Digital Archives Built by Students for Students : Inherited Learning at University of Hertfordshire

Abstract

Inherited learning is the latest stage of a programme to develop digital history methods in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Hertfordshire’s history department. Involving more members of staff than before and a range of topics, it engages students in discovering visual and textual material from online archives in response to specific remits. Learners construct the results into new archival collections that are published on the open web and used as a resource on which subsequent student cohorts can build. Harnessing students’ propensity to use digital technology in their studies, as well as generally in their lives, it puts this to use in the service of techniques integral to the evolution of the discipline and the construction of genuine historical knowledge.