First Year Seminar 100 - Digital Archives
The First Year Seminar (FYS) program at Marshall University is designed to teach critical thinking skills to first year university students using a disciplinary lens provided by the instructor. This iteration of FYS is focused on “digital archives” and follows an exploration of physical objects, physical archives, digital objects, digital archives, and archives that go beyond the traditional physical/digital divide. The course emphasizes student-centered discussion and hands-on activities to teach information literacy, inquiry based thinking, integrative thinking, intercultural thinking, and metacognitive thinking skills. All activities and assignments are free to reuse under the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
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Course Materials
Syllabus
The syllabus includes readings that are mandated by the First Year Seminar program at Marshall as well as additional readings and resources included as part of the theme. Also included is a detailed weekly schedule of topics, assignments, and activities.
Assignments
Commonplace Book Entry #1 Assignment For this assignment, students create a small book using a pamphlet stitch and collect quotes, ephemera, and other commonplace book-appropriate material on the topic of their personal feelings and experiences in higher education.
Physical Primary Source Analysis Assignment Students examine a physical primary source to gain experience with examining objects as sources of evidence.
Exhibit Label Assignment To practice for the final project, a digital exhibit, students consider ways to present primary sources to an audience of their choice.
Digital Exhibit Project Assignment The final project for the course is an exhibit of eight objects (physical or digital) and introductory and conclusion text on the topic, story, or subject of the student’s choice. It is worked on throughout the bulk of the semester.
Digital Primary Source Analysis Assignment Building on the Physical Primary Source Analysis completed earlier in the semester, students consider the differences in how born digital or digitized sources may be understood and used for historical inquiry.
Commonplace Book Entry #2 Assignment Complementing the earlier commonplace book assignment that took the form of a physical book, this assignment asks students to create a set of digital commonplace book entries on their changing understanding of the information ecosystem and their use and understanding of archival materials (digital and physical) . Students are encouraged to use the affordances of a digital format to include diverse types of media.
Digital Exhibit Presentation Assignment Reflection is often a neglected stage of project completion for early stage undergraduate students. In this assignment, students reflect on their final project and the choices they made throughout the process of creation.
Class Activities
The below activities make use of physical and digital primary sources, finding aids, and archival collections to teach information literacy, inquiry based thinking, integrative thinking, intercultural thinking, and metacognitive thinking skills.
Finding Aid Analysis Activity In this activity, students analyze a finding aid and (optionally) compare the finding aid to the collection it describes to consider audiences for archival access documents and descriptive content.
Personal Digital Archives Plan Activity In this activity, students create a plan for ensuring the preservation of their digital files.
Exhibit Label Gallery Activity In this activity, students examine the exhibit labels they have written in the form of a gallery that is later remixed to form a new narrative to learn about the impact of physical proximity, tone, and more for items and exhibit labels.
Archival Collections as Data: A First Look Activity In this activity, students consider the usage of metadata describing digitized photos from the Jim Peppler Southern Courier Collection at the Alabama Department of Archives and History as data. Topics of note include bias in metadata creation and data visualization.
Repository Design Activity In this activity, students design a digital repository and consider audiences, collected content, and uses of the repository as well as implications of those decisions.
Digital Repository Analysis Activity In this activity, students will analyze digital repositories maintained by archives, libraries, and museums to consider the efficacy and variety of ways that cultural heritage materials are made accessible to individuals outside of the original institution.
History in Your Home Activity This activity allows students to look at the physical items they interact with every day and examine them as though they were future historians looking at primary sources.
Your Digital History Activity The “Your Digital History” activity allows students to consider ways in which their digital lives might be understood and studied by future historians.