Role immersion in a history course: Online versus face-to-face in Reacting to the Past

This article assesses Reacting to the Past, a humanities role-immersion pedagogy that is popular at many colleges and universities in the United States. This pedagogy has been found to have many learning gains compared to traditional face-to-face teaching, but has not been adequately compared to online versions of the course. The findings of the article suggest that while learning gains can be achieved that are comparable to face-to-face versions of the course, student satisfaction was lower. The article concludes not by rejecting the online Reacting to the Past, however, but by suggesting possible ways to incorporate successful elements of it within a blended approach. These findings will be of interest to people interested in this particular pedagogy, but also to those who are interested in the general comparison between online and face-to-face learning and teaching.