Type
Presentation
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/z0bh-7362
Session Description
Archival instruction is often thought of as being only for history majors or graduate students; the Reading Room is a hushed, quiet place filled with antiques, white gloves, and future faculty members. But at Brandeis University, the University Archives & Special Collections Reading Room is also a place for our first year students to engage in the experiential learning component of their first year writing seminars. During in-person class sessions in the archives, students learn how to analyze primary sources in a low stakes environment, allowing them to develop confidence in their ability to incorporate primary sources into their future academic work.
Post-pandemic, we have started to work with more and more first year students as part of their required University Writing Seminar course in subjects such as medical research, dystopian novels, and social activism. In this interactive workshop, I will share lesson plans that I created and implemented over the past year that focus on encouraging our first year students to engage first hand with archival materials by participating in a variety of analytical activities. Each activity is either paired with an assessment worksheet or a class discussion, or both. The worksheet questions were developed based on each lesson's specific objectives, which mirror guidelines set by the 2018 Guideline for Primary Source Literacy Developed by the ACRL RBMS-SAA Joint Task Force on the Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy.
Workshop participants will act as students, engaging in a pared down version of one of the lesson plan activities, and then work together in pairs to adapt lesson plans that could be used at their own institutions. We will then come back together as a group to share ideas about how we can actively engage the newest members of our own college communities.
Type of Library
University Library
Empowering and Engaging First Year Students in the Archives
Hogan 401
Archival instruction is often thought of as being only for history majors or graduate students; the Reading Room is a hushed, quiet place filled with antiques, white gloves, and future faculty members. But at Brandeis University, the University Archives & Special Collections Reading Room is also a place for our first year students to engage in the experiential learning component of their first year writing seminars. During in-person class sessions in the archives, students learn how to analyze primary sources in a low stakes environment, allowing them to develop confidence in their ability to incorporate primary sources into their future academic work.
Post-pandemic, we have started to work with more and more first year students as part of their required University Writing Seminar course in subjects such as medical research, dystopian novels, and social activism. In this interactive workshop, I will share lesson plans that I created and implemented over the past year that focus on encouraging our first year students to engage first hand with archival materials by participating in a variety of analytical activities. Each activity is either paired with an assessment worksheet or a class discussion, or both. The worksheet questions were developed based on each lesson's specific objectives, which mirror guidelines set by the 2018 Guideline for Primary Source Literacy Developed by the ACRL RBMS-SAA Joint Task Force on the Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy.
Workshop participants will act as students, engaging in a pared down version of one of the lesson plan activities, and then work together in pairs to adapt lesson plans that could be used at their own institutions. We will then come back together as a group to share ideas about how we can actively engage the newest members of our own college communities.
Comments
https://doi.org/10.7275/z0bh-7362