Session: Talk – THATCamp Digital Pedagogy ATX 2015 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org Just another THATCamp site Thu, 25 Feb 2016 19:12:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.12 Gender, Diversity, Engaged Scholarship and DH http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/06/gender-diversity-engaged-scholarship-and-dh/ Wed, 06 Jan 2016 01:07:39 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=339

“Build a better panel: Women in DH” is the title of one of Jacqueline Wernimont’s latest projects, a crowdsourced DB of women in DH. –Add yourself to it if you have not yet!– Projects like this remind us that often in the midst of constructing the democratic discourse of Humanities’ digital future, we forget to look at the inequalities, hierarchies, and access barriers that exist today. Is DH really so white and so male? Now that we have broader reach, can we afford not to consider the responsibilities of the public intellectual?

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What Tools Do Digital Humanists Still Need? http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/05/what-tools-do-digital-humanists-still-need/ Tue, 05 Jan 2016 04:18:29 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=323

The tools that digital humanists use have changed dramatically since people began using the term.  Often, DHers find and adapt existing technologies to new purposes.  However, sometimes software developers build software with the purpose of solving problems digital humanists have already identified (see chnm.gmu.edu/tools/).

I’m a software developer and I like to solve digital humanities problems.  I’d like to learn more about what unfulfilled digital needs digital humanists have:

  • What are the problems you have that feel like they need a software solution?
  • What area of your work is full of almost-there technologies that accomplish half of what you need them to, but lack essential features to make them really useful to you?
  • What sorts of tools do you dream about having access to?
  • What tools do you use that feel inadequate to the tasks you put them to?

This discussion could go in a bunch of different, beneficial, ways.

  • We can identify common problems for digital humanists and begin to imagine solutions for them
  • We can probably identify existing resources for people who just haven’t been matched with the right technology for them.
  • We can feed the todo lists of future hackathons and the plant seeds in the minds of open-source and university-based developers.

 

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Digital Pedagogy and Public Humanities Projects http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/04/digital-pedagogy-and-public-humanities-projects/ Mon, 04 Jan 2016 20:31:38 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=295

The degree to which students engage with the broader communities surrounding their academic institutions varies hugely. At campus universities, particularly those more physically separate from towns/cities, it can be common for students to remain ignorant of the current issues and past histories unique to their surroundings. Public humanities initiatives are increasingly offering an antidote to these divisions. At the same time, the open access nature of many digital projects and the growing number of accessible digital tools provide educators with a wide range of opportunities to collaborate with students on this type of work. By engaging in community education, students develop valuable skills such as writing for diverse audiences. Furthermore, breaking down some of the boundaries between their lives on- and off-campus helps show them the ways in which humanities scholarship might remain relevant to their lives after graduation.

This session will be focused on issues specific to Public Humanities projects with a digital pedagogy element, discussion of best practices, and the value of alternative modes of writing. A similar workshop is taking place at MLA16 (session #461, “Public Humanities Pedagogy Workshop,” Sat 8.30am). We can configure our session to serve as a complement to this workshop if there a number of THATCamp participants interested in attending both. If there is sufficient interest, we will also use the session to begin organizing a proposal for a Public Humanities workshop at the Digital Humanities 2016 conference in Krakow in June (proposals due 2/17).

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Session Proposal: Defining Digital Literacies http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/04/session-proposal-defining-digital-literacies/ Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:52:20 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=304

What are digital literacies in today’s world?  Have we moved past information literacy alone?  What other digital skills do our students need for personal, professional, and civic lives in the emerging digital ecosystem that is fundamentally shaped by networks and that is increasingly driven by data and algorithms that personalize information for users and inform human judgment?

What standards or frameworks do you use?  Here are a few examples:

  • Information Literacy: Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.” Accessed January 4, 2016. www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
  • Data Literacy: Carlson, Jake R.; Fosmire, Michael; Miller, Chris; and Sapp Nelson, Megan R. “Determining Data Information Literacy Needs: A Study of Students and Research Faculty” (2011). Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research. Paper 23. docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_fsdocs/23.
  • Multimodal Literacy: See examples here: Kuhn, Virginia. “Multimodal.” Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, Jentery Sayers (Eds.), Accessed January 4, 2016. Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments. digitalpedagogy.commons.mla.org/keywords/multimodal/ and github.com/curateteaching/digitalpedagogy/blob/master/keywords/multimodal.md
  • Multiliteracies: Clement, T.E., 2013. Multiliteracies in the Undergraduate Digital Humanities Curriculum: Skills, Principles, and Habits of Mind, in: Hirsch, B. (Ed.), Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, England. www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/161 and
    New London Group, 1996. A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review 66, 60–92.

 

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Digital Humanities and Academic Entrepreneurship http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/04/digital-humanities-and-academic-entrepreneurship/ Mon, 04 Jan 2016 15:58:04 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=293

What is Academic Entrepreneurship?  How can one become a Humanist Entrepreneur? What does that mean?

AE education – How do we adapt and how do we apply to a Humanities ecosystem the training and resources about becoming an entrepreneur that are available to scientific disciplines? Why is AE so important to those disciplines? Is it equally important to the practice of DH?

Is the marriage of DH and AE a powerful instrument of democratization of cultural values? Does AE contribute to the scientific debate of a Humanities discipline? What are the major roadblocks, psychological, cultural, and institutional that make it challenging to blend Humanities research with business?

 

 

 

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Session Proposal: Engaging Students in Digital Projects http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/04/session-proposal-engaging-students-in-digital-projects/ Mon, 04 Jan 2016 14:57:21 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=302

In the 21st century we face complex problems that cross disciplines and require collaborative approaches. Digital tools and information networks make it feasible to design project-based learning experiences that integrate students into the research process. This session will provide examples of how such projects, when integrated into courses, help students develop skills to work collaboratively, apply appropriate tools, and learn flexible problem-solving skills.  It will also invite participants to share more examples and effective strategies for integrating student digital projects into classes.  How do you break a project down?  How do you access available resources including other people.  How do you ensure students have the right skills?  How big a project is feasible?  How will you evaluate it?

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Session proposal: Making Student Work Public http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/03/session-proposal-making-student-work-public/ Sun, 03 Jan 2016 20:08:10 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=287

The digital sphere offers humanities instructors a rare and valuable opportunity to have students create knowledge that can transcend the classroom and the class assignment. Whether this knowledge takes the form of Wikipedia entries, websites, contributions to crowdsourcing platforms, or online maps and timelines, it shows undergraduates that they can be contributors to our disciplines, not just consumers. But for this work to become “real”, it must be publicly available online. This raises a number of questions. How do we protect student privacy? What are our legal obligations with respect to student work published online and student online identities? How do we guarantee the quality of the information produced? Should we offer it to the world with caveats about its sources? What kind of citation practices should we demand of our students? How do we deal with the widespread copy-paste plagiarism that characterizes the web and frequently emerges in such assignments? How do we make it possible for students to participate while protecting their own privacy? How do we accommodate students who wish to opt out of the public component of such assignments?

This session will involve a frank discussion of these issues and how the participants have dealt with them in their own teaching. It will also include a review of FERPA laws as interpreted at UT Austin, as well as an overview of solutions some other institutions and individuals have come up with in this area.

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Session proposal: Fail Stories http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2016/01/03/session-proposal-fail-stories/ Sun, 03 Jan 2016 19:46:30 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=285

Just as scientists prefer to publish positive results, discussions of digital humanities pedagogy tend to focus on success stories — great projects, student engagement, polished websites. But just as negative results are important to science, so that scientists don’t keep repeating the same fruitless experiments, negative pedagogical experiences are important for teaching. This session will encourage participants to share their digital pedagogy fail stories, with an emphasis on what went wrong, why, and how we all might avoid similar problems in the future. Stories involving any aspect of the teaching process — assignment development, syllabi, student engagement, specific tools, etc. — are welcome. Ideally, we will be able to identify some common pitfalls and come up with some shared strategies to avoid them.

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Session Proposal: DH Tools and Platforms http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2015/12/16/session-proposal-dh-tools-and-platforms/ http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2015/12/16/session-proposal-dh-tools-and-platforms/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2015 17:11:46 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=279

My intention for this session is in part to engage in a conversation about sharing what types of tools have been used successfully or unsuccessfully with regards to mapping, timelines, and online exhibitions. I think, however, the conversation should also consider how to critically choose a tool that best supports the learning objectives and research questions of  the students. Each tool/platform has both strengths and weaknesses that need to be evaluated within the context of the goals of the class and project.  Often we get caught up using the new or the shiny but we cannot forget to consider the theoretical framework and methodologies before choosing a tool.

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Session Proposal: Teaching DH in the Online Setting http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/2015/12/08/session-proposal-teaching-dh-in-the-online-setting/ Tue, 08 Dec 2015 17:55:12 +0000 http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/?p=258

DH practitioners are accustomed to (and rapidly overcoming) suspicion from colleagues that practice traditional forms of research and dissemination; however, resistance to online education persists even among the DH community. This proposed Talk session about online DH pedagogies will build upon an unconference conversation at DHSI 2015 on DH and online education. Participants will confront questions such as: Why is there a resistance to online pedagogy among DH practitioners? What are some approaches to teaching an online DH course? What are some of the benefits and challenges? How does a class overcome the constraints created by the LMS? Are there examples of successful online DH courses?

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