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 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
Analysis Skills 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.