Not being able to meet face-to-face hasn’t stopped our students from interacting with Archives & Special Collections materials! For one of our Critical Thinking & Writing II (CTW II) classes, Librarian Summer Shetenhelm and Professor Amy Lueck asked students to create social media posts inspired by an object in SCU’s Digital Collections. The activity was divided into two sessions—the first, an asynchronous tutorial on using the Digital Collections to select an object and an assignment to post their chosen object to Padlet (an online bulletin board of sorts), and the second, a synchronous Zoom session where students discussed their posts and their process.
Each student was asked to select an object that explores the theme “college.” They received tutorials on using the SCU Digital Collections via a pre-recorded video and click-by-click instructions. Then, students downloaded an image of the object, wrote a social media post about the object utilizing two hashtags, and slapped that baby up on Padlet for all in the class to see and analyze.
In the synchronous session, each student explained how and why they chose their objects and hashtags. The posts were varied—students chose political articles from The Santa Clara student newspaper, maps centering the placement of Mission Santa Clara on campus, and athletic materials that highlighted SCU’s past football glory. One of the themes running through most of the posts was that of change and continuity—what aspects of our campus and college life have changed over the years, and what has remained the same?
The assignment grew naturally out of Dr. Lueck’s current syllabus. For their final class assignment, students will create a scholarly work inspired by an archival object that starts as a blog post and expands into a full project. By asking students to create social media posts, Summer Shetenhelm and Dr. Amy Lueck were encouraging students to start with an even more limited scope of expression. Additionally, through the use of hashtags, students were able to explore how to connect their posts to a worldwide conversation. While students aren’t required to use their social media posts in their final project, their posts will be going out on the SCU Library Twitter account throughout the month of April, connecting the students’ research to a wider scholarly community.
Librarian Kelci Baughman McDowell has employed an alternate approach to Archives & Special Collections instruction this quarter, opting to utilize Camino, SCU’s instance of Canvas, to insert a healthy dose of renaissance era bibliophilia into Professor Andrew Keener’s English 54 – Shakespeare class. As Shakespeare himself said, “I loved my books!”
While it won’t unlock until early May, mimicking the original timing of the class’s visit to the Martin Reading Room, the Camino module is a way to deliver asynchronous instruction that doesn’t rely on the whole class being gathered online at a specific time. This is ideal for students geographically spread over different time zones and those who may struggle with broadband issues or challenging home situations during shelter-in-place. Via a series of video recordings of rare books, an assignment in text format, and a discussion board post, students get a simulated experience of visiting the Norman Martin Reading Room, even if that’s at 2 AM in their home kitchen.
To add a degree of intimacy, the module starts with a video introduction from Kelci Baughman McDowell and directions to watch each 2-3 minute video of the six rare books from the holdings of Archives & Special Collections, many having been owned by SCU since the school’s early days as a college. The students are then asked to pick one work from the six and complete a worksheet furnished by Dr. Keener that uses the lens of descriptive bibliography to prompt critical analysis. Lastly the students are asked to post a comment to the class’s discussion board describing a notable thing that they discovered about their chosen work. The discussion board reproduces some of the back and forth that comes from a real visit to Archives & Special Collections, but as Kelci Baughman McDowell knows from completing her entire MLIS online through SJSU, discussion boards are never a true replacement for in-person discussion. Still, they go a long way.
Using a document camera, Kelci Baughman McDowell recorded footage of herself handling the six books as a surrogate to the students turning the pages themselves. The idea was to get closer to the tactile experience of interacting with a book in a way that digital scans can’t provide—there is no audio on the videos except the sweet sound of 16th and 17th century cotton rag pages turning in the stillness of an empty reading room. The pedagogical approach of making videos of the books rather than using digital scans of each page was a practical decision and only possible because Kelci received permission to sneak into the Archives on March 28, the last day before strictest lockdown went into effect on campus. And let’s face it, it takes a fraction of the time to make a short video of a book than it does to scan each page at high resolution.
There is much hope that this Camino module will complement the students’ learning and give them a favorable impression of Archives & Special Collections as most are not English majors and would not usually find themselves in our area. We’re hoping they’ll swing by once the Library is open again.
The quarter is still young, so the future will only tell what other adventures in new instruction methods librarians in Archives & Special Collections will embrace. If you’re a faculty member who would like to explore the options, drop Kelci Baughman McDowell an email!