Were there any notes from the Digital Archives session?

THATCamp – ontological crisis

Example:

Music software – music educators not always clear on some issues – although composers have been digital for decades – notation accompanied by playback to hear what you’re writing, but product is a score –

Digital music software organized according to what you’re trying to do: programs are complicated and very expensive (up to $1K)

Students come into college having composed since 2^nd or 3^rd grade – have started with pen and paper, then get a simple composition tool – now, students have been using iLife with Garage Band for back score (a la nine inch nails) – Garage Band built for copy/paste loops, not single notes into sound file, not score

SO – pedagogically, have students who want to “major” in Garage Band (ie electronic music, broadly) rather than learning process and product for single note composition culminating in a score

Similarly – students using “cite this” feature without understanding variations in citation styles – don’t understand components of a citation, for example, so can’t modify or (when necessary) generate manually

Worry re how pushing students toward more sophisticated, specialized understanding (“pushing against student misconception”) affects student evaluations – note a general societal trend toward minimizing credence of “expert” in field (eg PhD), especially in academia

TIP: extra credit for going into Wikipedia and adding citations to the entry for their topic

Need to help students see why we’re asking them to do certain assignments, learn certain skills – another role for transparency  – look at the purpose or meaning for certain requirements

Helping students see the benefit of knowing why/what’s going on with a process – the advantages when the technology progresses, for example, and you’re able to see what’s going on

It used to be we had to find the material (shlepping to library and using card catalog!) rather than expecting that the material will find us – a consumer mentality?

Market-driven curriculum and orientation to product lead to some students’ prioritizing the end result (product) over the process we want them to complete that is reflected in the product

Need to broaden discussions with students about why something matters, is important, has practical significance – looking at whole curriculum, not just our class –

Useful to bring other faculty into class to model discussion, disagreement

J Z Smith on using syllabus on first day to demo/discuss choices that have been made, the differences those choices make – including in evals follow-up questions on how those choices panned out!

Could a department have their students participate in a curriculum design exercise? HWS had graduating womens studies majors come to lovely lunch and talk about the curriculum, including responses to curricula from other programs – resources from other programs came from student project (funded) during semester to review other programs and gather info

Need to start out with (1) assessing where students are/what they’re thinking and (2) lay out the big picture for them from the beginning

A “main responsibility” is making clear – not just in abstract platitudes – the value and stakes of a liberal arts education

**notes taken by Sally Stamper

**music composed during session available at:

t.co/1dWYkeH

t.co/1awKyc3

Gamification: taking principles of game design and applying it to other activities and professions to make them more engaging/bearable/fun.

There is controversy and conflict about the topic and how it relates to students.  The Escapist’s “Extra Credits” video on the topic was used as an introduction (link for Video Essay )

Software for Digital Humanities using game design principle.  Game created by Michelle created level badges that equated to badge to grade.  Her game requires players/students to interact with each other via social media where they play roles of prominent characters and interact in character.  Scored based on liked and disliked posts.

This sounds like an actual game, rather than a limited use of “gamified” techniques

Might introducing game principles take focus away from other pedagogical objectives? Shawn Doyle raised concerns about the time needed to test and create games, rather than using their principles and ideas.

• • It is important that gamification doesn’t just provide a way to “game the system” (in which the game structure does not sync/fit with existing course goals
• What happens when our students start hacking the game?
  • When there are no additional incentives, then the game is the only thing
  • Cheating is always a problem when students don’t see the value of the course content itself
• What about examples of gamification in the humanities?
  • Working with gifted high school students, one approach is to give them “missions” that are focused on principles of positive psychology, as opposed to providing ways to “game the system.”  Also, this is not the core mechanic of the course; it is one element among several.
  • A Media Studies/Theatre team-taught course used several of these kinds of principles (drawing on Lee Sheldon’s course designs), and while some elements seemed to work well and engage some students well, others were either actively detrimental to learning or inconclusive.  More trials need to be conducted and reviewed.
  • Jane McGonigal has some examples in her book, Reality is Broken.
  • Katie Salen’s Quest to Learn pilot school in NYC
• Thinking about student motivation, wanting to know “what my grade is” at any given moment is a powerful motivator. The “Bartel Test” is discussed; breaks MMORPG players into  social, achiever, explorer, and killer.  The test is used to explain why people play.  Could it help explain why students try or do not?
• Gifted students often are hesitant to take on challenges where they might loose/fail.  Created missions to reinforce positives to provide motivation.

• With teacher education, the feedback can be competency based, with the motivator pushing being that they know they’re preparing for a professional position after graduation.  Concerned, though, that if we make all the achievement focused on small gains, we might lose students’ attention and focus on the larger picture.  How do we balance those elements?
  • Making education a game changes what education is; removing the intrinsic value of why you’re participating in education removes something very important
  • Possible to create “levels” within content where passing/achieving a certain level or skill it opens up new levels, challenges, and skills.  They included a revision structure so students could revise and retry.
  • Concerns were expressed about grading and achievement solely based on XP points, game skills, and levels missing loses the personality and individuality.

  Gamification requires a carrot, lots of them for extrinsic motivation.  If this is used then there is never any intrinsic motivation.  We can miss the “why”  “why am I doing this?”

  • What about just doing work because it needs to be done?  Learning to work hard when you don’t want to?
    • A lot of games try to find ways to make meaning for drudgery.
      • Seinfeld’s calendar for work
      • 10,000 hours theory and The Dan Plan
    • McGonigal wants to imagine a world in which there is less drudgery
• Games in education is not making education a game.  Where does the line between gameplay and work get drawn? Work ethic and stress do not need to go hand in hand.  Changing the meaning of work, changing goals is where games can help.
• Instead of thinking about faculty making games, what about asking students to design their own games?
  • Global Kids
  • Geocaching: for many, it’s about the journey; for others, the outcome (racking up numbers)
  • Younger students (primary and secondary) are more likely to engage well with simple and/or black and white objectives in games than students in higher education
• Have game design principles and game structures always been a part of education and learning?
• It should be more about “what did I learn today?” than “what will get me the A?”
• James Paul Gee’s 32 Principles
• Game strategies are more than simple rewards and levels; practice, challenge, motivation, personalization all contribute to what make games engaging

• Concluding texts
  • Gee’s interview for the New Learning Institute
  • Prof.hacker post on gamifying your course website
  • Ian Bogost’s critique of gamification

Topic introduction:

Amy comes as a humanist Political Scientist.  How can we talk with rank and tenure committees?  Also, having picked things up on her own, how does one build those skills?

Dick: My progress through tenure and promotion (while switching fields from math to CS years ago) was hampered by the time I invested in coming up to speed with technology, and helping others with those technologies.  None of that counted towards tenure.  Also, values in my field of CS were not well understood by my tenure and promotion committee.  How can we avoid this in the case of DH?

Discussion

Jackie: We all bear the burden of educating our colleagues.  This places burden on individuals to make the work of DH legible.

___: As a new faculty member, what is our advice?  How can we explain, make relevant, especially when there’s almost a service element?

Erin:  Must be able to explain whatever one’s field is.  Being at a liberal arts college, there’s more freedom to explore.

Jackie:  Are there places where we can send deans and provosts to?

Sara:  Looking at Twitter as a form of citation.

Rebecca:  At AACU:  Those administrators need examples and models of tenure cases.  MLA has something, but not enough;  Nines working on it.

Dick:  A white paper from one or more professional societies would help.

John:  Has been on a tenure and promotion committee.  It is just accepted.  Ryan:  as an interviewee, was asked “where do you see your scholarship going in next five years?”  Scientist asked for “traditional forms of scholarship….”

Erin:  We need to be aware of it.

John:  Departmental statement was rewritten.

Amy:  Will have to work hard to make the case for her tenure and promotion, make the case clearly to a heterogeneous group.

Dick:  Explicit wording of a departmental statement of values for tenure and promotion that recognizes DH would be enough.

Rebecca:  Katherine Harris sent a tweet about expertise.

___:  Were there relevant comments in the “communicating with colleagues” section?

Mark:  No.

Jackie:  What about interdisciplinary collaborations?

Ryan:  Seeking collaboration with computer scientists;  Dick is seeking collaborators in Humanities.

Mark:  Needs to be incentives on both sides.  Same with mentoring (as came up in “communicating with colleagues” session).

Rebecca:  What about role of undergraduate research as an incentive?

Jackie:  Collaborations such as LAC-R1 or anything newsworthy, and can help to make a tenure/promotion case.

Ryan:  There are NYT articles about DH this year.  Sometimes easier to make the case for outsiders!

Rebecca:  Role of grant agencies.  Can you get credit from peer-reviewed grant.

John:  Peer review an issue. DH that is “just doing it” won’t count.

___: At a small college, what do resources look like, how do they get shared, and how does that go?

Erin:  Laptop… That’s it.  She is her own tech support, and her IT department doesn’t support her Mac.  Particularly interested in partnerships with research-intensive schools.

Jackie:  Are there opportunities for multiple LACs to collaborate on grants?  Can we band together?

Dick:  I’m looking for that.  Is there funding for LAC-LAC collaboration?

Rebecca:  Talking to people about this.  One model is trading expertise for expertise.  NITLE is interested, Mellon is interested.  Will have to collaborate in order to .

Dick:  Start-up grants need initiation by a humanist, and I’m a CS collaborator.

Jackie:  Need an innovation statement.

Rebecca:  Brett Bobley is interested in new models of pedagogy, as well as innovation in humanities and innovation in technology.  Talk to Jen or Brett.

Ryan:  Need to connect.  Join DHAnswers, which supports technical questions, with vetting.  On a similar model, DHCommons is for collaborating on projects. Some big projects might use that site to collaborate or disseminate.  Quinn put the site together, several others here are involved.

Dick:  This kind of collaboration needs some face-to-face time to get started.

Rebecca:  Needs the face-to-face, which will happen at MLA session.

Mark:  If have gifted undergraduates doing innovative work, where should they go for graduate school, where they can grow their enthusiasm?

Sara:  Can be a divide at an institution between old guard and newer faculty;  at her institution, younger faculty are gathering to band together over lunch.  Helps them to bring informed internal ideas to the table.

Dan:  Had a discussion among faculty including both older and younger faculty, and some of the older faculty asked how they could help.

Ryan:  This is how DH gained a foothold.  Some with traditional scholarship are endorsing.

Ryan:  At MLA, it was said doing DH requires twice as much work, since must do the traditional scholarship, too.

Erin:  Fortunately, at LAC, don’t need the book for tenure.

Dick: Get it in writing.

Ryan:  There are these advantages of being at a small college.

Erin:  Have more latitude to create new courses.

Dick: Quinn said the same.

Jackie:  How many people are on job market.

Dick:  I meant getting the tenure values in writing for the committee.

Ryan:  Getting tenure and promotion letters.

Dick:  A possible model:  Computer scientist and student collaborates with digital humanist and student

Rebecca:  Wheaton College Old English/CS/Stat project to find about authorship is an example.  Their college requires a collaborative linked courses project.

Jackie:  At MLA DH track, do you need to build things in order o be a DHer?  Other questions:  What is feasible? What is feasible at undergraduate level? What computational competencies do DHers need in order to collaborate?

Dan: At Occidental, a staff group consults with faculty on these technologies.

Dick:  This is related to the technology center idea that arose in the student panel.

Dan: Doing that at Occidental, with students who help support.

What is the definition of social reading?:

Reading and analyzing texts collaboratively

• possible tools: good reads, social tagging (i.e. flickr)
• Ancient jewish concept of Midrash of collaboratively commenting on holy texts by scholars
• Comment Press–WordPress plugin for collaboration, annotation, alternative to Google Docs, must be run on your own server, comment on specific blocks of text.
• Why use Comment Press or like technologies? Connecting students to scholarship of analyzing particular portions of text, close reading, giving students ownership.
• Assessing students’ reading ability. Requiring students to write in books, text, direct interaction with text. Example, students that aren’t allowed to write in text, never given opportunity to have meaningful interaction with text, on deeper level than surface story. Deeper level, at zone of proximal development. Important as instructor to start at students’ knowledge base.
• Using social tools with students, do instructors lose control of class? In good or bad ways?
• What would an assignment look like that involved collaborating on a single piece of text?
• Example of collaboration via twitter: The Atlantic Book Club using #1book140
• Tool: Diigo for collaborating, marking up digital artifacts.

Social Media in the Classroom

• Facebook groups-interacting with Students, discussion board
• Facebook pages connected with Twitter to display on WordPress
• Historical Role playing using Facebook accounts, ex-students playing the roles of slaves, Nat Turner, evangelical preacher.
• What makes a classroom social?
• Technology as a second avenue for participation. Students have different preferred modalities. Some students uncomfortable with public speaking but more comfortable with writing.
• Activity example, taking poems by Robert Burns and rephrase into tweets. How does that change the text? And force students to reflect…socially?
  
• What does technology do to allow students to understand/reflect about the medium? How should students reflect on their social interactions in these kind of learning spaces?
• Early adoption stage, how do we get early adopters to say this has value, there’s an obstacle, but once you get past this obstacle, you can assimilate it into your learning.Tech is spread by word of mouth, by faculty members adoption rather than workshops. Better to invite faculty, rather than push out onto faculty. Seeding technology.
  
• Gathering questions via web form before class. Asking students: What is your top question?
• “Just in time teaching” related to using Google Docs or Google forms.
• Using Google Docs to teach summarizing articles, vetting writing, what counts as a good summary? Opening up the classroom to students.
• Letting go of control to students with social media, at what point do you need to turn it into a lesson of what are valid sources of knowledge? Value of stepping in when you need to. Teaching students how knowledge is constructed. How then are misconceptions constructed? Must be careful about teaching students public dialog.
• Gerald Graft–Teaching the Conflict. Allowing students to have a voice.
• Exercise experiment via Dave Carroll (@davidcaroll): backtoschoolforgood.daveandteena.com/2011/06/04/prof-hacker-blog-post-how-sociable-are-you/
• Digress.it: digress.it/
• FB for faculty, friending students? wait until you don’t have a class or until grades are turned in. Check privacy settings. What does friend mean on FB? It’s a verb now.
• Some schools have specific policies for social media, FB friending.
• Openbook.org: search engine for public updates on FB.

Session notes are in this Google Document. Feel free to edit!

• Using digital portfolios in a department whose chair is highly tech-phobic (refuses to use email, etc.).  How do you deal with a situation like that?
  • (Faculty engaging student with digital tools are primarily lecturers in the dept.)
  • Perhaps the tenured faculty could hold a meeting in which they openly identify the advantages/disadvantages of print and digital media
  • Her behavior is not rational, so trying to persuade her otherwise is unlikely
  • If your Dean is supportive, then he/she can put pressure on the dept. chair to make incremental changes
  • Bringing in recent grads who are working using digital tools to show the benefits of these tools
• How do you encourage faculty who seem to be interested/intrigued by new digital tools, but also seem to be reticent to take the time to learn and then integrate them into their pedagogy?
  • (And some people think they know more than they do)
  • Is having someone on staff with broad familiarity of applicability of tools to higher ed pedagogy crucial/central to disseminating these tools and practices?
    • Jay ___: I am that here at St. Norbert’s.  Staff are much more likely to attend workshops than faculty.  How do I get them to come in?
      • Blake: took long time to feel like they were worth attending.
    • Mentoring new faculty could be a way to encourage attendance
      • There needs to be incentives on both sides for it to work, though
      • Cross-departmental mentoring helps new faculty see connections between disciplines
  • Why isn’t there a “help desk” for integration of digital tools into pedagogy?
• In building inter-disciplinary minors organized around digital networked media, there is a huge coordination problem.  How do you balance resources, including hardware, software, and participants time?
  • Finding the right collaboration tool is probably important: meetings may not necessarily be the best way to get something like that going.
    • Email is also not the best; it must have a group collaboration component.
  • Does anyone use collaborative software within their department, perahps even in lieu of dept. meetings?
    • Sharepoint, though it’s a pain (and Microsoft empire).
    • Google Docs…
      • Working on such projects with colleagues crosses into territorial issues about authorship
      • There needs to be some kind of understanding about the appropriateness of such changes
      • It can be wonderful, in that your colleagues(s) are like little elves who come in to help you further your work, just when your energy is flagging
    • Facebook Groups’ new mechanic allows for friendships to develop more casually (can be closed, notifies you when new posts arrive)
  • What about a retreat during the summer to work out the logistics?
    • You might even be able to get day-rate funding from your institution as an incentive
    • Or perhaps a grant
    • (It seems like support community-building
• How is hardware shared on different campuses?
  • Shared pool: priority-based; some campus groups have higher priority
    • better equipment, but sometimes less access
  • Library controlled: reservations are first-come, first served
    • limited number of devices (laptop, ipad)
  • Media Studies dept. controlled: single faculty member, loans made on casual basis
    • Easy to get access because single faculty member is open to it, but can be a drain on his time
• Availability of IT resources can be very limited on some campuses.  Is anyone familiar with the WW3 network?
  • It’s an attempt to build a Web around scholarly tools only
• One prominent issue often raised when institutions consider making significant changes is focusing on changing/updating the Humanities (as opposed to Sciences and Social Sciences).  How do we keep Humanities faculty from hearing that focus articulated as “in the future, you will all become Media Studies faculty”?
  • Strength in Numbers: early adopters participate in pilot testing, and then they become advocates of ways to use those tools and practices in pedagogy.
  • If you say, “everyone will need to know this,” it’s less effective than if you provide colleagues with assistance with ways to introduce change
  • Again, face to face gatherings help to build community
    • (like Final Cut Pro User Groups)
    • Allowing people to give a “like” or thumbs up by regularly posting about such gatherings to a blog or listserve seems to really help approval rates

Kim Middleton kicked it off (was volunteered to kick it off) – what can we do to give students tools they can take with them; how can it be clear to students what it is we’re doing when we’re trying to develop skills. These are (at her school) college-wide goals for liberal learning. This is also an issue at Harvey Mudd. “Critical thinking” is ubiquitous but not always meaningful. Persuasive communication is also a vague phrase. What does that look like when it’s multimedia?

Broad institutional outcomes are not always on the front burner and can be hard to define (both politically and intellectually).

The value rubrics of AAC&U might be an approach as will Partnership for 21st Century Skills (k16) plus others that will be tweeted. (Media Scholarship?)

Defining terms – being forced to work in alternative formats can require people to stretch and uncover what they don’t know. Discomfort with the ambiguity of inquiry. Doing the research without yet knowing what the focus will be (using primary sources) can be really unsettling because you don’t know what to look for.  Another cause of hesitance is that when you don’t know how much time a new kind of task will take, which makes learners reluctant to take on those kinds of projects. “How do we scope inquiry?”

We need to recognize skills students do have in navigating contemporary sources. Have students use Diigo to share links that they can annotate and tag. (Students actually started using Library of Congress subject headings because having controlled taxonomy worked.) Can use the experiences of everyday uses of information and how one handles it to relate to unfamiliar resources such as digital archives. The focus on credible sources has led many students to be skeptical of social media sources as valuable.

Developing a way of thinking should transfer across media. Use, assess, and situate different media appropriately.  Need to understand that “credible” isn’t a matter of appearances. Need work days – lab days – when students practice can help. So might having a lab attached to a course.

A challenge is separating tool literacy from actual critical understanding.

In the humanities the process is often invisible; we assume students will pick it up somehow. We don’t do apprenticeship terribly well. We (sometimes) see writing as a process but often fail to recognize our own research process. “Mathematical maturity” – a threshold crossed when people understand underlying concepts rather than being able to get the answer. Peer mentorship is one way of helping bridge expert and novice mode. Can we leverage excitement about digital humanities and digital tools to model learning how to engage in research and creativity. In physics, peer learning has been proven to be effective. See also The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age.

Should there be a course in digital literacy? Or should it be across the curriculum? Like writing, it can’t be learned in a course, it’s learned over time with practice. Should bear in mind that the end goal is to be able to apply these skills in a variety of situations post-graduation. Learning how to learn is the point.

How do we assess this kind of learning? Project based learning can show products that unify process and content. Act of publishing in some form is where the balance between product and process happens. Need to tap into causes in which students are invested; they can understand the rhetorical nature of communication when their work is public and about something that matters to them.(Cf Standford Study of Writing.)

When does the technology itself become the product? Are there times when, if understanding a technological tool is not the purpose, a lower-tech approach would work just as well? If the technology offers a way into a different logic, a different ontology, it is worth it (though it may not get as far as when using a familiar technology).

Understanding what technology is capable of – knowing the logic behind it – is valuable. (Cf Jeanette Wing.) Creating a mix of content-based courses and ones that are multimodal might accomplish content and skills. In small departments it can be hard – maybe by making it a college-wide outcome it can be done, but that requires negotiation. Need to come up with a way to persuade our colleagues that sacrificing content is not always a sacrifice of anything of lasting importance to our students.

Joan Lippincott described that she remembered a paper she was told she couldn’t write for lack of sources as an undergrad. Now you can get all of those sources with a Google search. A link to her blog post about this is pending.

Whew!!

Here is the handout I will be using for this bootcamp.  If you’re not attending this bootcamp but would like to participate and contribute here are some ways to get involved:

One of the things we will be doing at this boot camp is “Asking” geographic questions as they relate to digital humanities. Take a look at the questions people come up with and feel free to post your own.

We will also be adding to a google spreadsheet any datasets that people have come across that have been particularly useful to them.  If you have a great resource to share, PLEASE add to the list!

Based on a suggestion by Jay Cook, we propose a session focused on the question of connecting with the greater worlds/universes we all move in.

• For technology staffers: how do we reach faculty who are reluctant to engage digital strategies?  If we build it, will they come?
• For faculty: how do we spin a successful narrative (thanks Fred Johnson) which both justifies our existence but more importantly convinces the larger faculty and the larger research/collaboration sphere that this direction is not only useful but vital.
• For students: how do we use the ubiquitous tools of technology in harmony with the academic environment which at times is intimidating and difficult to engage.  How do we honor the backgrounds of other students who are less digitally fluent than us, for whatever reason?

I have already learned a lot from several people. I think this will be a great conference.

Your THATCampLAC organizers spent some time turning all your blog posts into a series of session choices.  Below is the list we’ve come up with.  Tomorrow morning we’ll pick our favorites and add anything’s that missing.  Under each topic, we’ve listed links to the relevant posts.

spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkMD9d50nbADdEFETjIzaHhJMHBJa3hSZTdqVGp0WGc&hl=en_US&authkey=CJXUh7wM

The Social Classroom

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/thatcamp-session-topic/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/28/session-idea-social-reading/

Ontological Crises

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/thatcamp-session-topic/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/thatcamp-lac-session-deliberation-and-technology/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/17/music-composition-the-dh-edition-what-counts-as-composition-anymore/

Is There a Tech in this Classroom?

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/thatcamp-session-topic/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/27/is-there-a-tech-in-this-class/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/07/session-idea-class-and-professional-websites/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/06/02/session-idea-technology-in-a-writing-center/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/07/managing-multimedia-assignments/

Engaging, Collaborating, and Sharing with Colleagues

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/that-camp-session-topic-ideas-digital-media/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/06/01/interdepartmental-resource-sharingcoordination-interdisciplinary-minors/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/thatcamp-sessiontopic-ideas-librarian-faculty-collaboration/

Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/that-camp-session-topic-ideas-digital-media/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/06/01/whats-going-into-your-courses/

Gamification

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/that-camp-session-topic-ideas-digital-media/

Multimedia Projects and Lib Ed competencies

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/05/thatcamp-sessiontopic-ideas-librarian-faculty-collaboration/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/10/multimedia-projects-and-lib-ed-competencies/

Digital Archives

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/09/digital-archives/

Finding One’s Way in DH at Liberal Arts Colleges

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/16/new-dh-faculty-at-lac-sessiondiscussion-idea/
• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/17/session-ideas-finding-ones-way-in-dh/

Collaboration and Connection at LACs with DHCommons

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/23/collaboration-and-connection-at-lacs-with-dhcommons/

“Iron Chef” DH Challenge

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/05/26/iron-chef-dh-challenge/

Ask the Undergrads: DH Edition

• lac2011.thatcamp.org/06/02/ask-the-undergrads-dh-edition/

Once we’ve got the choices set, we’ll all vote on panels:

[iframe spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dEFETjIzaHhJMHBJa3hSZTdqVGp0WGc6MQ 600 1097]

Jen Serventi sent us a few materials for her grant writing bootcamp. First is a sample narrative from a successful grant application submitted to the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities. Participants will also review materials from the NEH website and review the guidelines for Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants.

All of the great posts so far are making me quite excited for the weekend’s sessions. I am really looking forward to conversations about multimodal scholarship and adding lab sections to non-science courses, but I hope we will also have time to talk about the role of programmers and developers in digital scholarship projects. I am all for a pedagogy of critical making and am always working to burnish my own skills at building scholarly projects, but I also recognize the value of partnering with others who might have far more advanced skills when it comes to actually coding and designing projects.

That said, I think a number if the threads so far have reminded us that LACs (and others, to be sure), have significant constraints that often make it difficult to have a seasoned digital scholarship developer available on campus. So how cam we address thus? Working with sympathetic and capable IT pros is a start. Continual learning on our own will help a bit. We could always look for grants that would fund small amounts of support. But is there anything more systematic we can do? Can we share developers across institutions? What might that look like? Would the hassle of networked development be worth the benefit of working with ever-more experienced developers?

One of the issues SNC’s President, Tom Kunkel, has raised is what will happen to current institutions of higher education if we do not embrace the possibilities of new technologies in the way we deliver education?  Tom came from journalism and the news paper business which has been negatively impacted by a lack of foresight in regard to how technology would transform their industry (see November 17, 2009- Too ‘Old School’ for Our Own Good? By Thomas Kunkel chronicle.com/article/Too-Old-School-for-Our-Own/49186/).

I was struck this week by two popular media stories that seem to support Tom’s assertions.  First, a piece in Time (Survey: College Is Unaffordable, and a Poor Value.  But It’s Still a Good Investment? moneyland.time.com/2011/05/17/survey-college-is-unaffordable-and-a-poor-value-but-its-still-a-good-investment/) citing a recent Pew Social and Demographic Trends survey (Is College Worth it? College Presidents, Public Access, Value, Quality, and Mission of Higher Education pewsocialtrends.org/2011/05/15/is-college-worth-it/) that questions the value and role of a traditional college education.

The second was a piece on CNN regarding the Kahn Academy, which Bill Gates has praised and Google has awarded millions of dollars, that delivers some of the same content you would find on college campuses for free via videos on the web.  See www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxgAHer3Ow and www.khanacademy.org/)

As we navigate the challenges of facilitating change in higher education we should be aware that the perception of the public about college may be shifting and other options may seem more viable.   To reiterate Tom Kunkel’s points:

“We must do a far more imaginative job of integrating the current student generation’s two educational worlds—the digital and the traditional—and utilizing the respective strengths of each….In a world with so many higher-ed options, colleges had better have a persuasive answer when a prospective student asks, “Why come here?””

EDIT: The session is over, and was a great conversation.  Some sketchy notes on the proceedings are found here: bit.ly/l3C0yk

______________________

It seems at least three campers are currently students at a SLAC, though I’ll be the first to admit I fit this definition somewhat marginally.

At any rate, I propose a simple Q&A panel with the current students up front and the rest (almost all SLAC educators) peppering us for frank feedback on what has worked and not worked in our experiences with classroom/course technology.  Maybe we’ll find some really obvious no-brainers that no one ever seems to talk about (e.g. the ubiquity of SMS texting as a communication method for the 17-22 set).

I’m hoping the spirit of the weekend (and the fact that no one is assigning grades) will encourage some tough but fair pragmatic conversation.

Possible starter questions:

• When do course / facilitation software (Moodle et al) packages become cumbersome rather than enabling?
• Digital syllabi: if we had to define a college-wide policy on delivery format, what would it be?
• Students often think of multi-modal / multi-media projects as somehow easier than a traditional paper.  Why is that?  What are the consequences?

Reviewing this site’s content contributed through yesterday morning, I see many postings and comments related to teaching strategies and pedagogical techniques. I would be interested in a session on how the findings of research in education and the assessment of learning gains can inform teaching initiatives in DH.

Of course, I am largely seconding Reid’s motion in his post A broader question. However, I also see many relevant opportunities for applying education research methods and/or results in other posts and comments: Sara’s Deliberation and Technology (and comments by Barbara, Amy, and Sara); Molly’s and Barbara’s observations about working with primary sources in Librarian-Faculty Collaboration; Ryan’s and Michelle’s grading strategies in Managing Multimedia Assignments; Sally’s Class and Professional Websites, and comments on blogs (Michelle and Barbara), proactive engagement (Dave and Sally), and that interesting topic of “software fatigue” (Dave and Michelle); Kim’s Multimedia Projects and Liberal Education Competencies; Barbara’s Is There a Tech In This Class? and comments on incentives such as GE attributes and on blogging by Michelle and Barbara; and Sara’s intriguing Social Reading idea.

I would like to hear a discussion of how we might understand the effectiveness of these and other good teaching ideas on student learning.

One of the reasons I’m coming to THATCamp as a computer scientist is to plan for an introductory course in computer science (CS) we will be offering in the Fall, with applications in Digital Humanities. As a liberal arts college, students in all majors have taken our first course (often to satisfy a general education requirement), including humanities students. How might studying CS help prepare students for DH?

I must clarify that my field is more about designing computations than in learning to use standard software or media tools. Many of the postings and comments I’ve seen on this site have expressed interest in training for using those tools, as opposed to the education in design of computations that we care the most about in CS. The principles of CS are the elements of computation that remain relevant as new technologies come and go, and although those principles provide valuable perspective and insight, relatively few people take the time to invest in learning CS as they approach new applications of computation. How many of us professors can put a priority on studying yet another field in support of our scholarly and educational work?

But perhaps we can ask our students to become knowledgeable in those other fields. They can help us to form interdisciplinary collaborations, and they will benefit from the long-term perspectives they gain. I’ve flown these and some related ideas in comments to posts, such as Molly’s Librarian-Faculty Collaboration, John’s Digital Archives, and especially Amy’s Finding One’s Way.

Rereading our postings and comments so far, I must admit that I expected more interest in humanities research and scholarship through digital methods than I have seen. Of course, our primary mission at a small liberal-arts college is good teaching, and research and scholarship belong in “category 2” (our college’s term for it). Also, I fully agree that the general academic movement towards undergraduate research moves our teaching towards research methods. But do we seek digital humanities research at our liberal-arts colleges?

Molly’s faculty-librarian collaboration post suggests that collaboration provides a potential avenue for digital research. I interpret John’s digital archives as resources not only for teaching, but also for professional-level research, particularly if those resources can be shaped according to particular lines of inquiry. Scholarly work is mentioned or referred to in marlowjm’s New DH Faculty, Amy’s Finding One’s Way in DH, Blake’s Music Composition/DH, and Christopher’s DHCommons postings, but few comments follow up on the scholarship aspects of those blogs.

I’m coming to THATCamp in part as a computer scientist seeking collaborative projects in DH research. When I have talked with humanists and others on my campus about their research, we almost always find some aspect of their scholarly work in which modern-day computational capabilities can be applied collaboratively to explore field-specific questions that were formerly impractical to pursue. As the digital scholarship laboratory at the University of Richmond (see also the recent New York Times article) suggests, small colleges can compete when DH methods are applied in new directions. I think some projects along the lines of Digging into Data are feasible at liberal arts colleges. It comes down to understanding a little more about what each discipline holds. Perhaps we can have such conversations at THATCamp.

I’ve just finished rereading the postings and comments through yesterday morning, and I have four session topics to propose after seeing our group-generated body of work so far. I’ll make separate postings for them, since the group will probably want to consider them individually. Here’s the first one:

How will the academic rewards system treat work in the Digital Humanities, for purposes of tenure and promotion?

The question of academic recognition of computationally-assisted scholarly work arose indirectly in Molly’s post on librarian-faculty collaboration: how do think about each other’s work? I think of it when I see Ryan and Megan’s comments about developing evaluation practices for multimedia assignments. Will the value of that time investment be recognized by our peers? New DH faculty and their colleagues who must evaluate their work have the most to benefit from a consideration of this topic. Marlowjm’s questions in that post about recognition by administration and faculty and support by an IT department indicate the importance of knowing how DH efforts will be considered in faculty evaluation, and several comments on that post seem relevant to me. In Amy’s Finding one’s way, Michelle’s comment about “teaching the technology at the expense of teaching our subject area” has relevance to how our work might be evaluated by our peers, and Amy’s thought about taking an introductory computer science course herself raises the important issue of whether we can afford such time investments for training and education (particularly if a tenure clock is involved). Blake’s excellent example of assessing computer-assisted music composition indicates a substantial issue in all of our fields. If evaluating digital work challenges specialists in our disciplines, how can a small-college tenure-and-promotion committee know how to judge it’s value?

I am particularly aware of this issue, having been part of the expansion of a technologically intensive field (computer science) housed within related departments (of mathematics) at two SLACs. The more I read in these postings and comments about colleagues pouring time into learning new technologies, the more I want those pioneers to understand how that investment will be recognized and valued, so they can make wise choices. With some proactive steps, I’m hoping tenure and promotion guidelines can adjust for DH in a more timely manner than it did during the CS transition.

How can technology help students navigate the writing process? At the Vassar writing center (where I am a student consultant) we have been working on ways to better integrate technology into the way we interact with writers and collect data about how to improve our services. These data have provided us with interesting insights about who is using our services and what kind of writing our consultants are being asked to help with.

What are some tools and best practices that could be helpful to student writers? How can technology help us beter understand the needs of students in writing pedagogy?

There’s maybe some overlap to other suggested sessions in my idea here, but…

My Digital Storytelling course, in particular, has been great to put together, but it feels like such a creature of my own brain that I would like to talk about it with others who are trying similar things; I’d like to know what’s working for others.  Are you developing one-stop digital humanities courses, or sequences of courses?  What are the constraints on you and your courses given the resources (or lack thereof) at your institutions?  What are you calling these courses?

(BTW, for what it’s worth, I’m defining “digital stoytelling” in something like the way it’s defined by Ball State’s Masters in Digital Storytelling program.  I don’t know if that’s the best or only way to name what I’m doing…)

At Whitworth, faculty from English, communications and journalism, computer science, and art are all teaching courses that in some ways cross into the digital humanities by dealing with media studies or media production in some way.  The oldest of those courses are a group of film studies courses, housed in English.  The newest, my own Digital Storytelling (on new media writing) and Visual Narratives (addressing graphic novels and visual communication), are also housed in English.  That means it’s likely that my department is going to end up in a leadership role, more than likely, for any digital media/new media/emerging media initiative on campus.  I’m interested to hear about how other small schools are handling (or not) interdepartmental majors and minors dealing with emerging media.

I’m particularly interested in what arrangements other campuses are using to share and house equipment, and in any initiatives to create shared media labs or classrooms.  At smaller campuses, it’s easier to get to know (and like!) colleagues from a lot of different departments (in my experience, so far), and that’s good for coordinating efforts.  But to create something like a shared media lab or a shared pool of equipment still raises a lot of tricky coordination problems.  E.g.: What if we all contribute equal resources to maintaining our equipment and spaces, but English or communications hogs the equipment?  What if we all run our most new media-intensive courses in one semester (or one January-term) and create too much demand for our limited resources?  What if we build around present faculty members and then lose the key player for one department or another?  And maybe a question for another forum: How do we manage to keep the equipment and facilities up to date?

Just in case you haven’t stayed in a dorm since college, here’s some information for those of us who took the dorm option.  Thanks to Patrick Olejniczak of the Kress Inn & Bemis Conference Center.

• The dorm room is configured with common space for the bathroom and living room for all four occupants.  You can get a private bedroom.  Please see the diagram layout
• The dorm rooms include linens (towels and bedding) and wireless internet access but do not include private bathrooms, toiletries or televisions.
• My advice: Don’t forget to bring all of your own toiletries and a hairdryer if you need one.

For the bootcamp, “Integrating Digital Humanities Projects into the Undergraduate Curriculum”, after we go through one example of integrating a project into a course, we will work in groups to practice this technique.  In order for this exercise to work, we need your help.  Please add your courses and projects to the wiki.  Your group will vote on which project they want to workshop–each group will use a checklist to brainstorm around creating assignments, assembling resources, and integrating DH research into undergraduate courses.  If you don’t have course or project, don’t worry–someone else will.  You’ll need to request access to the wiki if you haven’t already.  Just follow the wiki link and click the button for requesting access.

If you’re planning to take part in the bootcamp, “Integrating Digital Humanities Projects into the Undergraduate Curriculum”, please join our wiki:  integratingdh.pbworks.com/w/page/40112677/FrontPage

To get access just follow the link above and click on the link to request access.  Once we we grant access you should get another message.  If you don’t hear from us, try contacting me directly rdavis@nitle.org or via twitter @frostdavis.

You can also access readings for the workshop and share assignment ideas in advance in the wiki.

This proposal is for a mix of question-asking and idea-sharing.

One of the fundamental tasks in many humanities classes is reading a text to discuss it with a group. Students are already bringing their own devices to class, and some campuses are starting to provide tablets or e-readers to students.

Is there an opportunity for technology to change how we do the very basic exercise of reading together?

What would be gained or lost with social reading?

What tools are available right now for successful social reading, and what would “successful social reading” look like to you?

For me, it means being able to read the text in my own way and then flip a switch or change a view to see how my colleagues have responded to the text, to which I can reply and contribute. People who read faster will see an update feed of the latest comments, and slower readers will only see comments relevant to the sections they’ve covered already. I don’t know of anything that fully captures this fuzzy ideal picture in my head.

Some social reading tools (to varying degrees) I am aware of include: GoodReads, LibraryThing, Amazon’s Kindle Public Notes, Kobo’s Reading Life, and Jeff Howe’s 1 Book 1 Twitter (#1book140) initiative.

What I hope to get out of such a session would be ideas for bringing social reading to the classroom in such a way that all readers can be included (whether they have a device or not) and adds an out-of-classroom dimension to the discussion of the work.

I have often had students contribute to a class blog as a writing assignment. There are two things that I’m wrestling with. (Well, at least two things…)

Students are really nervous about using an unfamiliar technology at first, and then they figure out only so much as they have to. They don’t take advantage of the platform because they don’t want to invest the time to work out even little things, and I don’t want to require using the tools in a particular way because learning the tools isn’t an outcome I am particularly focused on. Should I focus on it more? Should learning to incorporate links and visual materials be a goal for these writing assignments? I’m worried that they will get hung up on the technicalities, and I want them to see the forest, not be blinded by trees.

Second, I ask students to post weekly. They always complain that they can’t think of ideas to write about. I tell them this is all about paying attention to the world around them and about invention, and they get that – but they still sit down to knock out the task at the last minute with a completely blank slate; few seem to really acquire the habit of paying attention and squirreling away those things that they might want to explore more thoroughly in writing. I think they are just busy, and they want to focus on getting each task out of the way rather than finding connections or letting things simmer on the back burner.

What I guess I am wondering is how do we get busy students who are conditioned to focus on grades that depend on products and tests to relax and play with technology – and with ideas? How can we reward them for playing?

*Yes, I’m riffing off Stanley Fish.

B”H

OK, I have already made a facebook page for us and suggested some sessions, but I got this idea today and thought I would throw it out there.

I am going to be teaching World Literature next semester, a class I have never taught at this school.  On their exit exam is Tartuff, which I have never even read, lead alone taught.

I thought it would be fun, as a kind of “Iron Chef” challenge, to ask that we do a session on  digital humanities solutions to teaching Tartuff.

How can I make it interesting, relevant, and make sure my students know the text as well as they possibly can?

Maybe everyone can come with their favorite programs, ideas, and teaching suggestions.  What do you think?

As a teacher educator and educational psychologist I am broadly interested in how technology changes and elevates learning.

Questions:

*How do we create a culture at a small liberal arts college that both embraces traditional pedagogy/ways of knowing and new technologies that expand the arena for learning?

*As faculty, how do we decide when a particular technology will elevate learning?  How do we understand the “value-added” by the incorporation of a technology and how do we document this impact on student learning outcomes?

One of the most significant reasons for having a THATCamp organized specifically for liberal arts colleges is to address the not uncommon isolation of digital humanists at smaller institutions.  Some  – maybe many – of those attending THATCamp LAC may be the only person doing DH in their department, and so are without the support structures found at larger research institutions or major DH centers.  Such isolation can easily leave lone DHers without access to or awareness about ongoing projects, standards, technology, and expertise for their own work.

THATCamp LAC will itself help by forging connections and discussing the dynamics of the profession, but one other initiative that would be useful to discuss here is DHCommons.org, a digital humanities collaboration initiative and hub that was born out of THATCamp Chicago.  DHCommons hopes to connect isolated digital humanists and break down larger silos on several fronts:

• A new hub at dhcommons.org to help digital humanists discover and contact potential collaborators and to find and join projects.
• Microgrants to encourage scholars to develop curriculum in conjunction with existing projects, travel to partner digital humanities centers for training or project mentoring, etc.
• Expertise sharing among schools without digital humanities infrastructure to promote mentorship and expansion of the field

Both myself and others from the core group organizing this effort – Rebecca Davis, Quinn Dombrowski, and Ryan Cordell – will be at THATCamp LAC and would love to have input on two fronts.  First, we seek the opinion of DHers who are at LACs as to how this site and initiative might be made (more) useful to you, how we might encourage participation among DHers at small institutions, how we might create or improve functionality of the site, etc.

We would also like to get your direct participation in DHCommons.org if you have (or know of) an ongoing DH project that could benefit from collaboration of any kind.  One of the major efforts in getting the hub off the ground is populating it with projects in order to show functionality to others in the DH community.  We’d like for anyone interested to add his or her projects, thoughts, and opinions during a panel.

Hi gang!

More of a series of questions and less of a proposal (I suppose that’s why were at THATCamp LAC, right?)…

Musicians (specifically composers) in academia are behind the curve in our pedagogical evolution apropos technological advancements and an increase in the number of digitally-native students in music classes.  I’m hoping the questions/problems/concerns I’m going to raise are actually the same as or similar to ones you have already come across in your respective fields!

Here’s the gist: composition is the wielding and manipulating of a musical palette comprised of very small elements: notes.  While some music conservatories will allow undergraduate students to “specialize” in an area (wind ensemble composition), most colleges—particularly LACs—ask students to learn to write coherently and idiomatically in multiple styles and genres.  In these settings, technology has traditionally been used in one of two venues: as a tool for notation (many composers use software like Finale or Sibelius instead of pen and paper), or through the genre of electronic music.

So what’s wrong?

Students who are entering college are part of the iGeneration which touts applications like Apple’s Garageband as a device to aid in composing music.  Using Garageband, burgeoning composers typically manipulate “loops” rather than individual notes to create a piece of music that is self-performing; there is no resulting “score” and the computer is the performer.  Many in academic music feel this process is more akin to digital DJing and not true “composition” and should not be part of the undergraduate curriculum.

Like it or not (and I’m still very much undecided on the issue), Garageband has become a gateway for students interested in pursuing a degree in music composition and they often become upset when they get to college and see that what they’re creating “doesn’t count” as composition despite the process being remarkable similar.

Here are my questions:

What’s the difference between synthesis and composition?

Is analog composition (“traditional” writing) actually different from digital composition (Garageband)?  Is it even “digital composition” or “digital synthesis?”  Are the skills the same at any rate?

Does Garageband fit into the traditional “electronic music” genre that students typically study, or is it really a different animal?  If so, where does it fit into the curriculum?

If a student can compose in multiple genres through Garageband, do they ever need to write note-by-note?

More aptly: if I ask a student to compose a piece for strings and the student turns in a Garageband file that digitally puts together dozens of synthetic or prerecorded string sounds, has the student done what I asked?

Most academic composers I know do NOT consider Garageband as legitimate means of composing, but I’m not so sure…

I’d love your thoughts!  If this is something anyone is interesting in helping me think through, I’d be delighted to demonstrate both types of composition (and hear the products!) so you can see the similarities and differences for yourself!

I’m most interested in figuring out what it means to work in Digital Humanities–both in terms of honing my own skills as a teacher and scholar and in terms of explaining that work to others. I’ve broken those interests into two sub-questions, either one of which could be a session, I suppose:

(A) The question I wrestle with a lot: “I’m actually in Discipline X (Political Science in my case–specifically, Political Theory/Philosophy–but fill in whatever discipline you like), which isn’t traditionally considered a humanities discipline. But I’ve been interested in digital tools for a long time, and I’ve tried to incorporate the use of some of these tools into my courses (along with trying to teach some basic information literacy). I’m also interested in exploring ways in which it might make sense to make a more conscious use of digital methods in my scholarly work. Where do I fit? And how do I explain the kinds of things I’m interested in doing–and their value–to colleagues who aren’t as interested in the digital?”

(B) In addition to the “Where do I fit?” question, I’m also interested in exploring the more practical side of things: How might I incorporate the digital more effectively into my courses? (This makes the Bootcamp 1 session especially attractive.) What kinds of digital tools are available and useful for the kind of scholarly work I want to do, and where do I begin learning those tools that may be new to me? So I’d definitely be interested in talking with others about research interests, and brainstorming about appropriate tools.

Below is the schedule we’ve worked out for Bootcamp 1: Integrating Digital Humanities Projects into the Undergraduate Curriculum.  Let us know if you have any questions or feedback.  We’ll also have a wiki for the bootcamp so we can continue to share resources.

As a future LAC faculty member leaving behind my doctoral work at an R1 institution where the numbers of resources and colleagues working with digital media tend to be more plentiful, I am interested in discussing what to expect in terms of differences between large research universities and small LAC campuses as they relate to digital/new media practices.  Specifically I am concerned with the following:

• How does one create careful, thoughtful, and effective relationships with the college’s IT (instructional technology) or ET (educational technology) department staff?
• How does one balance being one of (possibly) only a few faculty who implement digital media practices into the classroom?  That is, how do we act as resource for other faculty who are interested in doing this kind of work without becoming overwhelmed as the “go to” person (or one of a few) for tech advice?
• How does one help administration to better understand the range of necessary resources and ever-evolving platforms, applications, software packages that comprise “new” media?

At my current (research) institution we have an Institute for Teaching and Learning (<a href=”http://www.albany.edu/teachingandlearning/”>ITLAL</a>) that handles a lot of the faculty training in working with the digital.  I am curious to learn about smaller/LAC models of this and/or how to create these kinds of resources on LAC campuses.

In the spirit of cooperation and collaboration, I have just established a Facebook page for THATCamp LAC.  I thought we might like a place where we could connect casually, get to know one another, post things we come across, and generally interact. If you want to join, I please click on the link below!  After I get your “like,” I will make you and administrator so you can comment freely.

www.facebook.com/pages/ThatCamp-LAC/210037149016658

To get the most out of “Bootcamp 1: Integrating Digital Humanities Projects into the Undergraduate Curriculum” take a look at these readings in advance:

Blackwell, C., & Martin, T. R. (2009). Technology, Collaboration, and Undergraduate Research. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 3(1). Retrieved from www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/000024/000024.html

Cavanagh, S. (2010). Bringing Our Brains to the Humanities: Increasing the Value of Our Classes while Supporting Our Futures. Pedagogy, 10(1), 131-142.  Retrieved from muse.jhu.edu/journals/pedagogy/v010/10.1.cavanagh.html

• You can also get this one in our wiki.  Just click the link and request access.

We’re also developing a wiki for this bootcamp and will share the agenda and wiki link soon.

One of the conversations that we have around these parts revolves around the implicit connection between emerging platforms and texts (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, remix video) and the ways that they could best be channeled to help students practice the skills/core competencies that liberal education prides itself on: critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, etc.  (These are just the ones that show up in our institutional mission statement—feel free to add others!)

I’m hoping that people might like to brainstorm some ideas around the following:

• What do these competencies look like in new media forms, as opposed to the research paper format?  (In other words, how do we know critical thinking in a remix video when we see it?)
• What pedagogical strategies and examples can we explore with our students to highlight these?
• What versions of these competencies are site-specific (e.g., analysis on YouTube vs. analysis on Twitter), and which are transferable? Are there some platforms/practices that are more amenable to developing these competencies than others?

I’ve been interested in tracking the pedagogical innovations that are coming out of Project NML and HASTAC, but hopefully others have examples as well!

Gretchen Panzer and I have just finished a digital archive of North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies (1982-present). We’d like to see how to make the archive more interactive–we were constrained by our college’s use of Cascade. In addition, we are creating a digital archive that will supplement the publication of MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (1871), a children’s fairy-tale novel–we will provide additional information from the nineteenth century to situate the novel  more specifically to the Victorian age. Thus we’d like to discuss the strategies to use to create platforms for digital archives that are defined by the field.

There are so many things I’m curious about, but the one that comes to mind immediately is the use of specialized websites…

I’ve used Moodle and Chalk/Blackboard to some good ends and find them very helpful, although I never feel that I’m in any way deploying them optimally. I’d like to learn more about using an alternative class-specific website for links, resources, forums, maybe collaboration on papers – but especially to disseminate materials in a dynamic/interesting way that encourages students to engage the materials and course focus more creatively and independently.

I also would like to explore establishing and maintaining my own website in a way that would dovetail with teaching – maybe to help students see how my general (or particular) interests relate to a specific course that we share.

I’d really like to see a panel on managing student assignments that require them to create multimedia/multimodal documents. What are some of the best ways to grade videos, audio recordings, etc.? How much technology do you teach (using Photoshop, iMovie, etc.) vs. how much do you force them to learn on their own? How do you handle video hosting – since YouTube and Vimeo have some FERPA implications? And, more simply, how do you handle the byte size of these files since students end up emailing really big files to you and to each other (my University doesn’t give much cloud storage to the students)?

I’ve got some experience with these issues, but I’d like to hear ideas and solutions from the rest of you.

Okay, so, two (related) things:

1) Digital humanities projects—and really most kinds of pedagogical innovations—work best when they’re supported by faculty and librarians who understand each other’s aims and abilities. But we often … don’t. I have an odd and rich perspective on the faculty-library relationship because I’m currently a reference & instruction librarian at a SLAC where I’ve worked previously in a faculty role … and where I’ll be resuming a faculty role next year. The worlds of scholarship, pedagogy, and librarianship are deeply interdependent but rarely communicate and collaborate as effectively as I’d hope. I would love to contribute to a conversation about faculty-librarian collaboration and communication. It might also be helpful to talk about how faculty and librarians imagine each other—how we think about each other’s and our own jobs, skills, limitations, quirks, and roles in teaching/learning/scholarship.

2) As the library’s liaison to the history department, I often find myself teaching students strategies for finding primary sources. I am delighted with the increasing accessibility of these cultural materials. But of course it’s more complicated than that. What I’m seeing in classrooms and at the reference desk is a major shift in pedagogical practice within history—a shift toward substantial primary research and primary source analysis in undergraduate (even first-year) courses—which springs from the ongoing digitization of so many materials and which has important implications for students, librarians, faculty-library dynamics, and librarians’ roles in student research. Any historians or other primary-source-teaching folk want to work through some of those implications together?

I’m interested in having a conversation about the intersections of the humanities, technology, and deliberative democracy.  This past year, I’ve worked at the Kettering Foundation and have taken part in workshops among a small group of college faculty who are using deliberation in their classrooms.  A consistent theme in our discussions was how technology might facilitate the teaching of deliberation or the act of deliberation.  Put another way, what is to be gained by adding technology to deliberation theories and processes?  Why and how might humanities faculty combine deliberation and technology in their courses, particularly around the civic mission of many liberal arts colleges?  Some brainstorming ideas: discussions about theories of democracy and technology, using deliberative methods via social media, the use of technology to enhance civic engagement with the class, the campus, and the community, and so on.

1. My initial abstract was about discussing rhetorical strategies for engaging our colleagues who might be on the fence about the value of digital networked media in the classroom, especially at the expense of already established assignments, workshops, and other pedagogical tools.  I’d like to see a session in which we really try to attend the most salient concerns against technologies in liberal arts classrooms, so we can think seriously about how to address them.
2. I would happily lead or facilitate a discussion on the specific form of “digital storytelling” and its value in coursework that involves iterative, experiential learning.  I’ve been doing it for several years at Austin College where I teach and have also recently started a DS working group with other LAC faculty, so if folks are interested, that’s a very real possibility.
3. What if your IT staff are unreceptive or slow to act with regard to generating and maintaining the infrastructure for digital media in the classroom?  When your Media Services staff have only one camera available for checkout by faculty, and its a shoulder-mounted VHS recorder, there’s a problem.  Could we talk about that? (OK, this is really probably more of 1. above.)
4. How about “gamification” or “exploitationware” as Ian Bogost recently called it?  I’d love to participate in a discussion about the use of game-like systems (or students’ recognition of the inherent game-like nature of existing college systems) in LACs today.  What is their value, what resources are necessary to really make them go, and what research is there to suggest they can be helpful (Gee, McGonigal, etc.)?

I didn’t see anyone posting yet, so I thought I would start the discussion myself and invite others to join in to this post, if you want (i.e. go ahead and edit it, or respond).

I have a few things I would love to discuss, but as this is my first THATcamp, I am not sure exactly how specific I should be . . . so, I’ll just jump in!

IDEAS . . .

Using Social Media in the Classroom

I use Facebook and Twitter to interact with my students, mostly just as a communication tool . . . but I have also begun to use Facebook as a tool for classroom “group presentations.”  How have others used FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace in the classroom?

What Happened to “Humanities” in Digital Humanities?

I don’t know about you, but when I try to look into the field of “Digital Humanities” I find it mostly populated with computer geeks who seem to have learned programming in utero.  I’m an English professor, not a programmer!  How can we make this field more accessible to people who love technology as an end-user, not as a developer?

Using ePortfolios in the Classroom

This is probably passé for many participants at THATcamp, but my program uses WordPress blogs as ePortfolios for our students (and for class websites).  I would love to share my experience doing this, and hear some great new ideas for ePortfolios.

Thanks to Rudof Ammann at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, we have a spiffy new logo.

We think it looks pretty great, and will look even better on our t-shirts and other swag. If you want one of those t-shirts, apply today!

We’re pleased to announce our second bootcamp for THATCamp LAC. Jennifer Serventi, Senior Program Officer at the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities will teach participants about applying for grant funding to support digital humanities projects. More information will be available soon on the bootcamps page. To apply to THATCamp LAC, fill out our application form.

I’m thrilled to announce the first bootcamp for THATCamp LAC:

Bootcamp 1: Integrating Digital Humanities Projects into the Undergraduate Curriculum

Presenters:

• Rebecca Frost Davis, Program Officer for the Humanities, National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE)
• Kathryn Tomasek, Associate Professor of History, Wheaton College, Massachusetts

Digital methods of analysis exert growing influence on the practice of many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, yet students majoring in non-science disciplines often have little exposure to computational thinking and working with computer code. At the same time, in the curriculum, the Digital Humanities promises significant learning benefits for undergraduates, who need a measure of digital literacy to function well as citizens in the twenty-first century. This bootcamp will present strategies for effectively integrating digital projects into undergraduate courses. By examining effective cases of assignments linked to digital projects, participants will consider how to make room for such assignments in a syllabus, how to tie digital projects to a course’s learning outcomes, and how to scaffold both technological and content learning to allow students to make positive contributions to a project external to the course. Participants will leave with a set of proven examples of effective assignments, preliminary plans for assignments for their own courses, and suggestions for how to find collaborative partners in library and technology services for such projects on their home campuses.

St. Norbert College students only—here’s your first chance to get involved with THATCamp LAC!

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THATCamp LAC Logo Contest
Prize: Eternal glory (and $100)

In June 2011, St. Norbert College will host THATCamp LAC—The Humanities and Technology Camp for Liberal Arts Colleges. THATCamp LAC will focus on digital humanities research at Liberal Arts Colleges, as well as on issues surrounding technology and teaching.

If you’re still wondering what the heck THATCamp or “digital humanities” are, check out our FAQ.

When you visit the site, you’ll notice that our logo really isn’t that pretty. We need a better one. We need something that evokes the idea of the “liberal arts college.” Our logo will end up on flyers, on mugs, on t-shirts—it needs to be good.

So we’re holding a contest. Here are the rules:

1. You must use the THATCamp logo as the base of your design. Here are the files for THATCamp’s logo (in a number of formats).
2. Your logo must fit easily on the website’s masthead (lac2011.thatcamp.org). A very tall logo, for example, would be awkward. Wide is the new tall.
3. Your logo should be simple, but invoke the ideas of “the Liberal Arts College” and “technology”: ivy twined with circuits, a Greek statue wearing white headphones, a graph depicting small student-to-faculty ratios. It’s your call (but probably not the graph)!
4. Undergrads only, please!

For inspiration, browse the logos for THATCamp New England, THATCamp Virginia, or THATCamp Chicago.

Logos should be submitted to Ryan Cordell via email.

All submissions are due by January 28th.

Participants will be able to fly into the Austin Straubel International Airport, which is a few miles from the St. Norbert College campus.

Both hotel and dorm-style lodging will be available. A block of rooms has been reserved at the &dash;which is right across the street from campus—at a rate of $84.99 per night. Dorm-room accommodations will be available in the Dale and Ruth Michels Hall. Single occupancy in the dorms will cost $27.00 per night; double occupancy will cost $30.00 per person per night. Details about reserving those rooms will be available shortly.

THATCamp Liberal Arts Colleges will focus on a particular academic setting—the liberal arts college—rather than a particular geographic region. We envision two main tracks in the unconference. One will focus on doing digital humanities work at an LAC, where one is more likely to be the lone DHer on campus and must build stronger off-campus networks. The other track will focus on technology and pedagogy. We also hope to encourage undergraduates to apply for THATCamp LAC. We hope to get undergrads, grad students, professors, librarians, and other academics talking productively about the intersections of digital humanities, technology, and pedagogy at liberal arts colleges.

A few early details:

• Where: St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.
• When: June 4-5, 2011
• Who: 75 professors, librarians, technical specialists, and undergraduates interested in the intersection of technology and the liberal arts
• Info: the best source will be our Twitter stream @thatcamplac

More details will be posted here as soon as they’re available. If you’re interested in helping with the planning, contact Ryan Cordell. We’re looking forward to seeing you in Wisconsin this May!