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Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2015

Curriculum and Social Inquiry

Selected Works

College students

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Full-Text Articles in Education

Archives Alive!: Librarian-Faculty Collaboration And An Alternative To The Five-Page Paper, Tom Keegan, Kelly Mcelroy Aug 2015

Archives Alive!: Librarian-Faculty Collaboration And An Alternative To The Five-Page Paper, Tom Keegan, Kelly Mcelroy

Tom Keegan

The short research paper is ubiquitous in undergraduate liberal arts education. But is this assignment type an effective way to assess student learning or writing skills? We argue that it rarely is, and instead serves as an artifact maintained out of instructor familiarity with and unnecessary allegiance to timeworn conceptions of “academia.” As an alternative, we detail the Archives Alive! assignment developed by librarians and faculty at the University of Iowa and designed to bring Rhetoric students into contact with archival collections and digital skills. We also discuss how librarians can collaborate with instructors on new assignment models that build …