The TL;DR version: repeated exposure and active attention to primary materials can develop some historical skills; more learning happens through observing and participating in discussion. Presentation for Creating Historical Knowledge Socially: New Approaches, Opportunities and Epistemological Implications of Undertaking Research with Citizen Scholars Washington DC, October 2017 Abstract: This 20-minute presentation examines the extent to which crowdsourcing and 'citizen history' projects and discussion platforms enable and encourage the practice of historical thinking. It takes the definitions of historical thinking set out by scholars and institutional bodies and the American Historical Association's 'core competencies' for students in history courses and degree programs as cues for an extensive trace-ethnographic analysis of participant discourse on crowdsourcing and digital community history platforms. This analysis found evidence for the development of historical thinking, situated learning and collective knowledge creation through participation in online communities of practice. Crowdsourcing project forums support many of the behaviours considered typical of communities of practice, including problem solving, requests for information, seeking the experience of past behaviours, coordinating actions, documenting shared knowledge and experiences, and discussing developments. This paper draws on research undertaken for my 2015 PhD, Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research, in which I explored the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history.

1. Historical thinking in crowdsourcing
and citizen history projects
Dr. Mia Ridge, @mia_out
Digital Curator, British Library
Creating Historical Knowledge Socially: New Approaches, Opportunities and
Epistemological Implications of Undertaking Research with Citizen Scholars
Washington DC, October 2017

2. Overview
• Defining crowdsourcing, citizen history
• Defining historical thinking
• Crowdsourcing projects as opportunities for
learning historical thinking
• Crowdsourcing forums as communities of
practice for learning historical thinking
• Finding the limits

3. Asking the public to help with tasks that
contribute to a shared, significant goal or
research interest related to cultural heritage
collections or knowledge.
The activities and/or goals should be inherently
rewarding.
Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/5786204856

4. Models for citizen history from citizen science
The crowdsourcing model: assisting scientists
through participation in data processing tasks
The scholarship model: some definitions
additionally include participants in data analysis
and research design

5. More engagement = less
productivity
https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3072281873

6. A note on research methods
• Used 'trace ethnography' (R. Stuart Geiger;
David Ribes, 2011) on documentary traces of
computer-mediated communication,
particularly forum and social media posts by
participants and stakeholders
• Also reviewed project documentation,
publications, interface 'microcopy'

8. What is historical thinking?

9. AHA core historical competencies
• the ability to engage in historical inquiry, research, and
analysis;
• to practice historical empathy;
• to understand the complex nature of the historical
record;
• to generate significant, open-ended questions about the
past and devise research strategies to answer them;
• to craft historical narrative and argument;
• to practice historical thinking
- American Historical Association (AHA)

10. Historical thinking I
• observation ('scanning and parsing' documents)
• sourcing (asking who made the document and why)
• making inferences
• citing evidence for arguments, posing questions
(cultivating puzzlement)
• corroboration (comparing what is found to other
documents and prior knowledge)
- Bill Tally and Lauren B. Goldenberg, “Fostering Historical
Thinking With Digitized Primary Sources,” Journal of Research on
Technology in Education

11. Historical thinking II
The 'five C's of historical thinking':
• change over time
• causality
• context
• complexity
• contingency
- Andrews and Burke, “What Does It Mean to Think Historically?”

12. Crowdsourcing projects as
opportunities for learning historical
thinking

13. Source familiarity

14. Palaeographical skills
http://oldweather.org/http://forum.oldweather.org/

15. Name disambiguation
http://herbariaunited.org/core/forum

16. Change over time
http://playbills.libcrowds.com/

17. http://herbariaunited.org/atHome/
Developing research interests

18. Crowdsourcing forums as
communities of practice for
learning historical thinking

19. Communities of practice as social,
situated learning systems

20. Old Weather forum threads on the Spanish flu
http://forum.oldweather.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=389.0

21. Old Weather forum threads on the Spanish flu
http://forum.oldweather.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=389.0 https://blog.oldweather.org/2011/01/12/hms-africa-in-action-
against-orthomyxoviridae/

22. Posing questions

23. Historical thinking III
Jordanova on historians' skills:
• technical skills
• source-based skills - finding and evaluating
appropriate sources relevant to an identified
historical problem
• interpretative skills, including the 'ability to
construct a plausible argument'
- Jordanova, History in Practice, 2006

24. Evaluate citizen history on its own terms
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons/15815412282/

25. Citizen scholarship can be
• Designed
e.g. Children of the Lodz Ghetto, iSpot
• Emergent
e.g. OldWeather, Herbaria@home

26. Citizen scholarship can be
• Designed
e.g. Children of the Lodz Ghetto, iSpot
• Emergent
e.g. OldWeather, Herbaria@home
• Over-promised
– A critical mass of discussion is important
– Expert input in discussion is transformational

27. Thanks for listening!
Questions?
In the Spotlight http://playbills.libcrowds.com/
@LibCrowds newsletter http://eepurl.com/btvBKT
Dr. Mia Ridge, @mia_out
Digital Curator, British Library