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I like to assign a significant, primary-research-based, multi-media, group research project in my classes. I suppose my attachment to primary research and group work stems from my personal experiences.
My own commitment to primary source research as a compelling learning tool stems from an experience I had when I was eight years old. It involved a librarian and a 135 year-old map showing my family's new home. My mother sent to the local library me on a fool's errand to find out whether the house my family had moved into was originally part of the church or the horse farm it was sandwiched between. The kind and forward-thinking librarian on duty that day took my inquiries with the utmost seriousness and led my into the basement where historic town plats were housed. There we read the maps and formulated an interpretation of my house and neighborhood. The librarian captured my historical imagination in a way that would drive my academic studies for the rest of my life.
My pledge to group work is rooted in less sentimental. As a history student, I found little opportunity work in team, yet the career-track museum jobs I landed both out of college and out of grad school routinely required collaboration with other organizations and close team work with colleagues. Very little in school prepared me for such work after school. Therefore, I made a personal commitment to my students to introduce to them to--and hopefully prepare them for--working in teams in the workplace.
The following assignment is the first step in that process:
View Sample Collaboration Agreement Directions
