Digital Humanities Questions & Answers » Topic: How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?

Digital Humanities Questions & Answers » Topic: How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities? http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities Digital Humanities Questions & Answers » Topic: How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities? en-US Wed, 16 Aug 2017 06:26:23 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/search.php Paige Morgan on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1594 Tue, 10 Apr 2012 02:57:13 +0000 Paige Morgan 1594@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ Replying to @Ethan Gruber's <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1593">post</a>: I hear you on this; and I don't think it has to be. It's as much teaching undergraduates* how to use the already effective tools that are out there -- how 18th century English Lit studies are changed by the accessibility of ECCO, EEBO, and the Burney Collection,** for example. *And even graduate students, staff, faculty, in some cases. **Not that I'm blithely assuming that all colleges and unis have access to these tools. Ethan Gruber on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1593 Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:06:19 +0000 Ethan Gruber 1593@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ I agree with you that interpretations of textual, visual, geographical, archaeological, etc. data within the humanities are digital humanities. Almost everything I have done professionally or academically over the last six years has been DH, from GIS to 3D visualization to cultural heritage informatics. I'm not going split hairs as to whether TEI and data mining are web-based or not, but I find myself increasingly frustrated by conversations about "How do we teach/introduce students to DH," and all of the answers relate to some form of web development: designing a database schema, learning HTML/CSS. These are things that are of limited usefulness in many humanities disciplines. I understand that people will suggest skills based on their own experience, but DH is losing out a lot of experienced technologists and scholars from non-textual fields, and as I have observed DH becoming more and more narrowly focused, voices in the textual humanities fields have greater and greater influence (control, even) over what is or is not "Digital Humanities." That is why I suggest that people who call themselves digital humanists ought to reconsider their notion of DH. I think the field is much bigger than they realize, and thus needs to be more inclusive. Patrick Murray-John on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1584 Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:41:08 +0000 Patrick Murray-John 1584@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ Replying to @Ethan Gruber's <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1583">post</a>: I have to say, I disagree with most, if not all, of this. There is plenty of coding work in DH that is not web-related. Text-mining and distant reading are examples, as is work encoding texts in TEI. I think I remember some very awesome visualizations of ancient architecture, too, that I would call non-web DH coding? :) The thing that I disagree with most is the idea that we (counting myself as a digital humanist) need to rethink our notion of the Digital Humanities. Like the #transformDH hashtag, it is predicated on a set idea of DH that I do not think exists. It seems like less than a year ago that there was still very active discussion about the role of code in DH, what skills could/should be part of it, and how it all fits together. No one, I think, ever came up with a notion of DH that had widespread consensus as being a good definition. Now, it seems, we are chasing after responses to a non-existent notion. That said, I do see the existence of two branches of DH, with different histories. In broad strokes, one is the "Humanities Computing" branch, on is indeed the more web-oriented branch (which shares more in common with ed tech). This has been recounted many times before, sometimes in this very site. I'd ask that we all recognize the youth of DH, and this it is -- whatever it is! -- still developing through informal channels like THATCamps and blogs and twitter conversation, and through the institutional decisions made by administrators and through cluster hires. In short, I think it is far too early to say that DH is far too focused on textual disciplines. It might be at present, but the ultimate constitution of DH is still very much to be determined. Awesome visualization and interpretation of data -- textual, architectual, visual, geographical, temporal, archaeological, and more -- through digital/code-based means can and should be part of DH. I consider it to be implicit that it _is_, but maybe hasn't had as much attention as other aspects. Seems parallel to the Theory and DH questions that way? Ethan Gruber on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1583 Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:15:50 +0000 Ethan Gruber 1583@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ Is learning to code even important in Digital Humanities? I argue that it's not. There are particular technologies that are relevant to various disciplines in the humanities, and web development isn't necessarily one of them (since coding always refers to web development in DH contexts). Digital Humanities, capital D capital H, is far too focused on the textual disciplines and hardly inclusive of the humanities as a whole. Digital Humanists ought to reconsider their notion of the Digital Humanities. If you wonder why computer scientists are reluctant to get involved in Capital D Capital H, it's for this reason. There are actually a great many computer scientists involved elsewhere in the humanities. frostdavis on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities/page/2#post-1563 Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:10:11 +0000 frostdavis 1563@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ Thanks for all the great answers! To update this forum, two of the respondents (Brian Croxall and Jeff McClurken) along with Ryan Cordell spoke about "Teaching DH 101: Introduction to the Digital Humanities" for NITLE's Digital Scholarship Seminars in December. You can access the recording from the event website: <a href="http://www.nitle.org/live/events/129-teaching-dh-101-introduction-to-the-digital" rel="nofollow">http://www.nitle.org/live/events/129-teaching-dh-101-introduction-to-the-digital</a> This seminar prompted a couple of posts on the NITLE blog because the presenters didn't really address coding for undergrads. Here are a couple of posts that adress that issue: Can Humanities Undergrads Learn to Code? by undergrads who learned to code in a humanities course at Pitt <a href="http://blogs.nitle.org/2012/01/31/can-humanities-undergrads-learn-to-code/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.nitle.org/2012/01/31/can-humanities-undergrads-learn-to-code/</a> (The answer is yes!!) More Coding for Humanities Undergrads by Kathryn Tomasek, Wheaton College (again yes!!) <a href="http://blogs.nitle.org/2012/02/02/more-coding-for-humanities-undergrads/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.nitle.org/2012/02/02/more-coding-for-humanities-undergrads/</a> Elizabeth Glascock on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-353 Wed, 06 Oct 2010 02:14:34 +0000 Elizabeth Glascock 353@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ As an undergraduate, I approach this with a different perspective albeit slightly skewed due to where I study. I was first introduced to a digital humanities tool in my basic writing seminar Freshman year, Spring 2007. The primary goal of the course was to create a research paper on an aspect of The Great Gatsby. My prof. recommended the use of Zotero. This requirement opened the gateway of what exactly is possible. Personally, I feel that Zotero should be a commonly known resource among undergraduate students; however, most that I associate with have no clue about it. As an English major, I hate to say that it may be a downfall of our basic Composition courses. Who does it fall on to teach students in their beginning semester how to research beyond google? AND make the most of this researching time? With the influx of Blackboard and Angel sites for classes, the opportunity to open student's eyes to digital humanities is much greater. Recommending links to collaborative sites that offer more information than google ever will. Also, offering links to free downloadable tools that students are not aware of. Most undergrads are coming out of a generation that does not know what it is like to be without a laptop, wireless internet, or a cell phone. A lot of students are very open to the ideas behind digital humanities to an extent where it could easily be incorporated. Quite frankly, a discussion based around social networking, microblogging, et als effects on humanities most likely will engage more students. It may potentially pull them away from facebook chat long enough to pay attention. jmcclurken on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-352 Wed, 06 Oct 2010 02:00:07 +0000 jmcclurken 352@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ This is a terrific thread. I integrate DH style assignments into several of my classes, but my favorite class in a seminar of juniors and seniors called Adventures in Digital History in which the students actually do some DH of their own. In this course they are split up into groups, given broad topics, introduced to a "digital toolkit" of open-source tools, and then asked to design and build their own digital history projects. The course sites can be found (along with links to each students own narrative project blogs and the projects themselves) for <a href="http://digitalhistory.umwblogs.org/">2008</a> and <a href="http://dh2010.umwblogs.org/">2010</a>. [The question of a DH-undergraduate curriculum came up at the 2010 THATCamp Prime -- the notes from that session are <a href="https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AaEG5-WveNQ3ZGR6M3I4a3pfNjVnZ2ptNzRmMw&hl=en">here</a>.] briancroxall on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-317 Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:46:55 +0000 briancroxall 317@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ I have never taught a course specifically focused on the digital humanities. But I really enjoy inserting a few DH-lite assignments into my regular courses. The goal is to get students <a href="http://chnm2010.thatcamp.org/05/21/teaching-students-transferable-skills/">transferable digital skills</a>. With that, I offer my survey classes a chance to build a collaborative timeline. You can find my assignment--which is adapted from one by <a href="http://twitter.com/jbj">Jason B. Jones</a> at my blog: <a href="http://www.briancroxall.net/2010/02/03/assignment-the-american-century-geospatial-timeline/" rel="nofollow">http://www.briancroxall.net/2010/02/03/assignment-the-american-century-geospatial-timeline/</a>. For my course on media theory, I asked them to crowdsource an annotated bibliography of articles on media theory and related to the texts we were reading. That assignment is available at <a href="http://www.briancroxall.net/2010/01/18/final-annotated-zotero-group-bibliography-assignment/" rel="nofollow">http://www.briancroxall.net/2010/01/18/final-annotated-zotero-group-bibliography-assignment/</a>. Thanks all for sharing your ideas here. It's giving me ideas about what I could do the next time I start teaching. mleblanc on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-281 Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:11:48 +0000 mleblanc 281@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ In December of 2001, the Wheaton College (Norton, MA) faculty voted to "teach together" in various combinations. This unique alternative to a list of requirements provides an exciting way to explore different areas of knowledge and different approaches to problems. Courses are linked across any two of six academic areas: creative arts, humanities, history, math and computer science, natural sciences, and social sciences. Pairs of connected courses may be taken in either order and do not need to be taken in consecutive semesters, although departmental planning across campus attempts to offer each course of a connection within a year of the other. "Computing for Poets" (COMP 131) is connected with two courses in English: "Anglo-Saxon Literature" and "J.R.R Tolkien". For example, in the connection with Anglo-Saxon Literature, the relationship between Old English poems has been a vexed question for nearly 150 years. Because students may take the courses in either order, both English and Computer Science faculty participate in syllabus design and make several guest lectures in the other course to help reinforce the connection between the disciplines. For students majoring in the humanities and taking the computer science course, an exposure to the application of computers to manage the storage and retrieval of written texts shows by example the many new opportunities for scholars of ancient and other written works. In particular, the "Poets" course teaches computer programming as a vehicle to personalize the exploration of vast collections of poems and corpora now available online, including stylometry and authorship attribution. Course work includes a rich exposure to pattern matching with regular expressions, parsing large collections of XML files (e.g., corpora marked up according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) schema), building a concordance, examining the top-N words in your own writing, and elementary statistical methods for authorship attribution. (For syllabi and sample programming assignments [Python], see <a href="http://lexomics.wheatoncollege.edu">lexomics.wheatoncollege.edu</a> ). Brett Bobley on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-247 Thu, 30 Sep 2010 01:26:10 +0000 Brett Bobley 247@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ I've heard Greg Crane and Chris Blackwell make very good cases for how technology allows undergrads to get involved in serious humanities research. That is, rather than just teaching undergrads *about* the digital humanities, we should also get them to actually *do* it and feel they are making a real contribution. Greg notes that in the sciences, it is much more common to see undergrads working in labs and actually being productive parts of the research effort. Why not in the digital humanities? Here are articles from both of them on this topic: "Technology, Collaboration, and Undergraduate Research" Chris Blackwell and Thomas Martin Digital Humanities Quarterly <a href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000024/000024.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000024/000024.html</a> "Give us editors! Re-inventing the edition and re-thinking the humanities" Greg Crane The Shape of Things to Come <a href="http://rup.rice.edu/cnx_content/shape/m34316.html" rel="nofollow">http://rup.rice.edu/cnx_content/shape/m34316.html</a> katherineharris on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-240 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:47:19 +0000 katherineharris 240@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ It really depends if it's a course *on* Digital Humanities or if it just integrates Digital Humanities tools into the content. I have two classes I run in each of these areas: 1) TechnoRomanticism (<a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/TechnoRom_F09/News.htm)" rel="nofollow">http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/TechnoRom_F09/News.htm)</a>: We create our own digital edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Along the way, we create a collaborative timeline using MIT's SIMILE & Timeline script. We don't even begin to create a website until some of the preliminary assignments are done -- assignments that look at the construction of this novel, both linguistically and bibliographically. Every 2 weeks, we held a workshop on some digital assignment and acquired 1 new skill, not even necessarily a new tool, but a skill. It helps that we were in a gorgeous space where every student receives a laptop at the outset of class meetings. Even those not accustomed to posting to fora and blogs got something out of it. But, we reflected on the technology a couple of times throughout the semester: a) mid-semester to see if the tech was becoming too overwhelming (which I then adjusted) and b) at the conclusion of the semester to see what worked and what didn't. 2) Digital Humanities: The Death of Print Culture? (<a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/DigLit_F10/Introductions.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/DigLit_F10/Introductions.htm</a>) I'm teaching this one right now, also in the gorgeous room (not even really a lab, but more). We're theorizing all facets of DH while at the same time critiquing the tools for our thinking and dissemination. Thus far, it's been a real love fest in the class, but it's an Honors Colloquium, one that took 3 years for our department curriculum committee to approve. We're in Week 6 and now they're really seeing the benefits and pitfalls of DH (with much thanks to our latest virtual guest). We will also explore multi-modal arguments, i.e., the video essay. This is extremely new to these English majors and will be interesting to see. We have 3 Digital Media Artist majors in the class as well and they certainly push us all to discuss the digital beyond the linear narratives that we've become accustomed to in literary studies. They use art to critique our readings; it's been a fascinating ride so far. 3) and a third type of course, one in which content and DH are intertwined -- the British Literature survey course 1800-now: <a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/BritLitSurvey_F10/Engl56B_Frame.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/harris/BritLitSurvey_F10/Engl56B_Frame.htm</a> So for this course, we're not practicing any Digital Humanities, but we are looking at Digital Literature in the continuum of the survey, which is mighty difficult considering we're still figuring out what that means. This is a lower-division English major's requirement, which means students typically haven't had the requisite course on how to evaluate literature in various genres. I find that these skills are imperative to then leaping into e-lit. And, I have to admit, I don't really get to now, but my students do in their final projects. The last time I taught this, someone did work on Grand Theft Auto and narrative voice. It was awesome. But, that student already had web designing skills in DreamWeaver so we didn't spend much time on the tech skills. Instead, she really achieved an argument. I'm at a university in the middle of Silicon Valley, but we are surprisingly conservative for a variety of reasons. This isn't a knock against my university; it's a reality that probably many other faculty face in non-DH focused departments. This is how I've managed to get around that issue over the last 5 years. It's been a long journey, but one well worth it. I have to say that the students coming in, those traditional 18 y.o. in the Frosh Comp, can go away and create a blog without any handholding. 4 years ago, even, we spent a day on blog creation and posting to the class listserv. I like the idea of posting screencast tutorials for those who are still struggling. Great ideas here! Thanks DHAnswers! Meagan Timney on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-184 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:32:26 +0000 Meagan Timney 184@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ In my first-year <a href="http://humanities.uvic.ca/huma150">Introduction to Digital Humanities</a> class at UVic, I take a broad approach, and introduce them to a little bit of everything. We start with a general introduction to digital humanities, and then move into issues of digitization, remediation, and metadata. Once they have a background in some of the main issues and concerns about managing data, we start looking at examples of DH projects, use some text analysis and data visualization tools, and even take a brief look at GIS and mapping. The last few weeks of class are devoted to final group projects, in which students learn to collaborate and work towards a common goal as a team. Feel free to take a look at the <a href="http://mdouglas.etcl.uvic.ca/huma150/timetable">syllabus</a>, if you're interested. Julie Meloni on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-173 Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:13:19 +0000 Julie Meloni 173@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ Replying to @<a href='/profile/cara'>Cara</a>'s <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-171">post</a>: It's all true! And also sound. They were fascinated by sound. Cara on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-171 Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:37:17 +0000 Cara 171@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ Julie and I taught an intro to DH class for a visiting group of academically advanced high school students. Thanks to a bit of miscommunication about the group and resources, we ended up having to make up exercises on the fly. There were three things that went over really well: -- Group transcription exercise: The group worked together to digitize and transcribe a 19th-century apprentice's indenture document. Having to work together and come to consensus about what they were reading helped them engage with the object. With more time/computers we would have gone on to encoding. -- Visualization tools: We showed them how to make a word cloud and asked them what words they thought would show up most frequently in texts they were already familiar with. Then they suggested texts to use and offered interpretations of the results. -- Talking about copyright issues and remix culture. tanyaclement on "How do we introduce undergraduates to the digital humanities?" http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-we-introduce-undergraduates-to-the-digital-humanities#post-157 Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:00:36 +0000 tanyaclement 157@http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/ We are also implement a year long course within the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the University of Maryland, College Park (see <a href="http://www.dcc.umd.edu/content/academic-courses)" rel="nofollow">http://www.dcc.umd.edu/content/academic-courses)</a>. The first semester is "big ideas" including AI, Security, What is Reading?, Algorithms, etc. and in the second semester we'll be creating a class archive of Civil war letters. They'll learn XML, TEI, XSLT, PHP, MYSQL, JavaScript, video, and how to install and use Omeka.