Routledge, 4 Apr 2014

This book acts as a review of research by leading digital literacy scholars from around the world, and is as up to date as possible with new technology (as of 2014). The authors intend this book to be used as a reference guide, directing readers to the central issues in a cross disciplinary context, with explanations of theoretical themes throughout; it is indexed as so, to best facilitate this handbook goal. The book is primarily aimed at scholars from the following fields: ICT, library and media studies, cognitive science, educational studies (in all its forms), and linguistics. However, the authors do state their hope that graduate students in all disciplines will also find this text a help during their studies, and to this end the final section of the book contains commentary by top scholars on a selection of relevant studies. These aptly show the merit of multiple interpretations of research and the various uses that outcomes could be put to; ergo this could also be of use to administrators, course directors and institution policy makers. The book is split into six sections as follows: (1) “Methodologies” – looking at current research on new literacies in an extensive variety of areas. (2) “Knowledge and Inquiry” - where several varying perspectives are examined on how it could be best to fulfil the potential of new media in regards to knowledge acquisition. (3) “Communication” - where the latest (as of 2014) research on new communication media is examined e.g. social networking tools. The roles of language and gender are also examined in this section. (4) “Popular Culture, Community and Citizenship: Everyday Literacies” - looks at research in online worlds such as gaming and fanfiction, as well as the issues surrounding the role of digital citizenship. This section also looks at collaborative work and projects. (5) “Instructional Practices and Assessment” – looks at classroom teaching and assessment in a new literacy context from early years education through to HE. (6) This is the section that sees the reprints of articles with critical evaluation and commentary. As a large and detailed handbook, this publication is highly effective. It would be a great reference text for anyone interested in the integration of digital literacy into many aspects of research, teaching, or even day to day life.

M/C Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2015)

This article discusses the new generation of digital curation tools such as scoop.it, and the implications these have on ensuring that HE graduates are equipped with the appropriate metacognitive skills so that they can successfully function in an increasingly digital workplace. The authors define digital curation as “the art and science of searching, analysing, selecting, and organising content” and state that by teaching it to HE students, it allows students to develop skills in the evaluation of web-based sources. The majority of the article examines a case study where first year UG ICT students use scoop.it to “curate an annotated collection of resources pertaining to a particular topic”. Scoop.it requires users to critically evaluate material as it is collected, rather than just amassing it as other tools which claim to be for digital curation do; such as Pinterest. The method of the study is then detailed, including information on the two parts of the assignment; a traditional essay about an aspect of new technology, and an annotated bibliography. Students were asked to create a Scoop.it presentation on their chosen new technology and then curate content to assist the writing of their essay. Following the task, students completed an online survey regarding their experiences. These included demographic questions, qualitative answers and multiple choice answers – there were specifically on whether or not the task aided their digital skill development. The answers to each of the multiple choice questions are analysed by the authors in detail; but overall the picture presented is that most of the students believed that the task encouraged them to critically evaluate non-peer reviewed digital sources. However, the students were not necessarily confident in their ability to differentiate accurately between good and poor content. The authors use the results of this study to state that there is a strong indication of the “benefits of combining digital curation tools with formal content evaluation instruction.”

This article is a presentation of research which investigated computer literacy levels amongst Korean UG level students. The main purpose of the study was to look at differences in digital literacy levels between humanities students, and those whose degrees expect them to have higher levels of digital skills, such as in the computer sciences. The authors start the article with a short history of the information society, and then discuss the concept of Millennials as ‘digital natives’ and how this may impact upon their learning. Following this is a brief interpretation and breakdown of digital literacy indicators including: (1) the ability to recognise and apply community communication techniques (2) the ability to recognise and apply community information sharing (3) community ethics evaluation ability. This includes copyright and social responsibility. Following this, the methodology of the study is detailed, as is a break down of the results. The conclusion of this article states the findings of the study which are as follows: humanities students spend a far greater number of hours working online and using an array of digital tools, and these students has a greater awareness of the wider issues surrounding digital literacy. This included skill in sharing information and acquiring further information for critical reflection. Whilst these students of humanities express some difficulties in grasping the technical intricacies of the digital tools they used, they appeared more than confident to integrate them into their studies. The study showed that for the computer science students of this Korean University, that the wider community implications of how they utilised digital tools, were not something that they showed either familiarity with, or appreciation for. The author makes the following suggestions for the development of the measurement of digital literacy in UGs: (1) measurement should not be weighted in favour of students studying technical subjects, as there is more to digital literacy than the mechanics of tools (2) Standardisation of ability indicators should be developed for specific digital tools (3) The ability to adapt tools for new and evolving purposes should be recognised. Overall, the author calls for more work on the development of educational policy on the teaching of Digital Literacy at UG level; and this should involve interdepartmental collaboration if at all possible.

Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 11., 2014

This article looks at the impact of the lag in digital literacy learning and teaching at many universities. Murray argues that “digital literacy is widely acknowledged as essential and germane in today’s highly competitive and global markets”; to the extent that she states it is a crucial life skill comparable to reading, writing and arithmetic. Murray calls for digital literacy to be “assessed, remediated and amplified” at a university level, rather than these important skills being just taken for granted or assumed to be adequate. The first section of the article examines definitions of digital literacy, before moving on to look at the evolution of models of digital literacy (including a useful diagram). Murray then looks at how the need for digital literacy has “become increasingly critical to success in any education discipline or occupation”. The adoption of structured digital literacy initiatives varies globally, but as these skills become increasing prerequisites for so many jobs, Murray states that Universities in the global West need to focus on conquering digital literacy teaching. The current state of affairs (2015) in Canada, the US, Europe and the UK is discussed before Murray sets out the methodology and results of her digital literacy assessment. This assessment was administered to fourth year undergraduates at a regional US university, and demonstrated the lack of structure in the teaching of digital literacy as well as vastly varying skill levels among students. The details of this study would be of great use for anyone seeking to conduct similar research. Murray concludes the article by reiterating the importance of digital literacy, not only to student satisfaction in terms of their employability, but also on a wider country level in terms of economic growth and competitiveness. She also emphasises the need to constantly re-evaluate what digital literacy skills are taught, as the field evolves so rapidly.

CEA Critic, Volume 76, number 3 pp.336-342

Lenhardt discusses her experience of incorporating digital literacy (mainly requiring students to work with digital image collections), during her time teaching at a small private University, where the library did not have many resources. She has found that many students know the difficulties in obtaining digital images, and if they are required to do so for an assignment, will often begin research for their projects far in advance. This tended to be with second year students onwards, who had found that the process had been left too late in the first year. Lehardt addresses the merits of this failure and a learning experience, but also considers the fact that more teaching and learning could have occurred in the students’ first year, had they been introduced and guided through the difficulties at the start of their time at University. There were some instances where students were more digitally literate and savvy than their teachers, yet did not know the proper academic procedure for digital research; and it is these media-consumed, millennials that need their teachers to engage with this technique gap, so that all involved can overcome it. The remainder of the article discusses the ways in which students should be introduced to digital resources as early as possible, so that they could access them effectively for present and future projects; as well as opening their minds to the idea that working in research need not be solitary work in a dust achieve. She wanted to use her assignments to influence her students’ perception on the new direction that DH research is going, though Lehardt did come across many difficulties in the assessment design for her courses.

This is a section of her assignment details (it is a Shakespeare related project):

The assignment asked the students to meet the following objectives: (1) to use the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Digital Image Collection, the National Portrait Gallery, or the Tate Britain so that they could gain more experience working with digital archives and researching how actors and/or artists have interpreted Shakespeare in different time periods. (2) To practice researching and writing about primary and secondary sources. (3) To write a five-to-six page research paper on an image(s) found in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Digital Image Collection (or another approved site, such as the Tate Britain or the National Portrait Gallery). Students could choose to write on no more than two to three images or artifacts due to the short length of the paper. The Folger Shakespeare Digital Image Collection, the Tate Collections, and the National Portrait Gallery’s Collections are massive and daunting to sift through if one is a novice researcher. She therefore tested searches out beforehand and talked with the librarian about narrowing the scope of the assignment so that students did not get overwhelmed with the number of choices and images. Lehardt concluded that extensive scaffolding is needed to conduct such an assignment for most first year students, and that this could be gradually brought down by the time that a similar project was to be given to final year students.

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.

English 203, Winter 2012. English Dept., University of Calgary

A module from the University of Calgary’s English Department that was taught in the Winter of 2012. It is devoted to data and critical reading within English Literature, and aims to teach students the use of digital tools, and how to use to discover new information about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The format of the course was a humanities lab with half of the contact hours being dedicated to the hands on learning (and hopeful mastering) of digital tools. Emphasis appears to have been placed on the collaborative nature of using digital tools within an academic environment. However, the assessment breakdown shows that only 50% of the assessment was actually on the group work. Digital tools used in this module were: Wordhoard, Tapor, WordSeer, Voyeur and MONK. The module website includes details on all areas of assessment used in the module including: an encoding exercise, a twitter assignment, the two team projects, and the final (individual) paper. Grading boundaries and the course schedule are also included on this webpage, though the grade boundaries do appear to be standardised across the University of Calgary, rather than module or DH specific. There is also a link to the professor’s series of blog posts on various aspects of the course design, and a full outline of the course through Google Docs. The twitter feed of the professor is also accessible and highly interesting. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NkI4dUlWaXM5QyHqQbY7W47FjNVOqumI9DMpGTjGm7A/edit?hl=en_US http://ullyot.ucalgaryblogs.ca/category/teaching/w2012-engl203/ twitter.com/ullyot

CEA Critic.76.2(2014), pp.211-20

This article is based around the Research-orientated Social Environment (RoSE) project, funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start Up Grant (2011-2012), as part of the University of California. Thomas and Solomon argue that research and scholarship in DH is currently (2014) values more than teaching, curriculum development and student learning engagement. They ask that more focus should be placed on pedagogical techniques, so that the researchers and scholars of the future can become interested in DH as soon in their academic lives as possible. The RoSE project started off with less of a focus on teaching but throughout its development found that the primary goal of the project should be looking at UGs as the main audience, especially in the classrooms of the humanities at HE level. RoSE looked at a student storyboard activity as a tool of investigating issues surrounding the DH for example ‘the future of books’ (the storyboard of this example is included in the article). Following student workshops, feedback on the limitations of the RoSE project was obtained in order to focus the final development of the project. Issues that arose included: concerns over the validity and accuracy of data that was obtained through student designed projects, who would oversee student contributions to database projects in regards to accuracy, as well as many practical technological concerns. Thomas and Solomon then discuss how the RoSE project can be interpreted as part of wider digital pedagogy. The article concludes that the most valuable insight of the project was how crucial it was to use UG students in the developmental process. It demonstrated how “iterative project development itself is a pedagogical technique”. By asking UG students to become involved, it altered the way they thought about not only the DHs, but as how much planning and development goes into how material is delivered to them in a HE classroom setting. The authors end the article with a call to others in the DH to see the value of experimenting and playing with pedagogy, more than educators currently find time to do.

Literary and Linguistic Computing Vol. 21 No. 2 2006.

This article begins by discussing whether or not Humanities Computing is a discipline; opinion (in 2006) was pretty evenly divided amongst those that the author interviewed. Terras’s main argument is that Humanities Computing will only truly mature as an academic subject if it moves away from any insular ideas, and becomes more integrated as a bridge between the humanities and computer sciences. Terras emphasises that Humanities Computing is an emergent discipline which may fail to grow into a fully-fledged academic subject if those involved do not become more “inclusive, international and interdisciplinary”. Terras uses the externalised viewpoint of Education Theory to show that Humanities Computing is more scattered as a tool used within humanities teaching, rather than a subject in its own right. The article also looks at Philip Jackson’s 1968 ‘Hidden Curriculum’ theory, to more fully comprehend how academics using Humanities Computing teaching methodology were passing on socialising messages about the technology to their students. The projection of messages on to students by tutors is examined in detail with reference to other educational studies scholarly works. Terras acknowledges that further investigation needs to be done into digital aspects of Jackson’s theory. This article must be read with an awareness of the fact that it was published in 2006, and can be used as a reference to see how far the DH has come in the past decade.

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

Sternfeld addresses the pedagogical challenge for digital history on how to accommodate interdisciplinary in introducing students to a field of new terminology, theories, practices and disciplines. This field now extends beyond historians and includes archivists, librarians, information specialists, computer scientists, engineers, scientists and linguists – the training of arts and humanities students at a tertiary educational level must now include practical training on how to survive in this environment. Digital literacy must move beyond teaching students how to construct a database, or write a blog, but how to work with those in other disciplines to develop technology to generate new lines of enquiry to challenge entrenched theories or draw comparisons across greater and greater amounts of data. Sternfeld structures his discussion around these three main principles of digital historiography: (1) Digital history works are representations, the product of subjective decisions that humanists characterize as interpretation. (2) Digital historical representations include both academic works, as well as non-academic productions that traverse media genres and audience groups; their unifying trait is their use of historical evidence. (3) Regardless of a representation’s scholarly or non-scholarly intent, evaluation requires a working grasp of relevant historiographical knowledge. The next section of the chapter discusses the execution of the course, including a discussion of the course syllabus, readings, assignments and examples of exemplary student work. Sternfeld then concludes with a brief exploration of how to apply digital historiographical principles in his ‘History, Media and Technology’ course in three areas: (1) history and information studies graduate curriculum (2) undergraduate history curriculum, including courses designed to teach practical skills in creating digital history (3) trans-disciplinary academic programmes. In all three of these areas, he has found that there are opportunities to merge the traditional with the digital, with the hope of sparking cross-disciplinary dialogue at all levels.

JiTP: The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. 4 (2013)

This article is an investigation into the effects of digitally encoding literature texts on the teaching of close reading in an English Literature class. Singer argues that using digital tools and having students engage with their own encoding of texts should be a method of close reading, and work in addition to compliment the traditional practice of hard copy annotation. Singer then discusses the differences between teaching with HTML and TEI, for which examples are included. The main section of the article lays out the benefits that occur through having UG students engage in encoding as a close reading exercise. These include: digital highlighting which encourages sharing, refocusing reading, coming to terms with unfamiliar technical language and practices, discovery of unseen links, familiarity with a text due to the number of hours spent with it, and forced formal choices on categorisation. The remainder of the article discusses how working with TEI impacted upon Singer’s students’ learning experience. This includes analysis on how to successfully categorise and tag phenomenon in ‘experimental’ poetry that does not follow the format of other more traditional forms of poetry. Also, how to transfer classical terms in literature analysis effectively to TEI. Singer concludes that “as [her students] tagged and then colour coded their readings, [they] gained the editorial prowess and creativity to develop interpretive language beyond note or prescriptive terminology”; something that she decrees is perhaps more useful than what is gained from only a hard copy and ink highlighter pen.

Kairos Praxis Wiki. Last modified 25 May 2013.

This is an extended blog post come wiki entry on using the increased social media presence in classrooms, to the advantage of the professor and to fulfil learning objectives. Swartz seeks to address students’ concerns that what they learn in a classroom will never be relevant to their real world experiences, by looking at social networking sites as part of her teaching on language and identity construction. Swartz discusses how the use of electronic media as a teaching tool has its own set of problems; including keeping students focused on the examination of these sites as texts and to analyse them as such. She deems that the most important lesson that can be conveyed to students is why they want to use the session to check what their friends are talking about online: that language construction, meaning and the evolution of these, does not occur in a vacuum. It is just that social media now makes this easier to see than it had been historically. Social media can also be used to investigate representation of identity; a topic that particularly interested Swartz’s students. Writing assignments for this class revolved around comparing how social media has changed writing, and how online writing choices can be impacted by the inclusion of visual images. Swartz concludes that she was pleased in the way that the use of social media as a teaching tool, allowed her students to think about the changing nature of language. Swartz states that she aims to evolve the activities within the class to include looking at how writing online may alter for an individual depending on what persona (public or private, social or professional etc.) that they are imbuing their text with.

CEA Critic. 76.2(2014), pp.169-90

An article centred on close digital analysis of the poetry taught in a chronological survey course of American literature, considering ‘digital humanities tools as a means to reconsider the anthologized texts of literary works’. Raabe uses the differences in the punctuation in various copies of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” to teach that through slight variants, the message of a text can be dramatically altered; and how are we to know which of these variants was actually what the author intended? Digital facsimiles, online transcriptions, and DH research tools that permit students to visualise textual variation allow students to review alternate versions of literary works as a classroom activity, even during undergraduate survey courses. Raabe discusses how he uses this pedagogy with examples including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” and Emily Dickinson’s poetry manuscripts. The second half of this article discusses how the teaching of such a literature survey course has changed over the generations, and whether the teaching of anthologies is any longer relevant when students, trained as consumers, have instant access to a media-rich archive of all texts ever written. Raabe argues, in conclusion, that ‘One reason to introduce digital humanities skills to students of literature is to encourage them to think critically about such commercial trends and to seek opportunities for them to engage with literary texts in a wide array of material forms.’

Digital Humanities Quarterly. 7.2 (2013).

This article is about a University of California course taught in the Spring semester of 2010 for undergraduates in the History department. The focus of the course was the historical phenomenon known as ‘The Silk Road’, and the students were asked to utilise spatial history principles and methods, and to use Google Earth to make atlases of the historic journeys. The authors use this article to argue that the best place of DH within the classroom (as of 2013) is within specifically designed assignments, which make use of students’ knowledge and interests, as well as tools that are easily accessible within usual teaching schedules. Continual evaluation of all aspects of the project allows the students to see the merits and flaws of the digital tools, as well as their own use of them within a scholarly environment. The majority of the article is given over to addressing he issues faced in interpretation in the spatial humanities; and how this can be analysed and in turn assessed within the work of UG students. The article then moves on to discuss how spatial literacy ad spatial thinking can be addresses in a classroom setting, before moving on to a narrative account of how the specific module in question was delivered, received ad assessed. The authors conclude that the students’ achievement of the learning objectives exceeded their expectations during the course, and that the course was extremely rewarding for all involved. This article would be exceptionally useful for those looking to teach a similar module, as the Appendices give detailed outlines of the Digital Map Rubrics used, along with other criteria used for the spatial reasoning and visualisation component, and finally the storytelling and integration sections. The second Appendix contains the responses given in the student feedback forms at the conclusion of the module, which illustrated how valuable the students found it.

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

This chapter explored what it is that should be taught under the heading of ‘Digital Humanities’. Here is presented five case studies, the experience of organising/teaching of which, means that the author argues for a focus on teaching new methodological approaches to humanities problems and issues, rather than just giving students technical skills. Students should be trained in collaboration and professional cooperation: an issue that has been facing educators for some time, and whilst may be linked to a rise in digital literacy, it has not arisen because of it. Social networking could be used to teach this, though this may require further exploration before being successfully and formally integrated into a curriculum. There also need to be an awareness of how Millennials have grown up: “the Google search has become ‘research’ and thus they need to be taught how to go beyond the ‘point and click’ that they have come to accept as the norm. The chapter then goes into detail of the case studies of the course delivered by The Department of Digital Humanities at KCL, which are as follows: (1) One day training in XML and TEI – targeted at academics engaged in collaborative research (2) One week intensive training on Medieval Manuscripts – aimed at PhDs and includes theoretical classes as well as practical application of digital tools (3) An UG course ‘Introduction to the Digital Humanities’ – takes students from a wide range of disciplines, often who lack motivation for truly engaging with technologies involving the use of angle brackets, with some taking the class just to fulfil credit requirements (4) An UG module on ‘Texts in the Digital Humanities’ – following on from the previous course, with students taking it to “modernise” their degree, or out of a genuine interest in the technology (5) A PG module on ‘Advanced Text Technologies’ – taken by students on the MA in Digital Humanities and also the MA in Digital Culture and Society; not usually taken by other PGs, but most of the students are far more motivated to take in the same material as the UG modules. There is also more emphasis on modelling and analysis than just technical skills. The author concludes that there is a requirement to teach research methodology using DH, not just skills. It also needs to be relevant to the students and grounded in their own research/study area interests in order to retain their attention. The chapter ends with the hope that the wider arts and humanities will embrace the usefulness of DH and the DH approach once they see how successfully it can help those who engage with it.

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

Looking at UCLA’s 3 year Digital Culture Mapping Program sponsored by the W. M. Keck Foundation. The variety of topics that was seen in the final year projects that the students of this course submitted, showcases how DH skills can address a broad range of issues and interdisciplinary questions. The main tension that was faced during the delivery of this program was whether the Digital or the Humanities components of DH should be more dominant, or tackled first, when teaching through project based learning. This book chapters examines the conflicts that arose in the UCLA team’s delivery of its initial DH teaching (prior to 2011); mainly in regards to the variety of topic areas that mapping can be used to address, and the problems surrounding topic specific data collection methodology. The limits of a DH teacher’s knowledge (in either the digital, or the humanities section) when faced with a very specific project topic, must unavoidably be acknowledged, so that the best help can be sought to realise the full potential of the students’ resourcefulness when apply DH to their areas of interest. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the development of the UCLA program in detail, and looks at how the problems faced were tackled. This includes problems faced in the initial delivery of the program and the development of the three main pedagogical goals of (1) Teach the use and critical analysis of geospatial digital tools (2) Provide the tools for the students to contribute to, and develop their own, digital mapping projects (3) “teach professional vision”; a critical thinking approach to mapping. These goals were addressed as core components of the curriculum structure. The challenge was in integrating digital toolsets within detailed and appropriate humanities instruction. Practical demands were addressed, such as keeping up with the pace of change in DH mapping tool technology. A detailed explanation of the teaching and topic contents of the program follows, including the professors’ insight into how various teaching/learning tasks went. This is full of examples of task for students, though many are US or even LA specific. The program discussed in this chapter laid the foundation for the wider teaching (both separate and integrated) of the DH at UCLA: an UG minor was launched in 2011, along with a PG certificate.

INF 2331H, Fall 2010. Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.

This is a PG course at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information taught intermittently from 2009 onwards. It considers “the histories and possible futures of books in a digital world”. This course is designed to take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of every conceivable aspect of the book, and places a high emphasis on the use of digital tools to expedite and enhance analysis. All course texts were available in digital formal, and one of the core ‘readings’ included the playing of a video game. Assessment for the course was broken down into the following: 10% for participation (class discussions and debates), 20% XML encoding challenge (an introduction to digitally modelling print and manuscript materials), 30% report on the encoding challenge, and 40% on the final essay (a 14 to 18 page essay exploring a module appropriate topic). Academic integrity, in special regard to digital tools, is also covered in this class. The schedule for the class and assigned readings are all detailed on the module web page. Learning objectives for this course include a practical knowledge of XML mark-up and visualisation tools. Readings survey such topics as “the ontology of born-digital artefacts, critical assessment of digitization projects, collaborative knowledge work, reading devices (old and new), e-book interface design, text/image/multimedia relationships, theories and practices of mark-up, the gendering of technologies, the politics of digital archiving, the materiality of texts, and the epistemology of digital tools”.

CEA Critic, 76.2 (2014), pp.191-99

This article discusses the use of DH in the teaching of English Literature, and specifically the pedagogical value of the digital tool Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). The merits and pitfalls of teaching with TEI are explored at length; not just the practical hurdles but the theoretical ones also. Negatives include, for example, convincing students that the time consuming and labour intensive task is worth it, even though it can be frustrating to beginners. Also that it requires relatable take home computers and a classroom licence for software that may be difficult to obtain for teachers who are the first in their department or institution to use this teaching/learning method. She then goes on to discuss the pedagogical benefits of attentive reading in that it offers a rigorous, systematic and somewhat flexible way for students to inscribe a view of the text onto the text itself. The students would often come across the difficulties of encoding during the process of the task itself, and as long as they were made aware in advance that they could account for them, and overcome them, then they tackled these difficulties well. Gailey also found that by letting students (or groups of students) chose their own aspect of a text to investigate, that they then could bring an individual focus to the text that might not have been widely explored before. Being forced to write a rational explanation for the focus of their project and what kind of critical lens inform it, adds to any assessment that could be made on the encoding itself, and including the development of customised tags, and methods for quality control. Asking students both to think about texts from a material or representational perspective and to contribute creatively to cultural knowledge is the hallmark of many digital humanities classes. Gailey concludes that rigorous digital editing in the humanities is currently based on TEI and whilst this may not always be so it is important as the market gives rise to new technologies and digitally inclined researchers develop competing standards.

For a great summary of Amanda Gailey’s experience of teaching close textual analysis, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEXXS4V76y8 for a sixty minute talk that she gave at the University of Kansas in 2014.

Digital Humanities Quarterly. 5.3 (2011)

Does digital pedagogy have to be electronic? This paper discusses the idea that digital pedagogy is too frequently conceived in terms of instructional technologies. Technology, at least in its electrified forms, can be a limiting factor in imagining how humanities instruction can be "digital": something to get your hands on, to deal with in dynamic units, to manipulate creatively. What might an electronically-enabled pedagogy look like if we pulled the plug? This paper surveys several examples to suggest that an unplugged digital humanities pedagogy can be just as productively disorienting as doing humanities digitally, and can potentially help students prepare for and contextualize their learning experiences with instructional technologies or in online environments. The most accessible example is of the close and distant reading of the Austin novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Depended on how it is counted, the term ‘pride’ appears between 6 and 9 times more frequently than ‘prejudice’. This is interesting in terms of the vocabulary choice of the author: where pride describes a character trait, prejudice is more of a relational term: changeable, situational, and more dangerous to accuse someone of. Looking at where in the novel the frequency of ‘pride’ occurs, it can be seen at three key character introduction points. At a distance, the reader can see the ‘hot spots’; moving closer, the reader can analyse their contexts; and somewhere in the middle we start to learn about the novel’s reformation of pride through Elizabeth’s perspective. Though there are criticisms of using this method to teach about a novel, there are many values. Particularly for students whose interface with digital texts and resources is driven by search engines or guided by keywords and text strings. Unplugging the search engine can help students perceive the limitations as well as the possibilities of what makes these engines run: pattern matching. A method such as this sharpens students’ attention to forms of analysis that explore the analogue and digital domains along a continuum. It helps students to interrogate the various kinds of readings they can do therein. And it reveals all of those kinds of readings as actively constituting critical interpretations. Fyfe then moves on to discuss various different teaching methods for integrating DH into a class schedule; for instance he uses an example he takes from Ramsay, Stephen. "On Building." Stephen Ramsay. 11 January 2011. Web. 13 July 2011. After working on programming on Mondays and Wednesdays, his class devotes Fridays to a theoretical text on new media or the digital humanities. But no one gets to read it in advance. Instead, on "No-Reading Fridays", the class takes turns reading, paragraph by paragraph, the text projected on the classroom’s screen. After two such Fridays grappling with Heidegger’s "The Question Concerning Technology", the class had covered only eight paragraphs, but Ramsay declares that "I truly think that this is one of most enlightening class discussions I’ve ever been a part of (either as a student or a teacher)." The format allows the seminar to flourish, and "the professor is only a very small part of what’s going on." Fyfe asks if this is different from a seminar where everyone works from the same edition of a physical book. He concluded that it is not, yet for a graduate course in digital humanities, where much of the attention is on the digital realm and on theories of new media, it is a chance for everyone to be on the same page — literally — where the page is projected on the wall. Because no one (save the professor) has read it before, the seminar reimagines real-time information processing in a very old fashioned way. This is what Fyfe terms ‘teaching naked’ as it is meant to be understood: using technology effectively, subordinating it to the pedagogical goals of the class.

 Liberal Education Nation. February 1, 2012.

The promotion of ‘teamwork’ is a key objective of most employers. Davis looks at the difficulties of teaching this skill to students in a way that is fair and assessable. She stresses that this skill will become increasingly crucial as we move towards a more digital world, and that it is the collaboration aspect of digital humanities that separates it from the more traditional humanities studies. The notion that those who work in the humanities are usually individual workers/researchers, and thus do not know about teamwork or good collaboration, is shot down as a stereotype. More value should be placed on the experience of collaboration, even if this results in failure; though teachers should be aware that some collaborative group work activities may be less valuable if they are more like an absolutist monarchy in terms of group dynamics, rather than a democracy. Davis concludes with a discussion on the grading of teamwork in an educational environment and links to the following rubric: http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/teamwork  “This rubric is designed to measure the quality of a process, rather than the quality of an end product.”

Heather Froehlich blog. 19 March 2014.

Here Froehlich elaborates on the challenges faced in her ‘Textlab’ class. This blog post focuses more on the Computer Science students and the issues which they faced. This begins with an account on how the students taking Computer Science as their degree course, may have ceased studying English, or indeed any Arts and Humanities subjects, at age 15. Thus they found it challenging to interact with the English texts during the course and to interact with the English students, to whom the reading of Shakespeare was second nature. Froehlich found that during group work, the Computer Science students took a very basic entry-level DH approach to the texts that they were given to analyse; presenting word frequency diagrams for example. Yet they lacked confidence in producing any kind of explanations as to why variations in word frequency may occur. This is an intermediary blog post with Froehlich theorising over what the final projects may teach her about her students and the teaching of this course. Again, following up on her findings would be of interest.

Heather Froehlich blog. 29 January 2014.

This is a blog post on the author’s involvement in an interdisciplinary DH course called ‘Textlab’ at the University of Strathclyde (near Glasgow, UK) where the departments of English and Computer Science collaborate. The learning aim is to teach English students digital skills, and to give Computer Science students experience in aping their skills practically to a ‘real’ scholarly scenario. Froehlich uses this detailed and accessible blog post to explore the learning curve of the English students during the course, as well as what she learned and changed as a teacher of this course. The first step was in teaching English students computer coding, so that they had some understanding of the mechanics of the wider project. The English students struggled with this as they generally had very little coding experience. Froehlich describes how she dealt with the confidence issues of these students, and how practically she found it best to approach problems that arose when a student has no comprehension of how to engage with the computers. Froehlich sees her role as helping her students to understand not only what they are doing, but why. Her further experiences of this course would be interesting to follow further.

CEA Critic 76.2 (2014), pp.200-210

This article is looking at the question of the role of the Dh in the UG classroom. Complex programing ideas can often make it seem that the DH would be inaccessible to UG humanities students; but this is not necessarily the case. Thus far professors at small US Liberal Arts colleges have found that were they to be interested in pursuing DH teaching, that they would face difficulties ranging from budget blocks to computer lab logistic impossibilities. They may even face questions on an institutional level about what integrating digital skills could mean for the identity of their institution. Even professors at lager research based universities may come up against some problems when attempting to introduce DH skills to early UGs. Ficke recommends that others learn from her experience and introduce DH skills in small areas within larger first year gateway courses. In that way, the standard learning objective outcomes of the course can be driven by digital assignments, without incurring too much upset to the wider institution. Ficke then proceeds to give examples of how this occurred successfully in their English course by using foundation DH skills such as close reading, amongst others. By introducing her students to the processes used to make familiar resources (such as GoogleBooks) and literary translations, Ficke found that students were keener to engage with the act of contributing to building resources themselves. It also became apparent the need to teach students about considering “digital texts as mediated objects”, which was an important exercise in collaborative skills and processes, as well as an introduction to the ethics of using digital tools. The article then goes on to discuss in detail some of the assignments and teaching methods used to softly approach DH with UG English students. Ideas used include analysis of why digital copies of the same widely available document may vary. Technological challenges with OCR were also investigated by students; with the idea being that the students would understand more from their failures in digitising old font, and thus appreciate the labour that goes in to accurate digitisation. Ficke concludes that she has proven that HE institutions do not need a dedicated DH department to successfully incorporate DH tasks into UG teaching. That it is choosing the right incorporation of DH into the right assignments that is crucial. Moreover, that any professor can do this, whether they see themselves as technically savvy or not.

Department of Italian Language and Literature. Yale University, New Haven, CT.

This is the module website and course description of a Yale UG course that focuses on the digital reconstruction of an early twentieth century journey to and through Italy. The aim of the course is for students to use archives to carry out extended individual projects to examine history and literary contexts of travels in Italy during the time period in question. This s a highly imaginative and engaging approach to teaching DH, in an intensively practical historical environment, with no prior programming experience necessary for the students taking the class. The learning outcomes for the students can be summarised as follows: (1) first-hand experience of the pros and cons of digital tools for use in historical investigations (2) obtain knowledge of the evolution of DH and digital tools, and become competent in the use of these tools (3) be able to critically think about the use of digital tools by yourself and others, and the extent to which this could influence the historical investigations of the future. The transferable skills expected to be obtained during this module are: TEI, text mining apps, georeferencing apps, organising tags, using WordPress, learning Boolean search terms. There is an emphasis on an appreciated of collaboration in a digital environment, though it appears that the bulk of the final assessment is based on an individual project, that is then fed back to the group.

CEA Critic, 76. (2014). pp.147-57

An overview of the main discussion points for those involved in the teaching of, or with, DH. These include pedagogical concerns such as teaching strategies, curriculum development and learning outcomes. The author experiences the difficulties around teaching DH to UG through the construction of classes for English students. Bonds found, through research, that the benefits for teaching UGs the DH fell into two general categories: (1) using DH on an institutional level to resuscitate funding and “save the humanities” (2) strengthen the employability potential of humanities graduates by empowering them with skills that could see them successfully enter a wider range of industries. These reasons alone, Bonds argues, is why DH instruction should become widely integrated into as many arts and humanities courses as possible. Though it may appear that Millennials are “digital natives”, they still require specialist DH instruction in order to use their skills in a constructive and productive manner. Bonds then discusses the link between DH and project based learning; and the interpersonal and technical skillsets that must be taught to UGs to make this teaching method a realistic option for successful learning. Using various scenario setups for teaching UG DH are then explored, such as museum based assignments. The article concludes that the DHs have now entered a phase of “organising learning outcomes” and actively applying these to classrooms. Bonds calls for the conversation on the teaching of DH to continue and for all those engaged in it to share their experiences so that everyone can benefit from progressions in the field.

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.

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

This chapter looks at what is termed ‘first year writing courses’ (akin to English language), at US universities, which are compulsory at most institutions unless students gain exemption through high SAT scores. These courses teach students how to write for university level assessment, but have little time to teach more than composition; content is sacrificed, and even more than that, analysis of content is left out entirely. In the modern digital age, the author asks, should digital communication not be the centre of such a course? This chapter then details a brief history of the movement from the 1990s onwards, to teach students to become involved with the production of digital literature, not merely a consumer. He details that there is now no space for separation of the Digital from the Humanities, if such first year writing courses to be taught effectively and efficiently. Universities need to overcome the limiting factors of the technical knowledge (or lack thereof) of 1^st year UG students and instructors, the limiting time frame of these writing courses, and the availability (or again, lack thereof) of digital writing hardware and software. The author subsequently details theories and then examples of how computers can be exploited to update first year writing courses, and make them more relevant to the students’ wider tertiary educational experience. This includes the combination of qualitative and quantitative writing display and analysis: skills that students could transfer easily to other modules. Examples of projects and assignments are then detailed, mostly with an English Literature flavour. Getting students to engage with texts as data, not just words, provided deeper understanding opportunities, then looking at composition alone. The chapter concludes that using DH techniques and tools to teach such courses is a far superior way to achieve the desired learning outcomes. Though (as of 2012), funding for full uptake of using DH methods has not been as widespread as the author desires.

Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. (Autumn/Fall 2015)

A course to be run in the first term of the 2015-2016 year at the University of Pittsburgh; open to both UG and PG students. Course requirements include regular (preferably 100%) attendance due to the nature of the digital skills building learning schedule. Participation on the course blog site, discussion boards and completion of the tests/quizzes is required by all students taking the course. The course use designed specifically to give students the knowledge and skills involved in quantitative and formal reasoning with the context of the interests and needs of students studying and working in the humanities. There is no prerequisite at this time (Summer 2015) for programming knowledge. The am of the course is to use digital tools and techniques to “identify interesting humanities research questions’. The assignments for the course are the required readings, programming ‘challenges’ or ‘problems’, response papers and a large research project (conducting in collaboration). The module site goes into detail about how these will be organised and assessed, with qualitative indicators of the level expected. The weight of each requirement is as follows: 25% homework assignments, 15% taken from the six best test scores, 10% midterm ‘take home’ exam, and 50% on the final research project During the course XML will be taught along with several meta languages (W3C Scheme, Relax NG and DTD). The formal course outcomes are described as follows: “upon successful completion of this course students will be able to 1) identify opportunities for the application of computer technology to authentic research problems in the humanities; 2) analyse the structure of texts in the humanities and develop formal representations of those structures; and 3) write original computer programs to conduct research on those texts.”