Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics. Brett D. Hirsch, ed. Cambridge: UK, OpenBook Publishers, 2012

Part of the NYU Public History Programme, these authors discuss how digital technology has fundamentally altered the archival, public history and editing landscapes through the use of new media and digitisation of analogue resources. Thus students need to be educated in the methods, skills and tactics to manage digital resources and integrate new media into existing industries that employ historians. The article continues to discuss, at length, the need to alter the way in which students need preparing for careers in archiving, public history, museum professions and historical editing. The emphasis is on the importance of incorporating digital skills into degrees, not only in theory, nor only at post-graduate level but with practical experience throughout their course. The chapter details the NYU archives and public history program’s experiences in reconfiguring a long-standing program and integrating digital skills throughout its curriculum. A detailed discussion follows on what type of course should be made core, and what type should be electives, before suggesting how internships could follow on from these classes, to utilise the skills in a ‘real world’ setting. There is a fascinating section entitled ‘Capstone Projects’ that discusses the assessment of digital projects and the challenges of integrating new technologies; rather than having a separate DH faculty, they work in a silos structure which they acknowledge has some weaknesses. The final part of the chapter is a discussion on student feedback about the curriculum changes, highlighting the generally positive response to the course, as well as concerns about a possible overemphasis on digital material and a shortage of possible historical content in the course – students were mainly worried that the digital aspect would overwhelm the other important aspects of learning how to work in archives and the like – mainly this was addressed with making sure the accreditation was balanced, through constant evaluation of the students’ needs.

Literary and Linguistic Computing.

Museum Studies students, in Marsh’s experience, do not currently (2013) have a passion to engage with new DH technology, that now looks set to become the future of their chosen profession this article presents how Marsh introduced three years of her students to the merits of DH through a module on digital curation, as well as an online exhibit developed within a material culture seminar. Marsh uses Omeka, (the “free, flexible and open source web publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives and scholarly collections and exhibitions”) with her students to demonstrate how dimly technology can meld with their current studies. The questions March put to her students during this course were as follows: (1) What does material culture look like on the web? (2) How do you curate it? (3) How does the public interact with virtual objects? (4) What is the relationship between virtual and physical museum artefacts?. The article goes on to discuss how these questions were tackled by students, including the practical examples of how the students were taught to operate Omeka. Marsh also includes an example of how she chose to challenge and stretch those students who excelled at the use of digital tools. Marsh concludes that this paper is but a mere snapshot of what she intends to be a far larger 10 year project of integrating into Museum Studies the now essential digital skills that students require. She intends to follow up with her students as they look for, an take up, graduate work in museums to ding what skills and tools are needed in real scenarios. The question then needs to be more seriously addresses, Marsh argues, is how the necessary skills and technical techniques can be integrated into academic programmes to train the professionals of the future in the best way possible.

Digital Humanities Quarterly. 3.1 (2009).

This article is written by two Classics professors from Furman University and the College of the Holy Cross. It looks at their experiences at teaching UG students whilst attempting to incorporate new advances in the DH into their traditional teaching model. Classics is focused on here as a sub-discipline within History and the wider humanities in general. The authors lament that the Classics teaching community have historically been disinclined to show an interest in activities that would come under ‘UG Research’. Traditionally UGs have been taught critical thinking and evaluation skills, along with persuasive essay technique, and general assimilation of facts during survey courses. For professors to reinvigorate the life of an UG student of Classics, it used to take an extraordinary amount of creativity and flexibility on the part of the professors and the HE institution. This can now be achieved, the authors argue, more easily than ever before through the introduction of DH tools and teaching/learning techniques. The main section of the article details, at length, how the DH have been incorporated by the authors into their UG teaching. Many examples are given, which are Classics specific (especially in regards to databases), though have some transferable learning objectives to wider historical studies. The article concludes that the growth in DH and wider technology has “lowered the economic barriers to academic publishing” and because of this, UG students can be encouraged to become authors themselves. Digital technology allows students to experience what it would be like as ‘real’ scholars which the authors of this article state, will not only breathe new life into the discipline of Classics, but will encourage new students (perhaps from outside the traditional applicant pool) to engage with the subject.