teaching — News and Notes

From the History Classroom to the World: Skills, Competencies, and Their Transferability

History education develops transferable skills and competencies, including critical rationality, design and implementation, persuasive communication, creative analysis, and collaboration. These skills align with professional and civic success, emphasizing the value of history beyond academic content.

Blog PostsJason KellyNovember 5, 2024history, teaching, skills, competenciesComment

Historiography (2): Taking Notes Using the "Historiography Worksheet"

There are many different ways to introduce students to historiography. One of my primary tools is a "Historiography Worksheet." The purpose of the Historiography Worksheet is threefold. First, it teaches students about the complexities of historiography--as both a practice and a field of study. Second, it provides a framework for classroom discussion. Third, it offers students a standardized note-taking format that helps students develop their skills analyzing and synthesizing historical arguments.

TeachingJason KellySeptember 7, 2021historiography, history, research methods, research, teaching, teaching resources, note-takingComment

Historiography (1): Introducing Historiography

Historiography is essential to the historian's craft, so it is worthwhile spending some time understanding what it is as field of inquiry, how historians use historiography in their work, and what historiographical techniques might be valuable to the practicing historian.

Blog Posts, TeachingJason KellyAugust 15, 2021historiography, teaching, teaching resources, podcastComment

Archive as Pedagogy: Oral History and a Journal of the Plague Year

In March 2020, the COVID-19 Oral History Project, based at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), teamed up with A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 (JOTPY), based at Arizona State University to create and curate a series of oral histories focused on the lived experience of the pandemic. Among the results of this collaboration has been a focus on research-based pedagogy and learning for undergraduate students, graduate students, and the public at large. This pedagogical emphasis has both shaped the archive and has been shaped by the process of developing the archive.

Research, TeachingJason KellyDecember 18, 2020COVID-19, oral history, research and topics, pedagogy, teaching, interview, digital history, digital humanities, pandemicComment

Rights-Making and Rights-Taking: A Module on Stonewall and Intersectionality

In the end, I decided to frame rights in the context of "rights-making" and "rights-taking." By "rights-making," I asked the students to reflect on the fact that civil, human, constitutional, etc. rights are always made in a historical context. In practice, rights are never constant. They are negotiated, claimed, and fought for. By "rights-taking," I wanted them to think about how, in these historical contexts, rights are taken (i.e. claimed) by activists or taken away by those with power. Rather than working from a history-of or a taxonomical approach to rights, we would focus on rights as an assemblage of ideas, concepts, social relations, symbolic forms, claims, laws, practices, and materialities in motion.

TeachingJason KellySeptember 23, 2020teaching, teaching resources, intersectionality, LGBTQ+, oral history, historical memory, filmComment

Digital Audio for Public Historians (4): Editing Your Audio

Today, I am going to work with you on some basic audio editing techniques. As you will remember from class, we could use any number of programs to edit, such as GarageBand or Audacity. Since we all have a free subscription to Adobe Audition, I am going to demonstrate with it.

While the techniques that I am showing you today look different in different programs, all audio editing programs have the functionality that I am demonstrating.