public and youth culture, with historical games effecting the historical knowledge, historical learning, and historical understanding of gamers. In The Sims 4: The History Challenge, players construct their own digital past worlds through modifications and build historical narratives through their own gameplay. The historical accuracy of these gameplay modifications is disseminated in online fan-based communities, revealing an informal way of public historical knowledge construction, coined here as participatory historicism. The intention is to analyze the community knowledge constructs and their gameplay products, then incorporate this process into a classroom setting. This digital process grants more visual historical contextualization of the abstract mental activities found within the formalized historical reasoning utilized in classrooms. Combined, the processes give greater insight on historical games as a style of history learning.

Universiteit promotieonderzoek: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam