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Katipuneros RPG: Bisperas ng Himagsikan (Katipuneros RPG: The Eve of the Revolution) is an immersive and gamified theater that engages its “audiences” in the initiation rites of a secret revolutionary movement in the Philippines in 1896. This descriptive qualitative research evaluates such experiential approach to learning history by investigating the experiences and insights of a group of students from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), who participated in Katipuneros RPG.

Textual data obtained from the participants' reflection papers and focus group discussion transcripts were analyzed using open and axial coding.

Three key themes summarized the participants' learning experiences as they went through the play, as follows: (1) Katipuneros RPG as an immersive, interactive and intrinsically motivating medium for learning history; (2) the knowledge, values and skills that served as facilitating factors for their learning and (3) the insights the participants gained about history and life in general.

The research argues that in Katipuneros RPG, learners take on a more active role in studying history as the “teacher” vanishes in lieu of a learning system the allows students to think critically, reflect and collaborate. The approach integrates elements of development theater, immersive play and gamified learning, as well as the principles of constructivist, play-based and multi-sensorial learning.

As an innovative learning tool, it is a viable medium to teach history in the current socio-political context of the Philippines.

The study hopes to contribute to literature on pedagogical approaches for teaching and learning history through immersive environments.

A “state-driven” approach suggests that colonists use census categories to rule. However, a “society-driven” approach suggests that this state-driven perspective confers too much power upon states. A third approach views census-taking and official categorization as a product of state–society interaction that depends upon: (a) the population's lay categories, (b) information intellectuals' ability to take up and transform these lay categories, and (c) the balance of power between social and state actors. We evaluate the above positions by analyzing official records, key texts, travelogues, and statistical memoirs from three key periods in India: Indus Valley civilization through classical Gupta rule (ca. 3300 BCE–700 CE), the “medieval” period (ca. 700–1700 CE), and East India Company (EIC) rule (1757–1857 CE), using historical narrative. We show that information gathering early in the first period was society driven; however, over time, a strong interactive pattern emerged. Scribes (information intellectuals) increased their social status and power (thus, shifting the balance of power) by drawing on caste categories (lay categories) and incorporating them into official information gathering. This intensification of interactive information gathering allowed the Mughals, the EIC, and finally British direct rule officials to collect large quantities of information. Our evidence thus suggests that the intensification of state–society interactions over time laid the groundwork for the success of the direct rule British censuses. It also suggests that any transformative effect of these censuses lay in this interactive pattern, not in the strength of the British colonial state.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence of geogenic contaminants in groundwater from shallow aquifers of the crystalline basement complex rocks of Ibadan south-western, Nigeria.

A total of 30 drinking water samples, (six samples each from the five major lithologic formations of the study area) were collected from hand dug wells during the rainy season. Atomic absorption spectrophotometry was used to determine concentrations of arsenic, iron and fluoride in drinking water samples and also concentrations of other chemical parameters that could affect the concentrations of the geogenic contaminants including pH, Ca, Mg, Na and SO₄2−. Descriptive statistics, multiple correlation and analysis of variance were used to examine the relationship between the geogenic contaminants and concentration of other chemical parameters while inverse distance weighting was used to produce risk maps.

The results showed Arsenic concentration exceeding the WHO recommended concentration for drinking water in all the samples within the area. Samples from 16.6 per cent of the wells exceeded the recommended limit for fluoride while iron was present in most of the samples within acceptable limits. The study also revealed no significant difference in concentration of contaminants between the geologic formations.

Geogenic contamination has been scarcely studied in Nigeria. This research, therefore, is a paradigm shift in the study of groundwater contamination which had been mainly focused on anthropogenic contaminants. The outcome of this research will engender policy makers and researchers to pay more attention to geogenic contamination than anthropogenic contaminants in Nigeria.