Using Defined Learning Objectives in the Burns Library Instruction Program, Fall 2019

In the Fall 2019 semester, Burns Library staff has run 42 instruction sessions for almost 850 Boston College students. Working with faculty across 11 disciplines, we’ve custom designed active learning sessions around defined learning goals. We are tired, but we are really happy to see our efforts pay off as students acquire and sharpen their research and inquiry skills, both in the classroom and in follow up visits to the Reading Room.

A big part of what we do is demystify special collections and demonstrate that these unique materials are accessible to all BC students for any reason. Sometimes simply having students get their hands on rare books and archival material is all it takes to get over the concept that Burns Library is only for “real” scholars (whatever that is) and graduate students. As we routinely tell them, researchers come from around the world to use these collections that are in your backyard, so you might as well take advantage of them, too.

The Fall 2019 semester has challenged us to be creative in how we use our collections to develop a range of skills related to primary source research. We’ve tried lots of new things, and each session proves to be just as much a learning experience for the librarians as for the students. We’ve enjoyed planning and teaching all our classes, and have highlighted a few below from different disciplines that have been ideal collaborations between the instruction team, faculty, and students, and resulted in some robust special collections experiences.

Matthew Delvaux, Modern History II (History)

Learning Objectives: After these sessions, students will:

• Have a greater understanding of special collections repositories and how they are different from research libraries and museums
• Identify, articulate, and communicate their observations of interacting with rare materials 
• Distinguish how the physical format contributes to understanding meaning/use/context
• Locate primary sources using various discovery tools and appropriate search strategies
• Be familiar with the most common ways primary sources are described through archival finding aids.

Professor Matthew Delvaux used to work in Burns Library in his student days, and thought it was important for his students to have an understanding of special collections repositories and collections. To that end, he designed some pre-work assignments that fed into the classroom sessions we designed together; we then contributed to fieldwork assignments that helped build the students’ abilities and confidence to locate, request, and interpret primary source materials relevant to the class topic. The scaffolding we and Matt provided allowed 70 students to complete increasingly complex research visits to the Reading Room without panic or procrastination.

Rachel Carpentier, Introduction to Music (Music)

Learning Objectives: after this session, students will:

• Be able to “read” the physicality of a book and interpret size, decoration, wear, etc
• Understand the difference between experiencing the physical and digital object

Professor Rachel Carpentier decided to use some of Boston College’s digitized music manuscripts for her class. Before their session at Burns, students were given links to digitized materials, and asked What did you notice about the words or notes on this document? Could you read any of the words or notes? What do you think this book is made of? Was this written in pencil, ink, printed, or typed? Upon arriving in Burns Library, the students rotated amongst the volumes they had already worked with in digital form, revisiting the pre-work questions and also addressing How big is it? Did any of your answers to the previous questions change from when you looked at this online? Why? When would you prefer to use the online or physical version? Why? Almost universally, the students preferred the original copies, but could not grasp that handwriting could be that neat and regular, and were surprised that the materials were both much larger and much smaller than they appeared online.

The massive Augustinian gradual with the sanctorale (MS2005-059) always makes an impression after viewing digitized collections online. 

Rebekah Mitsein, Atlantic Passages (English)

Learning Objectives: after this session, students will:

• Become more familiar and confident using special collections / special collections repositories within the framework of an academic discipline or area of study.

Professor Rebekah Mitsein wanted her graduate English class to gain familiarity and competence in visiting special collections libraries, knowing how/what they need to do to find materials supporting their research topics, and strengthening their interpretation skills. So, we gave a crash course in finding, requesting, and handling special collections—everything from the existence and availability of evidence to truncated and wildcard searching; from finding aid description to citations, copyright, and permissions. The session prepared them for their assignment: search for and find a Burns Library resource relevant to a weekly reading, use it in the Reading Room, write a four page paper on what was discovered about its purpose, context, and relevance to course readings, themes, or critical questions, and share it with the class. Students have been returning steadily to the Reading Room to use materials throughout the semester.

Jenna Tonn, Women in U.S. Medicine (History)

Learning Objectives: After these sessions, students will:

• Demonstrate strategies for analyzing sources
• Put materials in historical, social, or cultural contexts
• Recognize that a source can inspire potential subject keywords
• ID potential keywords that can can expand topical searches
• Locate sources using the library catalog effectively
• Apply these lessons to  searching databases, etc.
• Construct narrative
• Build Analytical Skills
• Begin to understand evidence/validity/bias/authority

We spent two sessions with Professor Jenna Tonn’s Women in U.S. Medicine class. After an in-class introduction to Burns Library and special collections, the class visited the Fine Print Room to analyze groups of print materials, brainstorm keywords and other types of sources that might be helpful, and assign themes. We then demonstrated searching the catalog with keywords and search terms from each theme. The second session involved groups of students finalizing themes for their group’s materials, and selecting titles that best represented that theme, before coming together to group write an introduction. By the end of the sessions, the class had curated an online exhibit, Representation & Reality: The Evolution of Medicine and Women’s Roles Within the Field from 1699-1960. It was gratifying to those of us who have to coordinate and construct library exhibitions that students also learned “how hard it is to write a title of an exhibition,” and “how to work well with others in composing an exhibition.”

Michael Naughton, Classical Mechanics (Physics)

Learning Objectives: After this session, students will:

• Know how to properly handle rare volumes
• Directly interact with objects and interpret physical evidence
• Gain deeper understandings of the class topic by closely examining relevant material

Physics groupies take pictures with the Principia

As a librarian with a humanities background, the class request from Physics Professor Michael Naughton struck a small quiver of fear into my heart. His request was for his upper level physics majors to visit to see the first edition of Newton’s Principia and other classical physics texts in order to write a short report describing an aspect within the domain of classical physics or a rare book viewed, or a previously unknown fact about a book and/or its author. I knew we could do more than a show and tell. After a quick topic search (“What is Classical Mechanics”), and some deep diving into the catalog, subject headings, and holdings, we were able to design a new activity – Newtonian Bingo. We selected 15 books related to classical mechanics, created three different bingo cards, and determined that students able to get 5 across, down, or diagonally using different titles would win prizes (Burns Buttons!). Having a far greater grasp of the topics than we did, the students dove in and really engaged with the books and their content, even asking for scrap paper to work – and disprove – equations presented in them.

We can neither confirm nor deny the solution to this equation

Stacie Kent, Colonial Pasts, Global Present (History)

Learning Objectives: After these sessions, students will:

• Understand the purpose of special collections libraries and how to access material
• Identify and communicate information found in primary sources, including
• Summarize the content of the source 
  • Identify and report key components such as how it was created, by whom, when, and what it is.
• Critically evaluate the perspective of the creator(s) of a primary source, including tone, subjectivity, and biases
• Use close reading skills to place materials in historical, societal, or cultural context
• Effectively place sources in class conversation

Professor Stacie Kent first used Burns Library for her Colonial Pasts, Global Presents class last year, and, upon discovering the depth and breadth of the Williams Ethnological Collection, resolved to make it a significant part of her teaching going forward. This semester, she held four sessions in the Fine Print Classroom of Burns Library. Her students used a wide variety of publications to explore and reinforce themes discussed in class and, after each in-library session, had follow up assignments asking them to relate their special collections sources to class readings. Students really appreciated the close connection between their work in and outside of Burns library, saying they ” learned how to apply the ideas from a book read in class to my analysis of a primary source”

Annie Malady, First Year Writing Seminar (English)

Learning Objectives: After this session, students will:

• Recognize and demonstrate that primary sources can be used as evidence for a range of scholarly arguments
• Hypothesize about what research questions a primary source raises and answers
• Realize that relevant primary sources can come from many different collections

Professor Malady, who currently works in Burns Library, asked about bringing their class into Burns Library, and we worked with them to construct a session near and dear to most first years’ hearts: Boston College history and culture. It was important to them that their students use archival materials as sources and learn how to develop research questions around that source. After browsing through some pre-selected archival sources and thinking about what questions they raised, students selected pre-written research questions from a basket, went to the source they thought would be most helpful in answering the questions, and explained why they chose it. Our goal was to have students with different research questions choose the same object and/or students with the same research questions choose different objects – strengthening the lesson that many questions can be asked of the same thing and that research questions can/should be approached from different angles. Students then chose an object and wrote their own research questions, so they could be better prepared for their next instruction session at O’Neill Library, where they would learn more about searching databases for secondary source evidence to support their research inquiries.

We enjoyed all of our classes at Burns Library, but when we know what skills we are being asked to teach (leaving the various class subjects to the experts), it is usually easy for us to design a session that both enhances the course objective and takes some of the mystery out of special collections.

We are now turning our attention to the Spring 2020 semester. If you are interested in learning more about the Burns Instruction program, booking an active learning session targeted to defined learning objectives, designing an Out of Classroom Experience, or developing an assignment that incorporates Burns Library materials, please contact me at katherine.fox@bc.edu

• Katherine Fox, Head of Public Services and Engagement, Burns Library