SAFA Faculty Workshop (Philadelphia, PA)

Faculty Workshop

Students and Faculty in the Archives Philadelphia, PA

Monday, October 7, 2013

Welcome! 10:00 – 10:30 Introductions

10:30 – 10:45 What is SAFA?

10:45 - 11:30 Pedagogy: Big Picture

11:30 - 12:30 Using the Collections

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch

1:30 – 2:30 Pedagogy: In the Archives

2:30 – 3:30 Planning Your SAFA Experience

3:30 - 4:00 Wrap-Up

Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

Introductions

Julie Golia, PhD Historian / SAFA Co-Director

Robin M. Katz, MLIS Archivist / SAFA Co-Director


Introductions

• Your vitals (name, institution, department)

• Your experience teaching with primary sources

• Where are you in your planning?

• What is your biggest question at this point?


What is SAFA?

Innovative postsecondary education program which uses primary sources to teach document analysis, information literacy, and critical thinking skills in first-year undergraduates.


What is SAFA?

• Three year, $750,000 US Dept of Education FIPSE grant – Jan 2011 until Dec 2013

• Three schools within walking distance

– City Tech (CUNY), LIU Brooklyn, St. Francis • 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 Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

What is SAFA?

• Centered around class visits to the archives

• Item level document analysis – not independent student research

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

• Breadth of project allowed for experimentation, lessons, crafting pedagogy


What is SAFA?

• Brooklyn SAFA: student population – Mostly first-year / early academic career – Very diverse: many minority, non-traditional

students, and other under-represented groups – Mostly products of NYC public schools – Many international students, new Americans, or

non-native speakers of English

• Your student population? (audience) • SAFA’s secondary goal: familiarize students

with cultural institutions and resources Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

What is SAFA?

• Our Teaching Philosophy – Goals and objectives – No show-and-tell – Actively use materials – Less is more

– Modeling document analysis to beginners

• Specific vs. generic prompts to model analysis – Ex: “Why did Henry Ward Beecher write this letter?”

– Not “Who is the creator? What type of document is this?”


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


SAFA Findings

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


SAFA Findings

• This year, we will receive and analyze retention data – 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, 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, City Tech: “Through SAFA, I have been able to create a research project that mirrors that of the academic research process.”

• Deborah Mutnick, 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.”


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

More soon from SAFA

• Project level website to launch later Fall 2013 – Project documentation and findings – Sample exercises (with some digitized documents) – Articles on pedagogy by us and faculty

– Teacharchives.org

• More dissemination – Presentations – Publications


What is SAFA?

• General questions about the project?


What is SAFA?

• General questions about the project?

• NEXT UP: SAFA’s pedagogical lessons…


Pedagogy: The Big Picture

• Learning goals vs. learning objectives

– Why we came to find the distinction so important



Learning 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

• General statements about knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values. – adapted from

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


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





Professors’ course goals were often the same as SAFA’s goals

• Student engagement

• Building a sense of community

• Interaction with neighborhoods

• Interdisciplinarity

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



Learning 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





Learning objectives should

• Use measurable verb

• Articulate how students will demonstrate learning

• Provide criterion of acceptable performance

• Address knowledge, skills, and/or attitude – adapted from http://www.oucom.ohiou.edu/fd/writingobjectives.pdf





Sara Haviland’s goals vs. objectives • GOAL (broader)

– Students will learn the unique history of the Civil Rights movement in the North.

• OBJECTIVE (specific)

– 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.



• Assignment Design

– We wanted to demonstrate a wide range of assignment models

– Refining and tweaking over five semesters



• 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



• Assignments: questions to ask yourself – How much time do you have to spend in the archives over

the course of the semester?

– What knowledge or skills will your students gain in the archives? What kind of assignment will best manifest those?

– How important is student collaboration vs. independent work?

– Who are your students? (Majors vs. non-majors, first-years vs. advanced students, etc.)



• How to provide context to students

– Our experience: not enough or too much context

– Finding the “Goldilocks” of context



• Kinds of Context

– Historical

– Technical / Format

• Processes

• Paleography

– Collection Info

• Provenance or donor

• How organized

– What is a historical society/archives?



• Possible sources

– Secondary sources

– Other primary sources

– Popular or experiential readings

– Finding aids or other library descriptions

– Class lectures

– In-archive lectures

– Other ideas?



• Context: questions to ask yourself

– What knowledge/skills/attitudes might your students need to acquire before encountering the archives?

– If more than one archives visit, what knowledge do you want them to acquire between visits?

– How can context readings help them answer questions raised (and unanswered) in archives?

– Will you preselect a reading, or will students find one themselves?


Using the Collections

• Document Selection

– We quickly learned that less is more!

– We’ll talk about research this afternoon



• Document selection: how much?

– For first-year students, item level is best

• Some experiences with providing folder from manuscript collection

– Small number of items for students

• Especially textual material

– Arc of visit relies on the document(s)

• What is the journey students will take?

• Identify pitfalls and challenges

• You do have a reading in mind Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society


Channel your students when selecting docs!

• Think about your student’s first encounter with the document. Consider:

– physical size

– condition or handling needs

– length of text

– legibility (especially handwriting)

– vocabulary

– visual literacy skills of students Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society


Channel your students when selecting docs!

• Also remember:

– How much more contextual knowledge you have

– The feeling of overwhelm in an archives

• Manageable vs. unmanageable



• Picking your documents is just the beginning

– Tweaked room set up over five semesters



• Room setup: the “SAFA” model

– Stations and groupings

• Rotate or not? Timing?

• Even groupings

• Sitting at table or standing with clipboards?

– Logistics

• Remember size, condition, other layout issues

– Independent or group work?

• Small groups of 3 - 4 students are ideal



• Hands-on: Jeff Hyson’s document selection

• Consider

– Individual document choices?

– How would you stage these?

• Jeff: tell us the parameters

– Number of students

– Time available, number of visits

– Course, brief goals/visit objectives


LUNCH BREAK!

Next session at 1:30


Welcome! 10:00 – 10:30 Introductions

10:30 – 10:45 What is SAFA?

10:45 - 11:30 Pedagogy: Big Picture

11:30 - 12:30 Using the Collections

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch

1:30 – 2:30 Pedagogy: In the Archives

2:30 – 3:30 Planning Your SAFA Experience

3:30 - 4:00 Wrap-Up


Using the Collections (cont’d)

Researching as a teacher – not a scholar

• Identifying teaching docs very different than identifying docs for scholarly research



Researching as a teacher – not a scholar

• Identifying teaching docs very different than identifying docs for scholarly research

– Not looking for everything – looking for one effective teaching document

– Do you want a representative document or an outlier document?



Identify your research resources

• Finding aids, subject guides, digital sources, and more

• Other educators teaching similar topics

• Brooklyn SAFA’s successes in identifying and using docs for educational purposes

• Major service to BHS and other faculty!

• Ask about ways you can draw on experiences/knowledge of other educators


Visiting the Archives

• SAFA Brooklyn: class visits in a nutshell

– Had as many as 7 and as few as 1 during a semester; we find 1 – 3 visits to be best.

– Anywhere from <10 – 40+ students attend a visit

– Faculty pre-select docs with staff help; request them 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



KEY FINDINGS

• Less documents make for a more engaging/effective learning experience

• Logistics matter – a lot

• Students need to learn how to analyze primary sources



• CREATING SPECIFIC PROMPTS

– Why we think tailoring your student’s interaction with the documents is important



• Generic questions can be confusing

• Date created vs. date covered

• Author/creator

• Format

• “What is the source,” “why was this doc made,” “who is the audience” are actually difficult to answer



• Student prompts/handouts: why tailor?

• Primary source docs are infinitely interpretable – but educators often do have a reading in mind

• Handouts should reflect your specific visit objectives

• Tailored handouts help anticipate regularized experience for students

• Rather than an educator providing context to students on a piecemeal basis (when floating or zoning)



• Student prompts/handouts: why tailor?

• Don’t give students too long a handout

• Articulate to students that they should closely observe and read the entire document

• Consider including context or other sources in the handout



• Examples of effective SAFA handouts

• In your folders



• Facilitating an effective visit

– Thinking deeply about logistics makes for a better pedagogical experience



• Facilitating an effective visit: plan ahead

– Over budget time

• When to arrive and leave

• Don’t forget intros and wrap-ups

• It takes students a while to physically move

– Grouping students allows for discussion, collaboration, community building

• Consider the room, the size of the docs, how long

– What tools or other sources do you need?

– Spell out roles of faculty and staff Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society


• Facilitating an effective visit: in the archives

– Make introductions both clear and enthusiastic

– Think about logistics

• where to sit or stand, tables vs. clipboards, acoustics

– How available will you be to students?

• Floating vs. zoning

• Hang back or hands-on?

• What context provided as-needed?

• If you give one group a hint, tell the whole class



• Plan an effective wrap up

– Planning often overlooked by Brooklyn faculty

– Consider a way for the entire class to reconvene and share

– You can connect the “micro” (document) back to the “macro” (course content)



• Wrap ups: what to do

– Think about logistics again

• Change it up, make sure they can see/hear each other

– Facilitate community interaction – students speaking to each other, not you

– Ask hard questions! Demand a lot from your students at this moment

– Consider shaping wrap up around a “takeaway”

• Course goal or objective, contemporary theme, personal reaction, etc.



• After the visit

– Give clear instructions on follow up assignments

• What do students do with in-archives handout?

• Consider assigning a visit reflection

• Relate the visit back to larger assignment?

– Clarify how/whether they should come back to archives independently

• Enlist staff member for help

• Our experiences: don’t make it optional


Collaboration

Library and archives staff bring important pedagogical/institutional skill sets – use them!

– Content knowledge

– History and theory of archives/collections

– Teaching experience in archives setting

– Extensive doc analysis skills

– Extensive logistical experience


Collaboration

How to teach about the institution

• Care and handling

– Not punitive

– Stress universality

– Policies vary, but see our example guidelines

• Have students read aloud

• Ask, “why?” or, “security or preservation?”

• What is an archives/historical society? • Pre-visit experiment


Getting Started

Resources at HSP and beyond


Getting Started

Let’s workshop.


Wrap Up

Group-determined questions and discussion.

KEEP IN TOUCH!

Julie Golia, Public Historian / SAFA Co-Director [email protected] | (718) 222-4111 x203

Robin M. Katz, Outreach and Public Services Archivist / SAFA Co-Director [email protected] | (718) 222-4111 x299

http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/ #safabhs



