Working with undergraduates presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. We must employ pedagogical strategies to make sure that students develop the skills needed to create quality digital content. Best practices show that scholars must acknowledge that the communities we work with are the true owners of the histories that we tell. Therefore, we must help students to develop the view that they share authority over the content and subject matter of these projects with their community partners. In so doing, we support students’ ability to produce quality scholarship and digital content that they can confidently offer to a broad audience. Once students understand how to integrate archival research and analysis with the telling of stories in digital form, they can build and sustain meaningful projects beyond the boundaries of one semester. These long-term projects benefit the community as a whole, because they offer more depth and substance.

In different ways, the scholars in this roundtable session engage with these issues. Elizabeth Drummond will address the use of digital and public history approaches as pedagogical strategies that invite students to think about the ideological and political uses of history. These approaches foster critical thinking skills that allow students to make deeper connections to their subjects. Laurie Green will discuss undergraduate oral history and mapping projects that reveal the complexity of social justice movements in Austin during the Civil Rights era. These undergraduate-created digital exhibits and archives continue to expand over time and support student research and future digital projects. Sarah Judson will present student work that maps the history of African American women’s labor in Asheville. Ellen Holmes Pearson will introduce the work of her students, who are creating Black-centered narratives that give voice to those interred in historic African American cemeteries. Judson and Holmes Pearson’s projects contribute to a larger community-engaged digital exhibit and archive that centers the voices of historically excluded individuals in Western North Carolina.

Together, these presentations will show how the integration of digital platforms and historical research can offer undergraduates opportunities to interrogate sources and create narratives in accessible digital forms.