Project: An Oral History of This Place

The driving question

How has this place changed, and who remembers it.

Why this one works

This produces genuinely new material. Local environmental and social history mostly exists only in people's memories, and once those people are gone it is not recoverable.

It also puts students in front of adults as researchers rather than as children.

How it runs

Weeks one and two: design the questions and pilot them on each other. Piloting catches almost every problem and takes ten minutes.

Week three: consent. Written, explained, with a clear statement of where this will be published. This is a real research standard and it should be met.

Weeks four to six: interview and transcribe.

Weeks seven and eight: find the patterns across interviews, which is where the history actually appears.

Week nine: produce and give copies back to the interviewees.

What gets produced

A bound collection of transcripts with an analysis, and a copy returned to every person interviewed.

Where it goes wrong

Accepting the first answer. Teach one follow up prompt, can you tell me more about that, and require it. That single phrase transforms the transcripts.

Related

Project Tracker is the one page planning sheet for any of these.