RESOURCE: Lesson Planning 101: Primary Source Instructional Design for Archivists

The Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Collective is a hub of articles, best practices, and resources supporting education and teaching with primary sources for practitioners across libraries, museums and archives as well as those coming to that work from outside of those spaces.

Mae Casey (Penn State University) recently published an article on the TPS Collective entitled, “Lesson Planning 101: Primary Source Instructional Design for Archivists.” While archives specific, Casey’s article would be a useful tool for anyone looking to bring active learning activities into their class sessions.

The lesson plan focuses on helping the instructor think through the scope of their lesson and what is most important to focus on. The article’s explanation of  ‘backwards design’ and general practices for planning hands-on and engaging lessons with clear actions for instructors and students is widely applicable beyond archival instruction.

In Digital Humanities and/or Digital Scholarship instruction when teaching new tools, methods, or exploration of digital objects breaking down lessons beginning with outcomes, identifying potentially new vocabulary or concepts is important to keep lessons clear and accessible. The template that TPS includes in the article is a helpful outline for planning lessons starting with those sections and then moving through the rest of the lesson. The template would be a useful resource for anyone teaching hands-on lessons looking to clearly outline teacher and student roles throughout each part of the instruction session.

If you are interested in using the template or looking for more information TPS also shares the original toolkit published alongside the template which guides readers through how to use it.