Title of Proposal
Digitization in the classroom : teaching undergraduates the art of digitizing history
Abstract
In the fall 2015 semester, a new course was offered at Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) that involved a unique project collaboration between Professor Richard E. Bond and librarians, Patty Clark and Sophie Rondeau. The course, entitled Digital History 250, provided students with an introduction to how history is made and used in digital environments. Bond presented students with topics related to history and social media, spatial mapping, digital literacy, and the implications of crowd sourcing historical narratives, among others. The students were given a final project that involved creating digital exhibits using curated content from VWC yearbooks housed in the College Archives. Using the Omeka content management system - which provides Dublin Core metadata elements for item description - students were also expected to create metadata to describe each digitized item. Alongside teaching students about digital literacy, librarians Clark and Rondeau provided instruction about metadata, controlled vocabularies, and the intricacies of describing visual resources. What's more, their work involved building content standard guidelines suitable for undergraduate students new to resource description and a guide built of the tools they would need to be successful. This presentation will examine the delivery, approach, and tools they used to teach students about item description, as well as the challenges, successes, and failures of the digitization project from the perspective of all parties involved. What's more, future plans for a Digital History course are underway, and this presentation will discuss how the final digitization project will differ, and why.
Type of Proposal
Presentation
Proposal Category
Digital Projects
Keywords
Instruction, Digitization, Undergraduates, History
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Rondeau, Sophie (2016). "Digitization in the classroom : teaching undergraduates the art of digitizing history," Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Management. https://newprairiepress.org/cpndam/2016/day2/5
Additional Files
SophieRondeauBio.pdf (91 kB)Sophie Rondeau Bio
20161116Session6_255PM.mp4 (252371 kB)
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Included in
Archival Science Commons, Cataloging and Metadata Commons, Digital Communications and Networking Commons, History Commons, Technology and Innovation Commons
Digitization in the classroom : teaching undergraduates the art of digitizing history
In the fall 2015 semester, a new course was offered at Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) that involved a unique project collaboration between Professor Richard E. Bond and librarians, Patty Clark and Sophie Rondeau. The course, entitled Digital History 250, provided students with an introduction to how history is made and used in digital environments. Bond presented students with topics related to history and social media, spatial mapping, digital literacy, and the implications of crowd sourcing historical narratives, among others. The students were given a final project that involved creating digital exhibits using curated content from VWC yearbooks housed in the College Archives. Using the Omeka content management system - which provides Dublin Core metadata elements for item description - students were also expected to create metadata to describe each digitized item. Alongside teaching students about digital literacy, librarians Clark and Rondeau provided instruction about metadata, controlled vocabularies, and the intricacies of describing visual resources. What's more, their work involved building content standard guidelines suitable for undergraduate students new to resource description and a guide built of the tools they would need to be successful. This presentation will examine the delivery, approach, and tools they used to teach students about item description, as well as the challenges, successes, and failures of the digitization project from the perspective of all parties involved. What's more, future plans for a Digital History course are underway, and this presentation will discuss how the final digitization project will differ, and why.
Learning Outcomes
Attendees will learn about the challenges we encountered teaching undergraduate students aspects of digitization, the building of digital exhibits, and writing historical narratives.