Archival Research for Community- and Skill-Building in the Online Writing Classroom
Abstract
This low-stakes assignment invites students in an online corequisite first-year writing course to explore the archives of a local historic African American newspaper as an alternative to more conventional research-based writing tasks. This course is taught at a large public community college with a predominantly white student population in Louisville, Kentucky. For this activity, students first are introduced to the concept of archives through a reading and a video. Next, they are invited to freely explore the digitized newspaper archive, choose one article that captures their interest to read in full and sharing a short summary of it along with a reflection on their experience of navigating the digital archive on a discussion board. Finally, each student is asked to respond to at least two classmates, looking for harmonies and tensions between their and their classmates’ summarized articles and experiences in the archive. The local focus of this assignment encourages students to see research as personal and quite literally close to home, while the focus on reflection and response encourages students to work collaboratively to overcome challenges when navigating difficult digital sources. In an online writing classroom, which can often be an isolating and unfamiliar space, particularly for the historically underserved populations most likely to be in a developmental writing course, this assignment encourages students to embrace their roles as researchers in community with other researchers.
- Journal
- Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments
- Published
- 2025-02-25
- DOI
- 10.31719/pjaw.v9i1.205
- CompPile
- Search in CompPile ↗
- Topics
Citation Context
Cited by in this index (0)
No articles in this index cite this work.
Cites in this index (0)
No references match articles in this index.
Related Articles
-
Pedagogy Oct 2025Felisa Baynes-Ross; Caitlin Cawley; Caroline Hagood; Mira Zaman
-
College Composition and Communication Dec 2024“You could have students who barely speak English with someone who’s almost ready to go to comp”: Latinx Basic Writers in Iowa Community Colleges ↗Erin E. Doran
-
Literacy in Composition Studies May 2016Beyond Basic Reading and Writing: The People’s House and the Political Literacy Education of the Student-Activists of the Black Liberation Front International, 1968-1975 ↗Karega, Joy
-
Composition Forum Oct 2025
-
Pedagogy Oct 2025Megan Shea; Nate Mickelson; Jenni Quilter; Sahar Romani; Christina Van Houten