Assignment
Visual Aids and Descriptors in Primary Source Evaluation & Curation
This lesson was developed for HIS484 (Topics in the History of Gender and
Sexuality/Pride in the time of HIV/AIDS) in the Spring of 2018. The students’ final assignment
culminated in a multimedia or digital research project on a topic of their choosing and heavily
relied on primary source and visual materials. This lesson focuses on how students, as content
curators and analysts, can engage in deeper analysis and contextualization of the sources they
present through their projects. Students collectively analyzed one example from a particular
resource that they are already acquainted with and considered the language used by both
systems of knowledge and the communities that they are studying, in order to help them form
thoughtful, critical, and reflective perspectives.
Students will be able to analyze and contextualize primary source and visual materials related to HIV/AIDS.
Students will be able to articulate how knowledge is socially constructed and contested and how/why language evolves over time.
Students will engage with art as a primary source related to their research topics.
Information Literacy concepts:
Individual or Group:
Ability Level:
See full lesson plan/pdf
This worked well with a small class, but may be more challenging with a larger class. I would likely have students work in groups to evaluate different works of art using the google worksheet instead of doing one for the whole class.