History Lab breaks down barriers. Barriers between history and technology. Barriers between faculty and students. Barriers between traditional classroom instruction and transdisciplinary experiential learning.
Our team started out as a small group of faculty interested in harnessing the potential of new technologies to visualize, represent, and learn about hidden and hard histories. Members of our team have worked on a number of internally and externally funded projects including an Extended Reality experience allowing elementary school children to explore a former segregated school and a Virtual Reality experience that explores the World War I tunnels of Vauquois. Visualizing Virginia Tech History explores VT’s hidden histories during the university’s 150th anniversary—and beyond. With support from the Council on VT History, we’re building projection mapping displays, digital exhibits, Extended Reality tours, and more. All of our projects begin with a simple question: “If this place could talk, what could it tell us?” History Lab provides faculty and students the chance to learn together in a sustained way as we produce immersive exhibits and experiences and present and publish authentic intellectual transdisciplinary work outside the classroom. The project has also laid the foundation for a new transdisciplinary course, History Lab, that will allow more students to learn to play in the fields of history, creative technologies, education, and computer science.
