Talk with us :

1. Talk with us: History faculty report on how they use primary sources to teach undergraduates

2. 2008 online survey of 627 historians • Published in forthcoming Archival Issues • 25, one-hour, follow-up telephone interviews • Random selection of volunteers • Proportional to national figures for • Tenure and non-tenure track status • Years of teaching • Baccalaureate/masters and doctoral granting institutions

3. Interview Questions • How faculty currently use primary sources to teach • Barriers, such as • Class size and course loads, • Tenure requirements • Access to online or archival sources. • Student responses, their difficulties, and what helps them learn.

4. Major conclusions from the interviews • Using primary sources in conjunction with lectures has become the norm • Primary sources are used in freshman courses very differently than in upper division courses • Currently archival sources are used primarily for research • Innovators among historians are introducing students to archival work at all levels

5. Active learning • Learning by Doing • Primary sources are history’s “laboratory” • Affective connection to past improves retention of knowledge • Can accompany textbooks and lectures or stand alone

6. Briefly, active learning in history classes encompasses • Discussion, debate • Analysis of documents-textual and visual • Corroboration of evidence • Synthetic reasoning • Creative output-- articles, essays, journal entries, wikis, video projects, etc.

7. What Sources Historians Use* Published source readers– 90% Online primary sources—78% Archival primary sources—39% Proprietary databases—23% *Half or more of classes in online survey

8. How Historians Use Primary Sources to Teach Illustrate lectures Promote discussion

9. How Historians Use Primary Sources to Teach Ask students to compare evidence

10. How Historians Use Primary Sources to Teach Promote discussion Engage analysis Close reading

11. How Historians Use Primary Sources to Teach Role play/debates Dred Scott

12. How Historians Use Primary Sources to Teach Visual evidence

13. Historian’s Point of View -Bulk of teaching responsibility and students -Freshman level --Broad rather than deep --Mostly non-majors • -- Large classes-maybe discussion sections --Some, not all, fulfill “general education requirements” U.S. History Survey—

14. When the US Survey is a General education course Reading , writing and critical thinking emphasized -Classes smaller - Introduces how history is written -Content coverage broad U.S. History Survey— Majors and non-Majors

15. Historical Methods Course: -Classes 15-30 students; all majors -Hones online and archival sources search skills tours -Archival user education -Research papers . - Historiography Historical Methods

16. Upper Division Courses Content driven Research paper Specialty area History majors Smaller class size

17. Three points and ways to incorporate primary sources Upper division Document Search Topical AnalysisSkills Research U.S. History Survey— Majors and non-Majors Historical Methods

18. Range of faculty opinions Using primary sources “. . . is a time investment . . . but it is exactly something we ought to spend time on . . . It requires multilevel thinking . . . it is the kind of contextual thinking that you would expect a college graduate to own.“ • Three out of 30 interviewees did not think it was practical to use primary sources to teach freshman survey classes

19. Faculty Report on Student’s Response to Using Primary Sources • “they hate textbooks and they like primary source documents much better.“ • “there's much more of a sense of fun and discovery for most undergraduates in the act of trying to comprehend a primary source. They feel closer to the past in this.”

20. Examples of first person accounts

21. What teachers say are biggest challenges for students? • Getting past black and white thinking; • Accepting differing ideas; • Thinking independently • Moving beyond the first source that comes up

22. Where do archival materials fit in active learning approaches? • Open field • “Real stuff” is magical to students—complements the “virtual stuff” • Unique and local materials make history real

23. Constraints—time, place, space • What courses are being taught--Do my holdings include materials relevant to courses? • What size are classes?--How many students can my facilities accommodate and staff serve?

24. Identify documents that are appropriate for upcoming courses • First person accounts especially concerning young adults or students • Cultural artifacts—advertisements, magazines, photographs, cultural objects • Speeches, polemics • Local records illustrating national themes • Documents with contending truth claims • Readable, legible, not too long

25. Advocating for an expanded role for archives in undergraduate education • Distinguish document analysis from research • Students find working with the real documents very meaningful • Archival and online primary sources complement each other

26. Benefits of outreach • Students creates a large new constituency for archives • Student users help archivists make a strong case for the relevance and value of archives to the teaching mission of their organization.

27. Benefit of outreach • Students are the future • Future K-12 history teachers are today’s undergraduates • Archival experiences for wider swath of undergraduates builds reputation of archives as accessible, user-friendly, and holding valuable materials

28. Suggested activities Collaborate with faculty to: • arrange a tour and brief orientation • plan and coordinate archival assignments • Select real documents for students to use in the archives reading room • Make surrogates of a few documents for student to analyze in a larger space • Provide copies of documents for later classroom activities.