UCLA

Having recently become a fully-fledged field independent of media studies and archival studies, media archival studies has struggled to define what competencies constitute media archival literacy and establish a consistent set of learning objectives to teach in introductory media archival courses. Applying Bloom’s taxonomy to three introductory media archival courses’ learning objectives, this paper outlines what knowledge, values, and skills are being taught in introductory media archival courses and examines the effectiveness of current teaching practices. Building upon these case studies, this paper proposes a template of learning objectives to reach a new concrete definition of media archival literacy. Consisting of observable action items that students can learn in one semester, this template of media archival literacy learning objectives aims to standardize media archival education courses to better prepare students for research opportunities in the archive and potential careers in media archival studies.