Laura Elmer
Historical Research
However, not only did research teach me to be creative in the ways that I approached a problem, but it also taught me precision, strict organization, the ability to work with someone on a problem and communicate ideas back and forth. It even taught me to be more methodical about the ways in which I approached a problem so that I could reproduce the same answer. All of these skills I have applied in other situations over and over, because even if I was not working with microfilm anymore, research had made me into a more creative and collaborative problem solver.
This image is significant because during my research as a Defoe Research Fellow, I worked with microfilm reels of William T. Harris' correspondence as Commissioner of Education, and this is his signature from one of those letters.
Although this experience may not seem to be tied to working with multimodal forms of teaching writing and ePortfolios, training and working as a research assistant taught me more about being a critical and creative thinker than probably any other experience in my academic career because, when researching, one has to think of every possible angle from which a question could be answered. Historical research is more like problem solving or treasure hunting.