Understanding Modern Views on the Middle Ages Through Research-led Learning. A Teaching Report

Authors

  • Philipp Frey Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, History of the Early and High Middle Ages and Auxiliary Sciences of History https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7568-7518
  • Joana Hansen Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, History of the Early and High Middle Ages and Auxiliary Sciences of History https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3642-5014

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48783/gameviron.v20i20.255

Keywords:

University Teaching, Stronghold, Assassin‘s Creed Valhalla, Research-Led Learning, Middle Ages, Game Studies, Narratives, Digital Games, Historical Games, gamevironments

Abstract

This report brings insights from a course in Medieval game studies held at Kiel University from April to July 2023. In games, the medieval era is often depicted as a dark and cruel time on the one hand and a romanticized time on the other. One of the main focuses of the course was to look behind these narratives and how to examine games as an object of research further than just looking for historical inaccuracies. This shows some important methods for teaching game studies and discusses opportunities and representative results, as well as possibilities to improve this type of course embedded in regular studies of history without a gaming focus. We hope to demonstrate some approaches to involve game studies in curricula in which it was not included previously. This teaching report focuses on the research-led learning aspect of the course, which had a high amount of individual space for the students to create their research process, discusses some results that evolved out of the seminar, highlights the problems of teaching game studies to an audience which is not familiar with researching modern media and propose some solutions to these problems.

Author Biographies

  • Philipp Frey, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, History of the Early and High Middle Ages and Auxiliary Sciences of History

    Philipp Frey works as a research assistant at the Institute of History at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. He is affiliated with the Chair of History of the Early and High Middle Ages and Auxiliary Sciences of History. His PhD research examines the concept of 'treason' in the Early Middle Ages with a special focus on the Frankish Empire. He is a member of the  German working group "Arbeitskreis Gesellschaftswissenschaften und  Digitale Spiele" (working group Humanities and Digital Games).

  • Joana Hansen, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, History of the Early and High Middle Ages and Auxiliary Sciences of History

    Joana Hansen is a PhD candidate at the University of Kiel. Her dissertation is about episcopal power and administration of the prince-bishops of Constance in the 15th century. She wrote her master's thesis about Viking narratives in Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020) and enjoyed researching on computer games ever since. She is a member of the German working group "Arbeitskreis Gesellschaftswissenschaften und Digitale Spiele" (working group Humanities and Digital Games).

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Published

2024-07-13

Issue

No. #20 (2024)

Section

Reports