Education Commons^™

Serving Through Transcribing: Preserving History While Building Community, Julie Centofanti, Mollie Hartup

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Community is a foundational element in honors education. During the global pandemic, students reimagined ways to connect in order to build community and serve one another. Authors describe a virtual collaboration in transcription, where honors students gathered to participate in digital transcribe-a-thons. These informal groupings evolved into a transcribing club that met three times a week (collectively logging more than 1,600 hours) and transcribed over 16,000 historical documents. A study of participating transcribers reveals enhanced historical knowledge, skill building, and opportunities for relationships with students of varying interests and backgrounds despite edicts for social distancing. While a common feature of …