UFOs in the Cold War: A Fun Assignment for Teaching Digital Archival Research

ABSTRACT As the number of digitized archives increases, so does attention to archival research as a useful qualitative method. This article presents a pilot project in an undergraduate political science methods course at the University of Toronto Mississauga designed to familiarize and engage students with digital archival research in an entertaining way. In collaboration with the campus library, students were invited to imagine themselves as rookie detectives and investigate a “cold case” of a potential Unidentified Flying Object encounter in Canada during the Cold War. They explored a digital archive curated explicitly for this purpose and made available in the course’s online learning-management system, with related documents and photographs accessible from the Library and Archives Canada; visited the library that presented archival research; and answered questions relevant to the case. Results from a subsequent participants’ self-assessing survey indicate that this assignment was beneficial in enhancing student comprehension of archival research. This suggests that such innovative pedagogical activities can render topics like methods more appealing and learning about them more enjoyable.