Primary Source Instruction in Higher Ed

Students and Faculty in the Archives

Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Philadelphia, PA

Friday, November 8, 2013

Introduction

Robin M. Katz

Outreach and Public Services Archivist

Co-Director, Students and Faculty in the Archives

Brooklyn Historical Society

Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

What is SAFA?

• Innovative postsecondary education program • Uses primary sources to teach – document analysis, – information literacy – critical thinking skills

• First-year undergraduates


What is SAFA?

• Three year grant – US Department of Education – Now-defunct FIPSE program – $750,000 over 3 years – Jan 2011 until Dec 2013

• Supported – 2 FT professional staff – 1 PT staff member – Stipends for participants – Supplies

• Sustainability Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

What is SAFA?

• Three schools within walking distance – New York City College of Technology (CUNY) – Long Island University Brooklyn – St. Francis College

• Nineteen local partner faculty – All ranks and stages of career – Wide range of disciplines (not just history) – Variety of classes (seminars, surveys, etc.) – Intellectual and professional community

• National partners


What is SAFA?

• Centered around class visits to the archives • Over four semesters (Fall 2012 - Spring 2013) – 1,100 individual students – 63 courses – 100+ class visits to Brooklyn Historical Society

• Summer fellowship


What is SAFA?

• Class visits in a nutshell – Each course: as many as 7, as few as 1 – Ideally: 1 – 3 visits – Anywhere from <10 – 40+ students – Faculty request docs 3 weeks ahead of time – Staff pull, prep, cite, assess copyright, set up docs – Staff greet class; review care/handling; occasionally

lecture; co-facilitate exercise & wrap-up


What is SAFA?

• Student population – Mostly first-year / early academic career – Both professional and liberal arts majors – Mostly products of NYC public schools – Very diverse: minority, non-traditional students – Many international students, new Americans, or

non-native speakers of English

• SAFA’s secondary goal: familiarize students with cultural institutions and resources


What is SAFA?

• Sampling of SAFA classes – Robin Michals, Introduction to Digital Photography – Jen Wingate, Visual Culture of the Civil War – Sara Haviland, U.S., 1896-present – Geoff Zylstra, Early American History – Leah Dilworth, American Literature – Matthew Gold, English Composition: Fire, Disease, Disaster

and the Shaping of Urban Public Space


What is SAFA?

• Our Teaching Philosophy – Goals and objectives – No show-and-tell – Actively use materials – Less is more – Modeling document analysis to beginners


What is SAFA?

• Document analysis – Not traditional bibliographic instruction – Preselected, pull at the item-level

• Specific vs. generic prompts – Ex: “Why did Henry Ward Beecher write this letter?” – Not “Who is the creator? What type of document is

this?”


What is SAFA?

• Summer Fellowships − Application process − Produce own scholarly or creative projects − Only undergraduate fellowship of its kind − Gabriel Furman papers, ARC.190 − http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/fellowship2012 − http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/fellowship2013


http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/fellowship2012





SAFA Lessons

• SAFA as professional development • Opportunity to tweak and refine


SAFA Lessons

• Learning goals vs. objectives


SAFA Lessons

• Goals: a statement that describes in broad terms what a student will learn from your course. adapted from http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/fd/writingobjectives.pdf

• Prof goals same as SAFA goals

• Student engagement

• Building a sense of community

• Interaction with neighborhoods

• Student identity as creators, not just consumers, of knowledge


http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/fd/writingobjectives.pdf

http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/fd/writingobjectives.pdf

SAFA Lessons

• Objectives: Statement in specific and measurable terms that describes what the student will know or be able to do as a result of completing course activities.

• adapted from http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/fd/writingobjectives.pdf


http://www.lmu.edu/about/services/academicplanning/assessment/Assessment_Resources/Understanding_Mission__Goals_and_Learning_Outcomes.htm

http://www.lmu.edu/about/services/academicplanning/assessment/Assessment_Resources/Understanding_Mission__Goals_and_Learning_Outcomes.htm

SAFA Lessons

• Sara Haviland’s goals vs. objectives • Goal – Students will learn the unique history of the Civil

Rights movement in the North.

• Objective

− In their final research paper, students will identify and analyze the different issues, strategies, and constituencies of the Civil Rights movement in the North, as compared to the South.


SAFA Lessons

• Types of assignments and visits

− One-off in-archive activity

− Semester-long, multi-visit structure

− Building a collaborative resource as a class

− Scaffolded document-to-folder model

− Scholarly research paper

− Other scholarly work (oral history, walking tour)

− Research for a creative project


SAFA Lessons

• Types of context needed − Historical − Technical / Format − Collection Info − What is a historical society/archives?

• How to provide? − Secondary or primary sources − Popular or experiential readings − Finding aids or other library descriptions − Class or in-archives lectures


SAFA Lessons

• Document selection − physical size

− condition or handling needs

− length of text

− legibility (especially handwriting)

− vocabulary

− visual literacy skills of students

• Research as a teacher, not a scholar


SAFA Lessons

• Logistics • Room Set Uo

• Stations and groupings

− Rotate or not? Timing?

− Even groupings

− Sitting at table or standing with clipboards?

• Independent or group work?

− Small groups of 3 - 4 students are ideal


SAFA Lessons

• Tailoring student prompts/handouts

− Educators often do have a reading in mind

− Handouts should reflect specific visit objectives

− Regularize experience for students

− Not too long

− Tell students to read


SAFA Lessons

• Facilitation

− Determine roles of staff/faculty

− Over-budget on time

− Care and handling

− Not punitive, stress universality

− Ask “preservation

− Floating vs. zoning

− Wrap ups

− Coming back


SAFA Findings

• Independent evaluators have found that SAFA students are more engaged and perform better than their peers.


SAFA Findings

• Receive and analyze retention data this year – Final Report due December 2013

• Data from 2012 Evaluation Report – Available in your folders – Online at

http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/docs/EvalReport2012.pdf


http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/docs/

http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/docs/

Findings: Observation Skills

• Q: Why might this document be worth preserving in an archive?


PRE POST

Students noting a single feature of giving a vague response

72% 49%

Students noting multiple physical features

28% 51%

Findings: Articulating ‘a usable past’ • Q: Why might this document be worth

preserving in an archive?


Sample PRE responses Sample POST responses

This is a photo from the past To show how society valued entertainment

Because it showed what was going on at that moment.

[It] shows how technology was progressing in the US.

It gives insight... to what life was like during the 1960s.

It shows how people were sending postal cards through the

telegrams and how it was different... than... today.

Findings: Academic Performance • Just one class at LIU Brooklyn


SAFA NON-SAFA

Completion Rate 96.9% 76.7%

Passing Rate 91.9% 48%

Grade B or better 60.7% 30.3%

Findings: Professional Development

Peter Catapano, History, City Tech:

“My teaching always improves when I have time to stop and reflect on my current practices. What I learned is that sometimes less is more. Better to have fewer learning objectives... This experience has helped me trust my students, who have taken to the site visit and the web assignments much more than expected.”



Geoff Zylstra, History, City Tech: “Through SAFA, I have been able to create a research project that mirrors that of the academic research process.”



Deborah Mutnick, English, LIU Brooklyn “I have rethought how I teach research, inverting the movement from breadth to depth, the general to the specific, in order to engage students in ‘deep learning’ based on close readings and observation.”



• Professor’s website submissions: – Archives allow them and students to “slow down” – SAFA allowed them to focus on teaching


Why does SAFA work?

• High Impact Educational Practices – Work with first-year seminars, learning communities – Common intellectual experiences (among a cohort) – Collaborative assignments and projects – Undergraduate research – Diversity/global learning – Community-based learning – See www.aacu.org/leap/hip.cfm


http://www.aacu.org/leap/hip.cfm

TeachArchives.org

• Will launch December 2013

• Project-level website

• “Teaching effectively with primary sources”


TeachArchives.org

• Three audiences:

− Local community

− Educators nationwide

− Librarians and archivists nationwide


TeachArchives.org

• Three content areas:

− Exercises

− Articles

− Project documentation


TeachArchives.org

• Exercises

• To use outright or as a model

• Each will include:

• Info about course and prof

• Narrative and title

• Objectives, context, end products, assessment

• Attached handouts/prompts

• Skills used

• Some digitized documents Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

TeachArchives.org

• Articles by SAFA staff

• Including:

• Our teaching philosophy

• Faculty / staff collaboration

• Document selection

• Creating handouts

• How to teach care and handling

• Citations: it’s not about plagiarism

• Digital cameras and tablets in the archives Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

TeachArchives.org

• Articles by partner faculty

• Including: • “The Appeal of the Archives: Engaging Students in More

Meaningful Research”

• “Why Less is More in the Archives”

• “Fitting It All In: Incorporating Archival Materials into a World History Survey Course”

• “Texts as Objects: Complementing the Literary Anthology with Primary Sources”

• “How Archives Can Teach Design Students to Effectively Communicate Ideas”


TeachArchives.org

• Project Documentation

• Including:

− US DOE annual and final reports

− Reports by independent evaluators

− Materials and tools created by SAFA

− Online call slip, care & handling handouts, etc.

− Comprehensive lists of classes taught, materials used


TeachArchives.org

• Launch Party!

• Thursday, December 19, 2013

• Brooklyn Historical Society (Brooklyn, NY)


Thank You

Robin M. Katz

[email protected]

@robinmkatz

TeachArchives.org (Dec 2013)

#safabhs and #safafellows


mailto:[email protected]

Primary Source Instruction in Higher Ed

Education

class visits

local partner faculty

individual students

ft professional staff

francis college

year undergraduatesstudents

defunct fipse program

pt staff member stipends