Tips for teaching Bitcurator for beginners online

[Natalie Vielfaure]

Hi,

I help to facilitate a class on digital preservation every year in the fall, and we typically have a hands-on session where students get to use Bitcurator in a computer lab on campus. I'm currently adapting my sessions to work in an online format as in-person sessions may not happen until 2021, but I'm finding it challenging to adapt this particular session. I'm wondering if anyone has any good tips or resources for teaching Bitcurator online? I'd like keep the hands-on component, but every year we have people with various levels of digital literacy and it may be asking too much to have each participant install it on their own computers. This approach might also lead to a lot more time spent troubleshooting issues, rather than going through various exercises. I'm looking for recommendations on good online video tutorials that are designed for beginners and that students could watch for free to familiarize themselves with Bitcurator and get an idea of how to navigate through a Linux operating system, as this is usually a new experience for students as well. I'd also be curious to hear if anyone has ever done an online training session on Bitcurator and if so, was there was a practical/hands-on component to engage the audience a bit more? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[Hannah Wang]

Hi Natalie,

I'm the Project Manager for the BitCuratorEdu Project, where we are studying digital forensics education for libraries and archives students/professionals. We will be producing open learning modules around BitCurator, so your question is something that I think about a lot!

The BitCurator Consortium has a list of screencasts and webinars here: https://bitcuratorconsortium.org/videos. The screencasts would probably be the most helpful for introducing your students to BitCurator, since they walk through using individual tools in the environment. One of the things that we are currently working on is writing discussion questions/prompts around these videos to help create context for students - for example, why was X action necessary, what is the benefit of using Y tool, etc. These discussion questions will be geared toward helping instructors in online learning environments, especially if they can't have students install the software on their own computers.

In terms of online training sessions for BitCurator, one thing that we've heard is that instructors employ a flipped classroom approach, having students do pre work/exercises outside of class time, then come to class to share experiences and ask questions of the instructor. Several instructors also do an "evaluate the tool" exercise where the students can look at documentation to do an assessment if they can't download the tool itself. I would also be interested in hearing other strategies for online BitCurator teaching from members of this list!

If you are interested in sharing your thoughts about teaching BitCurator in the classroom, we would love to speak with you! And if you would like to be put on the list to pilot learning modules as we release them, please let me know. Feel free to message me off-list at hanna...@educopia.org.

Hannah

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Hannah Wang | she/her/hers

Project Manager, BitCuratorEdu

Educopia Institute

Working from Sheboygan, WI