Reconceptualizing the Classroom: An Immersive Digital Primary Source Exercise During COVID-19

Abstract

The Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture is part of the Libraries at Salisbury University and serves as a campus humanities research laboratory. With the closure of the University campus in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, staff and faculty quickly transitioned to online instruction. In response, Nabb Center staff initiated several activities including virtual classroom projects, online exhibits, and the creation of a COVID-19 collection. These activities unexpectedly presented our organization with new opportunities to expand our engagement within the University and broader community and will have a lasting impact on our instruction and outreach beyond the pandemic.

From “Outside the Box” to “Out the Window”: Teaching with Primary Sources through the Pandemic

“…These lessons would be made abundantly clear with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. 19 It is unsurprising, then, that with the arrival of the pandemic there emerged a new and urgent need to foster a dialogue with educators about what support they needed from libraries and museums to effectively teach with primary sources. 20 Articles such as these make up one facet of a much broader research trend to analyze and understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education.…”