Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation: The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children History Education Initiative (DOHR)

Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) is a history education initiative to teach Grade 11 students about the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC). The NSHCC, opened in 1921, was a segregated welfare institution for African Nova Scotian children. Residents suffered the effects of institutionalized racism in the Home throughout its 70 years. DOHR has partnered in the educational mandate of the restorative inquiry into the Home to co-design with the former residents a curriculum about their experiences (Province of Nova Scotia, 2015, p. 26). The purpose of the DOHR curriculum is for former residents to share their oral histories to develop students’ historical consciousness about institutionalized racism and to build right relations in their communities. The project was piloted in two Halifax area schools in October 2019. This symposium introduces attendees to the curriculum and shares initial findings from the pilot. Former residents share their impetus for the project, while other DOHR members share findings about the use of oral history—first person accounts of lived experiences with the past—as a restorative approach to redress of harms in education (e.g., Llewellyn & Llewellyn, 2015); how historical thinking lessons develop students’ historical consciousness—their sense-making of the past for orienting themselves to the present and future (Seixas 2004); and how DOHR’s use of virtual reality supports reconciliation with pedagogy-led (rather than technology-led) design principles (Kwon, 2019). To our knowledge, this is the first history education project centred on first-voice, to address reconciliation for African Nova Scotians

\u27Relational Presence\u27: Designing VR-Based Virtual Learning Environments for Oral History-Based Restorative Pedagogy

Relational presence is the core principle of a new approach to designing virtual learning environments (VLEs), which has been developed by the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project (dohr.ca). Presence, normally understood as the sense of being in a virtual environment to the extent that one forgets the environment is virtual, is thought to have significant pedagogical benefits in K–12 experiential learning projects aiming to develop spatial and social competencies that learners can translate into actual-world contexts. DOHR, by contrast, aims to build the understanding needed for learners to address systemic racism in Nova Scotia, through an oral history and restorative justice–based curriculum. To serve this alternative learning goal, relational presence replaces presence. The usual emphasis in VLE design on simulation, interactivity, identity construction, agency, and satisfaction is replaced with new values of impression, witnessing, self-awareness and awareness of difference, interpretation and inquiry, and affective dissonance. This paper introduces relational presence in order to help establish, in the field of VLE design, a productive discourse around issues of justice, representation of marginalized communities, and pedagogy-led design

\u27Relational Presence\u27: Designing VR-Based Virtual Learning Environments for Oral History-Based Restorative Pedagogy

Relational presence is the core principle of a new approach to designing virtual learning environments (VLEs), which has been developed by the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project (dohr.ca). Presence, normally understood as the sense of being in a virtual environment to the extent that one forgets the environment is virtual, is thought to have significant pedagogical benefits in K–12 experiential learning projects aiming to develop spatial and social competencies that learners can translate into actual-world contexts. DOHR, by contrast, aims to build the understanding needed for learners to address systemic racism in Nova Scotia, through an oral history and restorative justice–based curriculum. To serve this alternative learning goal, relational presence replaces presence. The usual emphasis in VLE design on simulation, interactivity, identity construction, agency, and satisfaction is replaced with new values of impression, witnessing, self-awareness and awareness of difference, interpretation and inquiry, and affective dissonance. This paper introduces relational presence in order to help establish, in the field of VLE design, a productive discourse around issues of justice, representation of marginalized communities, and pedagogy-led design