"Oral history" is the skillful use of interviewing to create new primary sources that are especially relevant to exploring and understanding many twentieth-century historical topics. The format in which the results of an oral history research project can be presented vary tremendously, and there is a lot of room for creativity, but your ideas should be explored with and approved by your advisor in advance.
If you don't have prior experience with oral history interviewing you might plan to take (or audit) the undergraduate course in oral history method before starting the project. (An extensive bibliography on oral history theory and method, and on applications of oral history to women's history, immigrant history and gay/lesbian history, is available in the American Studies office. You should also look over some examples of former Final Projects using oral history interview, on the shelves in the Lounge.)
Generally speaking, oral history projects are either biographical or autobiographical (focused on one individual's life, through a series of several interviews with the same person); or topical (exploring a theme, event, question or issue using the memories of several interviewees).
The final product of your research can take several different forms:
1. a set of fully transcribed oral history interviews, accompanied by an introductory essay (see, for example, Ellen Pinzur's 1990 final project "Eight Names on a Wall: Winthrop's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial")
2. an edited text (words on paper, or works in an audio or audio/visual form), along with an extensive commentary in writing and/or in audiovisual form (see, for example, Hannah Protzman's 1998 videotape "Film Biography of Dizzerene Patton" and her accompanying essay)
3. an analytical essay using oral history interviews as one kind of primary source
If you plan to use oral history interviewing for your final project, here a few things to bear in mind:
1. Though oral history interviewing is an exceptionally interesting and appealing way of doing research, it is also more time-consuming and unpredictable in its result than library or archival research.
2. Information gained in oral history interviewing should always be supplemented with information gathered in a more conventional way, because of the unreliability of people's memories, among other things. When planning a project, you'll need to do extensive background reading not just on oral history theory and method, but also on the topic you are exploring. In writing the final paper, even if your objective is to create a life history text or biography, you will need to use other kinds of sources, to help contextualize the oral historical interviews.
3. An oral history project should contain some discussion of methodology, and show awareness of the strength and weaknesses of oral history as a collaborative source-creation endeavor between the interviewer and the person interviewed.
4. If you choose to do an audio/video oral history project, it should be accompanied by an introductory essay of at least 15 pages discussing your research process and the results, and a bibliography containing both oral history theory/method readings and other primary (as well as secondary) sources on your topic.
5. If you choose to do a set of fully transcribed oral historical interviews, or an edited biographical text, this should be accompanied by at least 15 pages of analytical writing about the text; five pages on oral historical methodology as it relates to your project design, and a bibliography (as above).
A highly recommended first reading, which will give you a sense of whether and how you want to proceed with this kind of research, is James Hoopes, Oral History: An Introduction for Students (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979).