Doing collaborative projects with students and community partners

11 September 2014 – editors

Recently, Jane Becker initiated a conversation about doing collaborative projects with students and community partners on the public history educators’ listserv. An edited and condensed version of the discussion follows.

Photo credit: Berdea, Wikimedia Commons

Jane Becker: For the past few years, I have developed collaborative projects for my public history graduate students to undertake with community partners. The results have varied widely, and I’ve struggled with incorporating this semester-long “practical” assignment into the course as a whole and balancing the need to provide students with opportunities to put theory into practice with the other “agendas” of the class.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for a class of relatively new public history students over the course of a semester to achieve the kind of work that might be useful to an organization, even if the task is relatively modest. This is one issue driving my effort to consider other models for introducing first year public history graduate students to “practice.”

I am eager to learn how colleagues incorporate community-based public history projects into their graduate public history courses. For example:

• How do you fit the project into the course as a whole?
• What kinds of projects and products have been most successful?
• How have you worked specifically with partners in your neighboring communities?
• Do you provide significant technical training for students?
• Are there models for such projects that have proved most useful to you?

Lucinda Hannington responded with a general comment on the value of hands-on training for students: The more time students can spend out of the classroom and actually doing hands-on work, the better. Finding a way to balance the in-class and experiential parts of a course is a challenge, but providing students with the opportunities to get into the community is crucial. Yes, the results will vary but so will the places where the students are working and the resources that the students will have. Perhaps the grading should be less on the finished project and more on a reflective writing assignment that documents their process and how theory is either exemplified or thrown out the window.

Donna DeBlasio offered an example of a class project that led to an exhibit, brochure, and walking tour. She also discussed the differences between the types of projects advanced graduate students are capable of completing versus those she assigns to beginning students: This past spring my Practicum in Applied History undertook a project as part of a memorandum of agreement with Youngstown State University’s College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The YSU engineers had federal funding to erect two 86-foot-tall wind turbines that were on the edge of a National Register historic district, as well as four individually listed properties. The mitigation proposed by the Ohio Historic Preservation Office was doing something to educate the public about the importance and value of historic preservation. The solution was that my students would create an exhibit and a brochure on the history of Wick Avenue, which was originally the city’s Millionaire’s Row. Students also had to create and give walking tours of the historic district.

The seven students in that class were in their final year in our MA program, and all of them had taken the Museum Curation class the previous fall semester. Our first-year students don’t normally get to work on these kinds of projects. The students in the Curation class did get to do a small exhibit at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, which my program operates for the Ohio Historical Society. It was nothing elaborate, but it was an opportunity for the students to get a small taste of working on an exhibit.

Jane Becker agreed with Donna’s observation regarding the types of projects different levels of students are able to undertake and added a comment about balancing research, analysis, and other tasks: The issue that Donna raises of where grad students are in their program when they undertake these projects is an important one. One of the challenges I encounter is how the project fits into the class as whole. While we explore best practices and case studies in interpretation over a range of types of public history venues and media, these projects demand even more of students: collaborating with community partners, listening and responding to their needs, and figuring out their roles as public historians and how to perform in those roles.

Then there is the huge challenge of being a historian and employing research and analytical skills. Students struggle with even this familiar role, and they often devote less to this fundamental work of the historian and more to the practical tasks that come with mastering a process or medium and with collaborating with community partners and fellow students. Balancing all these demands, without sacrificing research, is quite a challenge for students.

John Krugler offered an example of a successful class project that was team-taught and led to a digital publication: This past semester in my Applied History class (Hist 4101-5101) we set out to research and write an iBook on historic preservation. We used five houses as our case studies. Prior to our first class, I selected four houses that had been saved from the wrecker’s ball and one that was demolished. The class was team-taught–one history professor and three “tech” experts from Marquette’s Instruction Media Center.

We divided the class of into four teams. Each team had to research the house, create a storyline, find photos, and conduct video interviews with interested parties. Initially, my colleagues from the Instruction Media Center used class time (two 75-minute classes each week) to introduce the technology. This included the basics on how to create an iBook, how to make good use of a camera, how to analyze photos, how to use Photoshop, and how to produce and edit videos. Outside of class time, I met students individually or in teams to work on the research and development of the storylines.

After about two months, the students submitted their chapters, and we began the arduous work of editing. Generally, we edited in class. It is a cumbersome way to do editing, but the students benefited greatly from the experience. We also critiqued the embedded photo essays and videos. In class, we sought a degree of uniformity. We wanted it to look and sound like a book, not a collection of essays.

Jay Price built on previous comments by discussing the distinction between projects for clients and class exercises that are intended only as learning experiences for students: I have found over the years that in the case of every project, one has to decide whether this is primarily a project for a client or a learning experience for a student. A project can be both, but those two goals are different with different expectations.

Projects that I do with students are “special topics” or other designations and require students to volunteer to be part of things. The Arcadia book projects that I do with students, for example, all have students step forward to take on that responsibility, which may also not fit nicely in a semester-long format. There has to be some level of commitment from the student from the outset to make it work.

Introduction to Public History classes don’t have students with equal levels of skill or levels of interest for a given project. I’d rather have a separate arrangement that self-selects for interest level and skill level. Introductory public history courses often attract a percentage of students who are more curious about what public history is and entails rather than committed students who are ready to get in the trenches. For classes, I like having modest practice pieces that might go to a client as part of a class but that is not required to go forward to the client.

Read more about community partnerships and public history training here.

Jane Becker is graduate internship coordinator and lecturer in the history department at University of Massachusetts, Boston. Lucinda Hannington is Director of Education at Victoria Mansion in Portland, Maine. Donna DeBlasio is Director of the Center for Applied History, Youngstown State University. John Krugler is professor and public history adviser in the history department at Marquette University. Jay Price directs the public history program at Wichita State University.