Teaching Materials

For university & professional educators

Structured approaches for using Simulating Silence in university seminars, multi-week courses, and professional development contexts. Materials span heritage studies, digital humanities, East Asian history, museum studies, and related fields.

New to this resource? Start with Teaching Pathways

Pathways

Teaching Pathways

Structured approaches for single sessions, multi-week units, and professional development.

Discussion

Discussion Prompts

Questions for classroom discussion, written reflection, and seminar activities.

Worksheets

Worksheets

Downloadable PDF worksheets for source analysis and comparative exercises.

In the Sources section
Assessment

Assessment Rubrics

Grading criteria for essays, presentations, and project-based assignments.

Module Guide

Social Media & Digital Memory

Instructor resources, activities, and assessment options for the digital memory module.

The Core Sequence

These nine modules are the content students read. Each takes 10–20 minutes; the complete sequence takes approximately 2.5 hours. Paired worksheets and discussion prompts are noted below each module. View the full sequence →

Module 00 · ~15 min

The HashimaXR Project

What was built, what was intended, and why it matters.

→ Worksheet 8: How Heritage Works
Module 01 · ~20 min

Hashima in Time and Place

From Meiji industrialisation through wartime mobilisation to UNESCO inscription.

→ Worksheet 8: How Heritage Works
Module 02 · ~15 min

How Heritage Works

Authorised Heritage Discourse, interpretive regimes, and the politics of "balance."

→ Worksheet 8: How Heritage Works
Module 03 · ~15 min

UNESCO & Contested Heritage

The 2015 inscription, Japan's commitments, and transnational counter-narratives.

→ Worksheet 6: UNESCO & Contested Heritage
Module 04 · ~15 min

Labour, Empire, and Evidence

Coerced labour at Hashima and the politics of historical knowledge production.

→ Worksheet 1: Source Analysis
Module 05 · ~15 min

Digital Histories

XR as historiography and the digital landscape around Hashima.

→ Worksheet 2: Analysing Digital Heritage
Module 06 · ~15 min

Reading Institutional Positions

Analytical tools for interpreting how heritage governance operates through documentary evidence.

→ Worksheet 5: Analysing Institutional Positions
Module 07 · ~15 min

Positions & Perspectives

Regional media discourse and institutional positions on Hashima's contested heritage.

→ Worksheet 4: Regional Perspectives
Module 08 · ~15 min

Why the Project Stayed Unreleased

Soft gatekeeping, procedural refusal, temporal drag, and the archive of obstruction.

→ Worksheet 3: Patterns of Obstruction
Companion

Social Media and Digital Memory

How platforms shape contested heritage narratives: algorithmic amplification and the testimony wars.

→ Worksheet 7: Social Media & Digital Memory
Companion

Songs from the Coalfields

An audio-based learning experience exploring the folk songs that Hashima's workers brought from Japan's coalfield regions.

Companion

Timeline: Hashima in History

Interactive timeline from 1890 to the present—filter by theme, explore enquiry questions, and hear the island's soundscape.

Downloadable Resources