Methods of Working With Local Digital Resources on History: Foreign Experience and Russian Practices

Introduction

The current trends of the development of society demonstrate the substantial intensification of digitalization affecting all spheres of human activity without exception (Denning & Tedre, 2019; Gibbs & Owens, 2013; Haskins, 2007). One of the most notable achievements of the last century’s mid-80s is the rapid spread of the internet and information and communication technologies (ICT). As a result, numerous highly-developed resources allowing official structures and individuals to build an accessible database of various materials, like projects for visualization, 3D modeling, and augmented and mixed reality systems related to historical science and history education, have begun to be created (Fino-Radin, 2012; Gaffield, 2000; Laato et al., 2021; Morville & Rosenfeld, 2006). From the pedagogical point of view, the formation of critical thinking occurs in the process of using such practical tasks that give students the opportunity to evaluate information, to draw their own critical conclusions (Oberman & Sainz, 2021). The development of critical thinking skills in pedagogy is based on the development and implementation of tasks based on the identification of information, its critical assessment in terms of reliability or inaccuracy of data, critical discussion and expression of their own generalizations and conclusions based on an objective vision (Hegazy et al., 2021).

Even though being highly mature, today’s level of development and distribution of digital content poses several urgent questions to the system of history education. The first relates to the issue of how to deal with the problem of history falsification, which has become a mass phenomenon due to the massive spread of web-based resources. Nowadays, even one internet user with access to digital archives but with no sufficient skills to conduct historical research can generate an entire wave of falsifications of historical facts and events. The second question concerns the possibility of conducting grounded historical research relying solely on digital content. Apart from this, it is still unclear what are the most effective methods to teach students to work with digital historical resources. The need to develop reliable tools for teaching how to research using e-libraries and archives is the primary task of the modern system of higher history education.

In terms of pedagogical perspective and opportunities, the study of the problematic issue of teaching history with the help of digital technologies is relevant, because such a learning process is considered modern and innovative, aimed at developing professional competencies and skills of students (Lee & Daiute, 2019). Pedagogical innovations allow to build logical connections during the study of history, to critically and objectively evaluate historical events (Walder, 2017). In practice, the modern world is in the midst of a digital revolution in historical research techniques and methods (Council of Europe, 2018; Mingsiritham et al., 2020). The new way of work of the research historian can be called ‘on hand archival research’ since the precondition for its carrying is the availability of trustworthy content from online-based resources. Such resources’ accessibility and quality should be ensured by organizations and scientific communities with a confirmed scientific status. The presence of a huge number of such informational web pages, as well as already familiar forums and social networks, leads to the fact that everyone can post a document of historical research interest (Martin, 2020; Povroznik, 2020). However, the problem here is that an incorrectly attributed source, taken out of the context or environment of its creation, can direct research along the path of history rewriting.