Abstract
The use of educational digital games and simulations have a long tradition, primarily in the USA. First, teachers implemented mostly commercial games (Civilization, Age of Empires).
Later on, the development of specialized educational games and simulations started (Playing history, Mission US). This article explores the introduction of these technologies to formal education and critically discusses educational goals associated with these new methods.
It stems from an experimental development and evaluation of an educational simulation Czechoslovakia 38-89. Czechoslovakia 38-89 is a complex educational tool for high school students.
Its educational objective is to present key events from Czechoslovakia's contemporary history and to enable students to "experience" these events from different actors' perspectives. In doing so, the simulation aims to develop deeper and critical understanding of the multifaceted political, social and cultural aspects of this time period.
This article presents two simulation modules which focus on the assassination of Heydrich and post-war expulsion of German speaking citizens. We have evaluated these two modules in autumn 2013 at 9 schools (9 teachers, 569 students' questionnaires) and spring 2014 at 3 schools (3 teachers, 356 students' questionnaires).
The evaluation's key results show that students perceive the simulation to be attractive and self-report a greater interest in learning contemporary history. For teachers, the simulation is a learning tool that fulfills its educational goals and enables deeper understanding of the given topics.
At the same time, the evaluation shows that the fundamental limitation of innovative teaching use of the simulation is the gap between its declared educational objectives and the broader context of practice of history education.