Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to offer sessions for adult learners, which have been very rewarding experiences for me–and I hope for them. In partnership with the Fayetteville Public Libraries’ Adult Services Department, and with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), I’ve developed two classes that encourage participants to explore what it means to do archival research and to demystify the work of archivists here at the University of Arkansas.
Each class began with an explanation of core archival practices, including: assessing, arranging and describing, preserving, and providing access to records. These are aspects of archival work that I shy away from talking about when working with undergraduates. I’ve found when I delve into that kind of detail about our profession students appear less engaged than when they have time to literally put their hands on history by interacting directly with the materials that relate to their class content or themes.
However, adult learners seem to enjoy hearing about the theory behind our practice and different aspects of our profession. Several participants tend to be collection donors to our department or former faculty members, and are therefore keenly aware of the important role archives play in documenting and preserving history. As we strive to document more of the student experience at the UofA, I hope students will begin asking more about the behind the scenes aspects of our work.
In the most recent class I taught as part of the OLLI program, I more directly applied my teaching methods to the course agenda. I have always felt that a constructivist learning model best fosters engagement and the development of a shared understanding of the given topic. What that means in practice is that I don’t enter into these classes assuming that I know every last thing there is to know about the topic we’ll be talking about. Learning from one another- a core aspect of this learning theory- is a good part of the fun. Instead, I focus my preparation for these classes on thinking about the kinds of materials that might seem most relevant to the participants.
In the example of the OLLI class, I focused on the World War II and 1950s periods here in Fayetteville to guide the participants through what’s called a close reading analysis of a page of advertisements in The Traveler as well as a letter from the digitized collection of Richard L. Holt Sr letters written to his wife while stationed abroad during World War II. In those discussions we talked about the different themes that emerged from those documents, including topics related to the economy, family life, and changing face of Fayetteville’s downtown area.
Most of these sessions are then devoted to giving the students time to read through and analyze the items I’ve brought with me from our collections. I tend to focus on collections recently opened for research, which you can find linked from our website. It’s exciting to see these collections used- sometimes for the first time- by these adult learners, who take tremendous care and have great interest in the content in front of them.
Similar to the attention paid by graduate students and upper-level undergraduates, these adult learners are eager to understand the bigger context of the stories that emerge from the materials. Our discussions at the end of each class, often include the concept of a “spring board.” My intention with bringing specific items and folders from these collections is to invite the students to seek out additional information or find a spark within the materials that interests them and that they’d like to explore further.
Working with adult learners is a central part of how our Special Collections Department fulfills the University’s land grant mission. It’s my privilege to be able to offer these classes to explore the world through our archives.