By Victoria Jones
Last year, I had the opportunity to join a community of practice that focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) through Florida Gulf Coast University’s faculty development center. As our monthly meetings continued, I became more interested in two research paths: incorporating pedagogical frameworks into archival instruction and internships. These interests culminated in a study to examine the effect of using student-negotiated curriculum in an archival internship. As the University Archivist and the faculty of record for the history internship course, I felt perfectly positioned to explore a different way to approach archival internships.
Internships, as defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, are “a form of experiential learning that integrates knowledge and theory learned in the classroom with practical application and skills development in a professional workplace setting.”[1] Similarly, the Society of American Archivists advises that internships should be designed “to connect the skills and knowledge gained” in coursework to day-to-day professional practice, and interns should “[engage] in meaningful work under the mentorship of experienced … professional.”[2] To ensure that archival internships meet these standards and are, in fact, “meaningful,” some practitioners have developed archival internship programs using specific educational pedagogies or frameworks.[3]
Kopp as well as Denda and Hunter provide excellent examples of effective implementation of a pedagogy-focused internship by intentionally incorporating experiential learning methods into their internship programs.[4] Yet, there is little within the archival literature that addresses using student-negotiated curriculum in internships. A teaching method developed in the 1980s, student-negotiated curriculum disrupts traditional power relationships between interns and supervisors by requiring both parties to negotiate curriculum decisions rather than have them imposed by the internship supervisor.[5] Using student-negotiated curriculum presents an opportunity to tailor archival internships to individual students, thereby creating an environment where they are more invested, engaged, and productive.[6]
Traditionally, there are 10 steps for implementing student-negotiated curriculum design into classes.[7] However, these steps are designed for a traditional class that runs for a full academic term and has 20 to 50 students. A larger class provides opportunities for students to share in small groups before sharing with the class and the instructor. Since an internship is less likely to have enough students to function like this, I adapted the steps for small internships. In the adaptation there are six steps:
- Project Planning: Before the students arrive for their internships, my colleague and I list the projects that need to be completed and that are appropriate for interns.
- Meet with Students: One of the most important steps is explaining the student-negotiated curriculum to interns and getting buy-in. The students may not be accustomed to the idea of negotiating with an authority figure, so it is important that they feel empowered to voice their opinions and to disagree.
- Identify and Share Personal Interests: During this step, students are asked to list what they’d like to learn. This summer, our intern responses included working on specific collections, creating finding aids, and processing physical collections.
- Identify and Share Repository Priorities: I asked students to think beyond themselves to consider what we, the repository, might need. Having interns consider the concerns of the archive allowed me to explain to them that there are numerous stakeholders the department is beholden to and to make clear connections between their work and the department’s success. My colleague and I also used this time to share the specific projects that we drafted during step one.
- Connecting the Themes: Here, I made clear connections between the personal concerns of the interns and the repository concerns. Drawing these connections helped interns understand how the work they would be doing aligned with what they wanted to learn and what needed to be accomplished.
- Selecting Activities: Finally, our interns began to negotiate which projects they would tackle during their internship. Most of the projects were unique opportunities and the interns had to negotiate with each other to decide who would work on what. In addition, we made sure to discuss time management, which also played a crucial role in the negotiation process.
I made clear connections between the personal concerns of the interns and the repository concerns.
Drawing these connections helped interns understand how the work they would be doing aligned with
what they wanted to learn and what needed to be accomplished.
Initially, I struggled with how to incorporate “non-negotiable” elements into the course. These elements include internship hours, weekly journals, mid-term assessments, and final assessments. These are items that must be completed to ensure that we meet standards for the academic departments. Eventually, I reconceptualized these as “negotiable non-negotiables.” For our interns, that meant they were given choice and room to negotiate within these “non-negotiable” elements. For example, each student has a set number of hours that they must complete to receive course credit. That is non-negotiable. However, when the hours are completed is negotiable. The weekly journals are non-negotiable. Since they are graded for completion, each intern can choose how they are submitted and whether that is as text, videos, illustrations, voice notes, etc.
The mid-term and final assessments were also “negotiable non-negotiables.” Each of the assessments was necessary, but there was space to negotiate what would be assessed and how it would be assessed. Through discussion, the interns and I agreed their curated display case would be the activity assessed for their mid-term. We also sat down as a group – two interns and two staff members – to negotiate how the display case would be assessed. Ultimately, we agreed to create a rubric with seven criteria: research, oral presentation, visual presentation, written communication, oral communication teamwork, and project management.
Both interns chose to complete a series of reflective short answer questions for the final assessment. In the self-generated questions, the students asked and answered questions that required that they thoughtfully analyze their work, their process, and their experience. They asked themselves questions like:
- How did the internship align with your expectations?
- What was the most challenging part of the internship?
- What could you have done differently?
- What skills did you learn or improve?
- What [skills] do you think you should focus on more?[8]
It has now been two months since the summer internships ended. After reviewing the student feedback and reflecting on this practice, I am pleased with the results. The main goals and learning outcomes of the internship remained focused on introductory archival theory and practice. However, using student-negotiated curriculum made the alignment between the work we do and the impact on the student and the department clear. In addition, this methodology could reveal surprising skills and knowledge bases of our interns that would otherwise be unknown to me but could help the archive. Finally, I believe that using student student-negotiated curriculum in an archival internship centers students and the student voice. In doing so, we (the supervisors) create an environment where we are facilitators and partners in learning. By design, the voice of students is critical to the success of the internship because they must be engaged, they must speak out, and we must listen.
I believe that using student student-negotiated curriculum in an archival internship centers students and the student voice.
[1] National Associate of Colleges and Employers, “Internship Meaning and Definition: A NACE Guide,” NACE, accessed August 9, 2024 ,https://www.naceweb.org/internships
[2] Society of American Archivists, “Best Practices for Internships as a Component of Graduate Archival Education,” Society of American Archivists, accessed August 9, 2024, https://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/BestPract-Internships.pdf
[3] Kayo Denda and Jennifer Hunter, “Building 21st century skills and creating communities: A team-based engagement framework for student employment in academic libraries,” Journal of Library Administration 56, no. 3 (2016): 251–65. Accessed August 9, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2015.1121662; Maggie Gallup Kopp, “Internships in special collections: Experiential pedagogy, intentional design, and high-impact practice,” Rare Books and Manuscripts 20, no. 1 (2019): 12-27. Accessed August 9. 2024, https://doi.org/10.5860/rbm.20.1.12
[4] Denda and Hunter, “Building 21st century skills and creating communities,” 251-265; Kopp, “Internships in Special Collections,” 12-27.
[5]John Macalister and I.S.P Nation, “Negotiated Syllabuses,” in Language Curriculum Design, (Routledge: New Your, 2009), https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203870730-15/negotiated-syllabuses-john-macalister-nation?context=ubx&refId=1eac172c-5ff5-4430-bd44-d0684e23f29a
[6] Garth Boomer, Cynthia Onore, Nancy Lester, Jonathan Cook, Negotiating the Curriculum: Education for the 21st Century (London: Falmer Press, 1992), 11.
[7] J. Fitzpatrick, E. O’Grady, and J. O’Reilly, “Promoting Student Agentic Engagement through Curriculum: Exploring the Negotiated Integrated Curriculum Initiative,” Irish Educational Studies 37, no. 4 (2018): 453–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1512882
[8] Small word changes were made to the questions to ensure student privacy and anonymity. The author has secured permission from all in these photographs.
Victoria Jones is the University Archivist at Florida Gulf Coast University. She received her MA in History from the University of North Florida and her MLIS from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her areas of interest include primary source instruction, literacy, and assessment