A virtual fieldtrip to the House of European History

The global Covid-19 pandemic has pushed faculty to reassess the bounds of how experiential learning ought to look like in a fully remote learning environment. Is it possible? And if so, in what manner can an educator facilitate experience through a screen? What is a genuine experience in the knowledge creating process? To address these questions, I present in this paper my newly developed teaching tool, a virtual ‘fieldtrip’ to the House of European History in Brussels (Belgium), which allows faculty to teach Europe in a more ‘tangible’ manner and illustrate to undergraduate students step-by-step how a pan-European history is created in a top-down fashion by the European institution. Students engage with the various exhibits independently on the museum’s website, inspect artefacts, and work together to highlight their meanings in relation to their course materials. It, thus, allows to make Europe more ‘real’ and ‘show’ Europe to a student population which has potentially yet to step foot on the old continent – let alone Brussels. While born out of the creative necessity of the pandemic to develop a more engaging learning environment and to give students a larger sense of ownership over their education, I also want to present this virtual fieldtrip tool now as an opportunity for faculty in a ‘post-pandemic’ world to teach Europe more visually and accessibly to students around the globe.