No Paving Projects

This course had no intention to put up a parking lot. Instead, the class wanted to evaluate local primary sources through the lens of an environmental historian. Not only did I have a wealth of sources to use for the class, I had a number of these sources available digitally. Students could use the originals during the class and the digitals to help with their assignment; it was the best of both worlds.

Audience: Undergraduate students in an introductory environmental history class.

Ingredients:

• Five groups of original documents pertaining to the local environment, in this case a naturalist society, a biologist, an oologist, meteorological records, and an environmental group.
• Finding aids for each group of records.
• One set of questions.
• One set of critical analysis questions.

Method:

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Exercise time: 45 minutes

1. Explain the exercise. The instructions were for each student to look through the boxes, select one item, examine that item, and then answer a set of questions.

2. Give the students time to explore the contents of the box without having the questions. [I found out that circulating the sheet of questions after the students looked through the boxes was best, otherwise, they picked up the first item and worked through the sheet without enjoying the box.]

3. Circulate the sheet of questions, asking:

• What is the title of the item?
• What is the date of the item?
• Who is the author of the item?
• What are important facts you learned from this source?
• Why was this source created?
• What biases might the author have in creating this source?
• What else do I want to know about this source?
• What other sources might help answer my questions?

4. Allow each group time to talk about the items they selected. Then, discuss one or more of the questions above as an entire class. This is also an opportunity for me to talk about the sources that are available digitally.

5. If there is time, allow the students to go to another table and look at the sources used by their classmates.

Notes: This was the first class in which I used an audio element that was related to the subject. I chose “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, but I could have chosen “Beds Are Burning” by Midnight Oil.