Getting Started With Oral History Workshop

The Institute for Oral History invites you to take part in our next online oral history workshop. A fee of $100.00 covers six hours of instruction, access to useful documents and forms, and continuing consultation for your oral history project.

Our next workshop will be offered in August 2025. Check back here for registration information this summer.

Purpose

As its title suggests, our E-Workshop is designed to get you started doing oral history. The workshop is primarily an introductory course for first-time oral history interviewers. We also welcome participants who have done a few interviews in the past but have questions about improving their interviewing techniques, processing and preserving recordings, or designing a project.

Topics

Topics covered in the workshop include project planning, ethical and legal considerations, recording equipment, interviewing techniques, and processing and preserving oral history. Before you complete the workshop you will have experienced writing a project plan and conducting a one-on-one oral history interview. View E-Workshop Topics

Faculty

Your instructors are faculty and staff members of Baylor University Institute for Oral History, with an accumulated record of more than fifty years of experience with oral history interviewing, training, and administration.

Format

The six-hour workshop is in two sessions, each presented on a weekday morning, with a week between sessions. We allow ample time for questions and comments at the end of each session and make ourselves available as consultants for the duration of your oral history project. Sample forms and documents related to oral history, as well as readings and additional resources, will be made available to workshop participants through Baylor's online file sharing system.

Online Connection

The class comes to you through the Zoom web conferencing interface. With a computer and an Internet connection and using your computer's audio capabilities and a microphone, you can join the class, hearing the lectures, asking questions, exchanging text messages, and sharing in the discussion. The E-Workshop requires some preparatory reading on your part, an assignment between classes, and a practical follow-up exercise. All readings and resources are provided to registrants through an online file sharing system from about two weeks before the workshop through two months after the workshop.

Outcomes

Participants receive a certificate upon completing 1) both sessions of the live workshop; 2) the assigned project design; 3) the assigned practice interview; and 4) the course evaluation form. Baylor University is a Texas Education Agency certified provider of Continuing Professional Education, and participating K-12 teachers in Texas are eligible for ten CPE credits for completion of the course.

More Information

If you have questions, or would like to be added to our notification list, please email buioh@baylor.edu.

Reviews From Previous Workshop Participants

One of the best on-line / interactive courses I have taken. I will recommend this to many of my new oral historians!

Considering that online live instruction and interaction is a different experience for me than a typical face to face group experience I thought these sessions went very well. It was obvious that the Baylor team of instructors were very well prepared and enthusiastic in their presentations. I thought that there was a reasonable balance between the interaction with the participants and instructors. This online approach certainly creates a more convenient and less costly approach to learning for the participant and I like that.

This was my first time doing any sort of online course. I was very impressed with BearSpace and with the Elluminate set up. The prework readings were very helpful, as are the forms and other documents that you've made available to us.

Interestingly, though I'm at the point in my career where the certificate really doesn't "matter" in any grand sense, the idea of feedback from you all is great motivation to do the homework. And the two homework assignments are really all that's needed to get a project moving forward. Preparing the project description and then getting the equipment together for the first interview could be the stumbling blocks that would keep this on the back burner forever -- but now that I've done those things in order to complete my homework, there's no reason not to move forward. So I think the assignments are perfect!

The mission statement was a great assignment because it forced me to articulate in words what exactly I was going to do. It became a crucial part of my unit rationale that justified the question, "Why do this project?"

I hated and loved the homework at the same time. I was honestly baffled by the project mission statement since I did not have a clear project in mind. It was a great thing to have to produce however since it forced me to really think things through and ask questions to those areas I did not have a clue about! I am so glad that interviewing is part of the homework. I did the research and purchased the necessary equipment so I am ready to interview. I might not have done that had that not been a part of the homework.

What a wonderful experience it was to find out where everyone in the class was from and to hear their project ideas and specific questions. Thank you for making that time available. I had many more questions after the class was over so it was extremely helpful to be able to email my questions and know I would get a response. I was actually surprised that my questions were not only answered but encouraged!