United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship
Capturing Connections of Real Voices, Real People
Dr. Elizabeth (Liz) Cantu, Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona)
Holly Hancock von Guilleaume, Pima Community College (Arizona)
2022-2023
Introduction:
Welcome to your role in an international mission. This mission is dedicated to expanding
educational access and championing student empowerment through "open pedagogy." In this
approach, you, as a student, are at the heart of an engaging, collaborative learning environment,
with the freedom to access your educational journey. What is this mission's ultimate goal? To
heighten social justice in our community, promoting the free exchange of knowledge and work.
Under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, this renewable
assignment paves your path to becoming an agent of change within your community. Prepare to
embark on this transformative journey.
For this work, we will integrate the disciplines of Communication and Adult Basic Education
Programs to achieve the primary goal of responding to SDG #10: Reduced Inequalities. Within
this SDG, we will focus on the specific target 10,2. This assignment also focuses on SDG #8:
Decent Work and Economic Growth.

Purpose:
The purpose of this assignment is to identify a person in your community who you want to
interview for an oral history project, conduct the interview, and record the resulting conversation.
To help you identify a person and/or topic to discuss during the oral history interview, please see
the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with a specific focus on Goal #8 (Decent
Work and Economic Growth), Target 8.5, or Goal#10 (Reduced Inequalities),Target 10.2.

Learning Objectives:
This assignment will help you practice the following skills:
1. Develop written interview questions for the person you selected for the oral history.
2. Practice oral conversational skills when conducting an interview with a person of your choice
to learn from their perspectives and experiences.
3. Apply listening and conversational skills to seek understanding from the person of your
choice.
4. Critically think about excerpts from the interview to incorporate into an oral history.
This assignment will help you gain the following knowledge:
1. Understand that oral history is a way of gathering detailed information that helps us
understand a specific time, place, person, or event.
2. Familiarity with how individuals and communities encounter personal, social, economic,
and/or cultural factors that affect a person’s experiences, perspectives, and identity.
3. Understand the value of oral histories to document and preserve cultural ways, knowledge,
and experiences.

Instructions:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Select one person in your community to interview.
Develop interview questions and practice/prepare for the interview.
Conduct an oral history interview with the person you selected.
Write 1 paragraph (or about 200 words) on Padlet reflecting on the oral history by answering:
• What did you find most interesting about the person you spoke to and/or the topic(s)
discussed?
• Based on the interview, what do you think others should know or learn about?
• Who would benefit from learning about the person’s life or what they said?
• What medium (comic strip, poem, essay, audio, video, among others) do you plan to
produce so you can share the oral history with others?

Assessment Criteria:
To assess this assignment, the instructors will use a rubric focusing on the completion of all
assignment tasks, the analysis of the oral history’s content, and the quality of student writing.

Capturing Connections of Real Voices, Real People is licensed by Dr. Elizabeth (Liz) Cantu,
Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona) and Holly Hancock von Guilleaume, Pima Community
College (Arizona) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA)