Staff Workshop at Brooklyn Historical Society

All Staff Workshop
Students and Faculty in the Archives
Brooklyn Historical Society

Monday, October 28, 2013

Welcome!
1:00 – 2:00
Lunch

2:00 – 3:00
“SAFA's Findings and Institution-Wide Implications”

3:00 – 5:00
"SAFA Teaching Philosophy in Practice" (optional)

Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

Introductions
Julie Golia, PhD
Public Historian / SAFA Co-Director
Robin M. Katz, MLIS
Outreach + Public Services Archivist /
SAFA Co-Director

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

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 BHS

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

What is SAFA?
• 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

• SAFA’s secondary goal: familiarize students
with BHS as a cultural institution/resource

What is SAFA?
• 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

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?
• What makes SAFA different?
– Museum Education
• Often K-12
• Tour based, guided inquiry

– Special Collections instruction
• Often advanced undergrad
• Show-and-tell model

– Library instruction
• Typically focuses on finding/evaluating resources

– Common teaching strategy
• Professors often lecture on primary sources, don’t push
students to engage with them

SAFA findings
Our Teaching Philosophy
– Goals and objectives
– No show-and-tell
– Actively use materials
– Less is more
– Modeling document analysis to beginners
(will address this in greater detail in the optional
workshop from 3:00 - 5:00)

SAFA findings
Less is More
– Document selection (item-level)
– Professor research
– Reference support



SAFA findings
How SAFA differs from the typical approach to
primary sources
• 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?”

• Handouts

SAFA findings
Logistics
– These details make for good pedagogy and efficient
BHS workflow
– Agendas
– Arrival, room set up, traffic flow, space/overlap,
pulling, document arrangement
– Tweaking and refining
– Clarifying roles



SAFA findings
Making Students Feel Welcome
– Care and handling about stewardship, NOT punitive
– Extra support needed
– Tailoring services to early college students
• Academic preparedness
• Limited research experience
• Personal perspectives (ex: international students, FT
working students, outer borough, etc.)


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
– Online at
http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/docs/EvalReport201
2.pdf


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
This is a photo from the past
Because it showed what was going
on at that moment.
It gives insight... to what life was
like during the 1960s.

Sample POST responses
To show how society valued
entertainment
[It] shows how technology was
progressing in the US.
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


Products of the SAFA grant
• Project level website to launch later Fall 2013
– Audiences - national and local, faculty and staff
– Site will include
• Sample exercises (with some digitized documents)
• Articles on pedagogy by us and faculty
• Project documentation and findings

– http://teacharchives.org

• More dissemination
– Presentations
– Publications

What is SAFA?
• General questions about the project?
• What would you like to see from us?


SAFA Teaching Philosophy in Practice


SAFA Teaching Philosophy in Practice
• In this workshop, we will cover:
– Goals and Objectives
– Assignments and Visits
– Context
– Document Selection
– Logistics
– Student Prompts
– Facilitation

• Start in classroom, move to library

Goals and objectives
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


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.
–



Learning objectives should
•
•
•
•

Use measurable verb
Articulate how students will demonstrate learning
Provide criterion of acceptable performance
Address knowledge, skills, and/or attitude

–



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.

Assignments and visits
Different models
–
–
–
–
–
–
–

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

Context
Talk to the professor about context
• When to provide?
• What do students need to know?
– Historical
– Technical / Format
– Collection Info
• Provenance or donor
• How organized

– What is a historical society/archives?

Context
• How to provide context?
–
–
–
–
–

Secondary sources
Other primary sources
Popular or experiential readings
Finding aids or other library descriptions
Lectures (in-class or in-archives)

• Who will provide?
– You (staff) or professor?

Document selection
• 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


Document selection
Think about a 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

Document selection
Channel students when selecting docs!
– How much more contextual knowledge we have
– The feeling of overwhelm in an archives
• Manageable vs. unmanageable


Document selection
Supporting (or collaborating with?) faculty
• Different levels of experience with archives
– Discovery tools
– Using primary sources
– Reading room procedures

• Identifying teaching docs very different than
identifying docs for scholarly research
– Professors usually do have a reading in mind

Document selection
Supporting (or collaborating with?) faculty
• 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?


Creating Student Prompts
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


Why tailor prompts?
• Primary source docs are infinitely interpretable –
but educators often do have a reading in mind
• Handouts should reflect 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)


Making the handout
• 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


Logistics
Room setup: the “SAFA” model
– Stations and groupings (affects prompts, too)
• Rotate or not? Timing?
• Even groupings
• Sitting at table or standing with clipboards?

– Documents
• Remember size, condition, other layout issues

– Independent or group work?
• Small groups of 3 - 4 students are ideal

Logistics
Institutional considerations
– Scheduling
• Challenge of college classes
– Times not standard; don’t meet every day; semester is short;
popular days and weeks; profs not used to planning far ahead

•
•
•
•

Outlook and Google calendars
Space conflicts; 2nd floor parlor, new classroom
We had mtgs before each semester; Liz’s new form
Set up sheets (not usually needed)

– Visitor Services
• Early and late classes - opening the building, front desk

Planning ahead
What professors should provide before the visit
• Visit objectives
• Document selection list
– Online call slip

• Agenda

– Time break down
– Roles clarified

• Any relevant assignments, syllabi (?), etc.
• Handout (day of)
• Don’t be scared to make demands of profs

Facilitation
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


Facilitation
•Arrival
– Group or not?

•How to welcome students to BHS
– Museum, library, public events

•Care and handling
– Not punitive, stress universality
– Policies vary, but see our example guidelines
• Have students read aloud
• Ask, “why?” or, “security or preservation?”
Students and
•Pre-visit option Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

Facilitation
In the archives
– Make introductions both clear and enthusiastic
– Think about logistics
• where to sit or stand, tables vs. clipboards, acoustics

– Facilitate community interaction – students
speaking to each other, not you
– How available will you and the prof be to students?
• Floating vs. zoning
• Hang back or hands-on?
• If you/prof give one group a hint, tell the whole class

Facilitation
Encourage profs to plan an effective wrap up
–
–
–
–

Planning often overlooked by Brooklyn faculty
Suggest the entire class reconvenes and shares
Push profs to have a main takeaway
Ask hard questions! Demand a lot from students


Facilitation
Students coming back independently
– Give handout on how to use the library in future
• What to do when the self-starter shows up in the library?

– If professor wants students to return to use specific
collections, or complete an assignment
•
•
•
•

DON’T MAKE IT OPTIONAL
Discuss ahead of time with professor - no surprises!
Clear instructions to prof, students, other staff (handout)
Manage expectations of service provided in library vs.
class (an issue with SAFA)

In Library: Model Class
•
•
•
•

Arrival and intros
Sample exercise: slave indentures
Workshop pedagogical and logistical choices
Time for discussion and questions


Staff Workshop at Brooklyn Historical Society

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