Sample Assignment

This Sample Assignement was created by Dr. Rebecca Scofield (History Dept., University of Idaho) for her class, The Long 1960s and is used with her permission.

Oral History as Data Assignment Description

Oral histories provide crucial primary sources for historians. These interactions—and the recordings and transcripts that remain—offer historians the opportunity to understand how people experienced the past and choose to remember it. Rather than offering a “what really happened” account, these sources often provide greater context about people’s memories of an event, person, or era.

Oral histories are troublesome documents as well. They are influenced by the questions of the collector. They are shaped by time, distance, and a desire to remember things a certain way. It is important when you collect these texts that you keep these factors in mind, even as we acknowledge that all of this is part of the collaborative process.

Oral historians have been aided in making the stories they collect public through the expansion of the Digital Humanities. As our Digital Librarian Olivia Wikle notes, “Digital Humanities can be defined as the process of utilizing technology to ask (and answer) traditional humanities questions in new ways.” Digital History “can range from asking traditional humanities-oriented questions about digital media and computing technologies, to using computational tools and methods to investigate historical data.”

This course will provide you the opportunity to gain training in both public history and digital history as we undertake a collective oral history DH project. You will be asked to do the work that historians do—interviewing, coding, tagging, uploading, and writing an analytical essay.

Below is a description of each step of this assignment:

  1. Oral History Training:
    1. Please familiarize yourself with the Oral History Association’s Best Practices.
    2. “Interviewing Techniques and Strategies,” Recording Oral History, 103-133
    3. Assignment: Write up three potential questions you’d like to ask and three accompanying tags you could use. Due September 8th.
  2. Conduct Oral History:
    1. Contact and set up a meeting with a person who was living in Moscow during the 1960s.
    2. Gain written or verbal permission to use their oral history.
    3. Conduct the interview following OHA’s best practices. Interviews can be free flowing but limit your interview to 30 minutes to 1 hour.
  3. Transcribe Interview:
    1. You can do transcription by hand or find a free online transcription software (please note that even the best software cannot produce pristine transcriptions). These do not need to be verbatim (ummms, ahhs may be omitted).
    2. Write up a summary paragraph that provides biographical information and major themes of the interview.
    3. Format the transcript as a CSV with appropriate tags.
    4. Due October 11th.
  4. Upload to website:
    1. CDIL will provide in-class instructions (also find them here:)
    2. Due October 25th.
  5. Write Finale Essay:
    1. Write a final paper, 5 pages double spaced, on history and memory about the 1960s. This paper will be grounded in 3 oral histories from our collective database. You should make an argument about how people like to remember the era, incorporating additional primary and secondary sources from the course.
    2. Due December 15th.

Grading Rubric

Excellent Developing Needs Improvement
Questions/Tags Complete and Thoughtful Difficult to follow, poorly constructed, or not on topic. Incomplete.
Interview Demonstrates careful thought, consideration for your narrator, and attention to best practices. Demonstrates interest and engagement with topic. Some minor issues with equipment, structure, time limit, etc. Poorly structured interview or inattentive to narrator’s needs.
Transcription Content Error-free transcription. Competent transcription with minor errors. Incomplete or quick transcription with numerous typographical errors.
CSV/Tags/Upload Fully uploaded, neat CSV with appropriate tags (minimum 3 used). Competent CSV with minor typographical errors, fewer tags, or unclear speaker initials. Incomplete or posted with numerous typographical errors; unclear speaker initials; lacking biographical information; insufficient tags.

Final Essay

Formatting: Student’s name and title of source, 1-2 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font, and 1-inch margins.

Mechanics: Includes a clear structure and an active writing-style. Avoids grammatical mistakes and typos. Avoids common writing pitfalls like passive voice, contractions, wordiness, and over-generalizations.

Content: Contains a strongly worded and identifiable analytic argument connecting the content of your primary sources to the historical questions being addressed in other readings and class.

Sources: Cites/Quotes a minimum of 3 oral histories from our collective website and engages with appropriate primary and secondary sources from the course. Additional research may be necessary but is not required.

Excellent Competent Needs Improvement
Formatting No formatting errors 1 formatting error 2 or more formatting errors
Mechanics Structure is clear and builds the argument in a convincing and compelling way. Sentences contain almost no grammar issues, use active language, and maintain a scholarly tone. May contain a few grammatical issues, but overall ideas are still clear. Prolific and persistent grammar problems. Lacks clarity or precision in describing ideas. Does not adhere to a scholarly manner of writing.
Content Strong thesis statement that clearly connects historically-situated concepts between several readings. This argument is consistently supported with clear evidence and quotations throughout the paper. Relatively clear argument supported by sufficient evidence. Focuses on summary or statement of fact, rather than original argument. Lack of argument, unclear analysis, or unexplained evidence.
Sources Engaged with at least three oral histories and a range of other primary and secondary sources.

Suggested Readings

  • Valerie Raliegh Yow, Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).
  • Anderson, Kathryn, and Dana C. Jack. “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses,” Chap. 1 in Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, edited by Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, 11-26. New York: Routledge, 1991.
  • Capturing a Living Past: An Oral History Primer
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