#52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 52 Prompt: ‘Resolution'

Week 52  Prompt: Resolution

My New Year’s Resolution for 2019, is to follow the learnings of the course below, in my family history research this year.

( I wrote this entry below in April 2015)

Just prior to Christmas 2014 - an advertisement on the Tassie Facebook page caught my eye for a free University Course being held online from The Uni of Tasmania named “HSP 105 Introduction to Family History”.   It was only for 9 weeks over the Summer Semester running from 08 Dec 2014 to 13 Feb 2015. 

The Unit objectives included:

• Understand family history planning, research, and recording
• Evaluate primary and secondary sources of information
• Conduct genealogical investigations
• Analyze genealogical problems and develop plans for solving them
• Present the findings of your applied genealogical work. 

On reading these I thought It sounded really good - after all, wasn’t I already doing most of them?  I thought it would be interesting to do some study on the subject and hoped to learn some good new ways to break down some brick walls.

Although we would be slowly travelling down south to Victoria by car when the course started, my husband and I both decided to enrol. It might be hard going back to Uni. study, but we would help each other. We packed our laptops with our own current family history information, memory sticks, backup hard drives, and power cords. 

Hobart city in the foreground. Hobart Uni Campus is below the Casino tower R Foreground.

Apparently, Uni. of Tas was swamped with people interested - and thousands enrolled.  However, out of us all, I think there were only about 550 who finished.   

This online way of study is really taking off and is available all over the world now. 

We had no idea of what involvement there would be.  The course outline had suggested 4-5 hours study per week, but once we got to Melbourne and heavily into the course it would have been at least that much per day !!

We had to learn first of all how to navigate the University study site - online student centre, e-student email and the catacombs of the MyLO (My Learning Online) environment.  Luckily there are service desks and Info. Tech. assistants on hand to help !

Dr. Dianne Snowden was our Coordinator and was a very helpful, learned researcher.  Those who went down to the conference recently in Canberra may have met her. 

Dianne Snowden joint authored ‘Patchwork Prisoners’ about the convicts on the ‘Rajah’ and making the Rajah Quilt. 

We were given weekly topics in the MyLO units content and discussions.  We needed to view the lectures and/or video interviews with well-known researchers about the topic then read the recommended texts.  Any recommended resources had to be read or checked and then complete the related self-tests online. 

We were divided up into groups of about 20 students with a dedicated mentor. We could discuss in the group how we were going or any questions or relevant info we had. This was important as at the end of the course we had to comment on how our weekly posts and replies in the group discussions had helped others and added positively to the topic

There were also other ‘Discussion’ areas we could join in - such as - Technical, Weeks topic, DNA, Brick Walls, etc. - that were all very interesting.  However, with thousands of posts it was too overwhelming to participate in many, plus get all the work done.  

The course covered many topics:

Week 1: Introduction and getting started - family information, evidence, trees, charts, forms, logs. 

Week 2: Oral History.  Plan an Oral History interview with a family member.  Types of questions, Interview, Record the interview and then write up.

Week 3: Planning your Research.  Aim, List of repositories and records to use for conducting research.  Primary and Secondary sources. Critical evaluation. The Research Process.   With your plan include a completed Ancestral Chart up to current knowledge using info from your oral interview.

Week 4: Conducting your Research.  Follow a methodical Research process. Tips on Research and evaluating sources. Critically analyze genealogical problems. Develop plans for solving them .

Week 5:  Maps and supporting materials. Reading handwriting.  More Problem Solving. Overcoming Brick Walls. Timelines. Mis-transcription. 

Week 6:  Discussions and further Problem solving.

Weeks 7 & 8: Presenting your family history - reunions, creative presentations, traditional, books, online blogs and presentations.  Guides to writing Family History. Preservation of materials.

Week 9:  Presentation of our Research Report.  Becoming an Independent Researcher.  Family History Groups. Introduction to Convict Research. 

By about week 6 we had returned home which made it a lot easier to study and check our own manual information.

So, the big day arrived when we had to post our final project.  We had to write a report of our genealogical investigation, using all the tools we had been taught.  The report had to include the aim, sources, a biographical report of 1000 words including conclusion.  There had to be an ancestral chart completed for the relevant individuals and a completed Family Group Sheet for the main selected individual.  All of the sources had to be defined as Primary or Secondary. All due on Friday the 13th !! of February.

We had passed the other assignments during this first unit - but this was the one we had put all our time into and fashioned into a University standard works of art with referencing, etc.  What a relief for us both to finally get it finished.

And wouldn’t you believe it - I hadn’t been able to find a birth certificate or baptismal record for my main individual - and a week after we handed in the assignment, I had a reply email from a church in Melbourne I had given up on. They had found the baptismal record proving that none of the secondary sources of information stating his birth date were correct, in fact I don’t think he would have even known his own real birthday, himself!