Two issues by way of meandering confession
Let me begin with a confession (or maybe an apology): I don’t take notes in the ways we’re doing for this discussion group. I don’t share slides or my notes in my classes, so I’m well-out of my comfort zone. And I think it is worth trying a different path through just for the sake of comparison, so here we are. Based on that, one of the things I think might actually make for some interesting starter discussion as we move into the topics for this set of readings is about taking a sort of inventory about where you have particular preferences/tendencies/what-have-you about boundaries as you’re starting to think about delving into this?
There’s also a rhetorical shift that happens in Chapter 4 that I’m still deciding about – it’s most pronounced in Table 4.2, in that the assumption seems to be that even in non-Intro to Digital Humanities (hereafter, DH) courses, that you’d have readings, etc that are explicitly about DH. I’ve been thinking of DH as tools to use rather than as a topic to foreground, so I’m curious what everyone else thinks.
Choose your own adventure platform
One of the biggest issues of the chapter is about what digital platform you’re going to use to actually structure your DH experiment.
The chapter poses this largely as a question of whether you want to host your own site or use some existing platform (which, for our purposes includes UW’s choice of course management software, Canvas). This section was a pretty quick fly-by, but there are some issues worth pulling out because the platform you choose is carries with it a range of issues.
A lot of these issues are going to connect to the discussions for Chapters 5, 6, and 7.
Some decisions to make about platforms
- what features do you need your site to have?
- how much intellectual property of your own are you willing to make publicly available?
- how much of your students’ intellectual property is going to be visible (and why)?
- what types of content do you intend to share that isn’t your own?
- how much time do you have to maintain the site?
- how often are you going to get to use it?
- how much can you afford?
While there’s some advantage to owning your own site, hosting and domain names can cost you money. Using a content management platform (like WordPress) can you get around some of this, but might require some forethought before diving in. For example, if students are going to contribute but you’ll use the site in multiple terms, how easy will it be control access to what new students get to engage with?
And in case having an example beyond this blog to consider, here’s a site I used through the content management system Tumblr from my previous life. Table 4.1 provides a useful breakdown of some other platforms you might consider. I know why I used Tumblr, but does anyone have any other strong opinions or recommendations on platforms they’ve used?
Wasn’t this chapter supposed to be about syllabi?
The discussion about syllabi focused on two broad issues: Course Information and Objectives and Course Policies.
Depending on how much DH you intend to use, you’re going to have to think carefully about your syllabus and how you want to approach the class. That might include thinking differently about office hours, deadlines, etc. All of those things need to be telegraphed by the syllabus. I’ve found myself wondering as we’re talking about DH whether a DH class should have to be connected to the iTech Fellows program here at UWT. Even if it shouldn’t, I think the rubric the program uses to assess iTech fellows preparation is useful for our DH purposes.
Depending upon how much DH you intend to incorporate into your class, how you design the course and its syllabus will likely change. Table 4.2 breaks down some of the possibilities for this. Regardless, there are some specific points that are worth considering in both of these sections.
Course information and Objectives Points to Consider
- Office Hours and the guidelines about when and how to contact you
- Course description: what skills do they need to start and what skills should they end with?
- What technologies they’ll need and where to get them
- clear course objectives that incorporate DH
Course Policies Points to Consider
- How will you gauge attendance and participation?
- How are students expected to use technologies and when?
- How will deadlines work (taking into account that students are likely learning a new skill)?
- Are there particular behavioral expectations?
- What is the process for getting help with technologies and where can they get that help?
I was surprised there wasn’t much discussion about behavioral expectations (for example, rules for online discussions groups, etc). Were there other issues that got missed?