Practical Strategies for Developing a Community Focused Blended Learning Project
Submission Type
20-minute Presentation
Abstract
In this presentation, we will share our experiences developing the Glassboro Memory Mapping project, a collaborative project that incorporates blended learning within both a Cultural Geography Honors Course and an internship program. We will share our experiences (missteps and successes), methods, technologies, and recommended strategies for developing a community focused blended learning project.
Start Date
5-22-2019 1:30 PM
End Date
5-22-2019 2:45 PM
Description
In this presentation, we will share our experiences developing the Glassboro Memory Mapping project, a collaborative project that incorporates blended learning within both a Cultural Geography Honors Course and an internship program. We will share our experiences (missteps and successes), methods, technologies, and recommended strategies for developing a community focused blended learning project.
The Glassboro Memory Mapping project was developed as an innovative community partnership between Rowan University’s Cultural Geography Honors Course, the Rowan University Digital Scholarship Center, the Glassboro Historical Society, and the Heritage Glass Museum. Utilizing digital scholarship, blended learning methods, and historical and cultural geography research methods, the project explores:
- How digital scholarship can be leveraged to increase student and community emotional attachment to, intellectual curiosity about, and appreciation for a local community's heritage.
- How historical, digital archive collections can be used to enhance place-based experience and engagement in the present.
Attendees will learn how the project created a publicly accessible online digital archive containing a wide variety of material related to the history and development of Glassboro, NJ. This material includes historical photographs, video, audio recordings, documents, maps, oral histories, digitized books, student projects, and a comprehensive resource list. The attendees will also learn how we used traditional face-to-face class meetings, accessing online content, and exploring historical societies and museums, so that students can learn to use campus and community resources to research historical buildings, people, and events related to Glassboro, NJ. Attendees will also learn the process of how students wrote archive records and developed an interactive online Scalar project related to their scholarly interest.
The development of this project provides geography students with relevant, real-world experience (in both a course and an internship program) including fieldwork, research methods and writing, interview skills, critical and spatial thinking, creative and design thinking, GIS, metadata, handling archival material, and digital media development. Students are provided opportunities to autonomously investigate a wide range of issues and explore research methods within the fields of geography, public history, and museum and archival studies. In addition, students gain unique personal experiences interacting with a diverse multigenerational community while also working to document memories and preserve (and potentially conserve) endangered historical material and information directly related to the founding and economic development of Glassboro, NJ and the United States.
Attendees will gain insight into how to develop a community-based project within a course.
Practical Strategies for Developing a Community Focused Blended Learning Project
In this presentation, we will share our experiences developing the Glassboro Memory Mapping project, a collaborative project that incorporates blended learning within both a Cultural Geography Honors Course and an internship program. We will share our experiences (missteps and successes), methods, technologies, and recommended strategies for developing a community focused blended learning project.
Comments
Please note that the digital archive is under development.
The project is currently online at:
https://glassborohistory.org/digitalarchive/