Introductions

1. Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? 

I’m Jessica Webster, and I am on the library faculty. My work is in the Archives and Special Collections department and I focus on Digital Initiatives. I teach in the information studies minor; my courses focus on the interplay between archives, digital materials, history, media, and current events. This is my second semester teaching an online synchronous course. My classes tend to be small (15-25 is average) with a lot of lecture, discussions, and group activities. I focus a lot on active learning techniques but have really stalled on implementing them in an online environment; I seem unable to get students to really engage with each other and have the vibrant discussions I foster in in-person sessions.

1. Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? 

I’m preparing to again teach LIB3030, Archives, Documents, and Hidden History, which focuses on ways to locate, think about, and use a variety of types of primary sources (along with some basic archival theory). In this course we have units learning about how to think about, engage with, and use different types of primary sources in research. I’m also planning to apply techniques learned here to future versions of my Digital Archives and Current Events course.

1. What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

1. Understand the origin, storage, retrieval and use of primary and secondary information sources.
2. Identify the relationship between finding aids used to describe archival collections and primary sources.
3. Access and use archival and/or primary source materials for research projects.
4. Interpret historical, social and cultural issues through the use of archival primary source materials.
5. Employ organizational skills to formulate and interpret research questions as necessary.      

1. What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?

I’d like to develop an approach for students to engage with each other outside of class sessions more readily, to help build a course community that feels more engaged and foster discussion during classtime. But I don’t know what this should look like yet: a discussion board? A slack channel? A google doc? Standing discussion groups? I’d like to get some ideas for this during the class.