“Using DH in the Classroom Discussion” (Pt. 3): Grad Students, Support Communities, & Research

With our last meeting coinciding with the wind-down of the Spring Quarter, we had a pretty light turn-out for the discussion of the final chapters of Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom by Battershill and Ross. Yet among the six people in attendance, we had a good mix of faculty and library staff and managed to fill up the hour and half with conversation.

As I was looking for images to accompany this post, I was drawn particularly to the color analyses charts of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, which I found in the Public Domain Review. These charts and studies seemed appropriate because our conversation revealed a spectrum of responses to topics discussed. Sometimes the discussion formed clear pictures of opportunities and positions, other times they were suggestive, shaded by our own views or experiences.

Toward the end, some ideas began to take shape for me of possible futures, but we didn’t have time to explore them in detail. Later this month, I intend to write a blog post that will offer a few possible scenarios, and then we’ll hold a Zoom meeting with the participants to explore what resonates most.

Tools Discussed

A quick review of some of the tools mentioned:

• Social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Academia.edu, etc.
• Lucidchart – An online diagram application that makes it easier to sketch and share flowchart diagrams.
• Scanner Pro – An iPhone app that enables quick scan and organization of texts.
• Zotero – A useful tool for organizing, sharing, and citing sources.

Chapter 9: Teaching Graduate Students – Riki Thompson

As the Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) Graduate Program Director, Riki was particularly drawn to this chapter. She noticed right away that the chapter assumes that grad students will be entering academia, and yet most of the MAIS students she works with  are getting a terminal degree. Some of the observations about the professionalization of academics did not seem relevant. What did seem applicable was that digital scholarship approaches open up career opportunities outside of academia. Effective, critical, and professional uses of communication and digital technologies  seemed the most obvious skills most transferable to the workplace.

The question of risk came up again too. The conversation on p. 156 of Battershill and Ross¹ resonated with the group because it highlights the tensions and contradictions of graduate level digital projects. We are all “digitally assisted scholars,” Riki pointed out, but when initiating a new project, it can be extraordinarily difficult to calculate the amount of time that must be devoted to it. Students considering innovative uses of technology may need additional support. Right now, because there isn’t a central place to conceive of such projects, faculty advisers likely bear the brunt of this work.

Chapter 10: Finding Internal Support Communities – Tim Bostelle

Tim led us in a discussion of how to develop internal support communities. One of my favorite slides from his presentation emphasized:

As the Head, Library Information Technology, he also modeled some of the approaches suggested in the book. He searched the UW Tacoma website to find other departments and colleagues on campus that might be collaborators in DS groups and activities. The Center Business Analytics in the Milgard School of Business, the Institute of Technology, the Office of Research, and Nursing all came up in his searches for faculty using digital tools in their scholarship and research.

We also discussed the Student Technology Fee Committee, which distributes funds for technology resources that serve students. Having led the Library’s application process for many years, Tim has gained a lot of experience going through the STF application process. He would be open to partnering with faculty members to put together proposals for rounds in the future.

Chapter 11: Finding External Support – Justin Wadland

Because I wanted to learn more about this area, I led this discussion, focusing my conversation around the use of social media. Doing a quick poll among the participants, we discovered the variety of social media platforms we use, with Facebook and Twitter being the most popular.

The uses ranged from professional to completely personal and private or a mixture of something in between. Some avoided social media because of information overload or it seems like a waste of time. Others recognized that social media, Twitter in particular, can be “insanely useful” (direct quote) if you follow the right people. Some of those who use Twitter mentioned that they have UW Tacoma “Twitter buddies” that they engage with, but it is not necessarily embraced across campus as a platform for communication and information sharing. Some observed that when used as tool for professional communication, Twitter does seem to favor public, formal conversations, but others recognized the risks of such platforms.

Battershill and Ross in their chapter provide a lot of useful tips for promoting scholarship with  social media and connecting to other scholars.

Chapter 12: Connecting to Your Research – Joanne Clarke-Dillman

Joanne presented on the final chapter, connecting to research. She appreciated the advice of “making things count more than once,” meaning that explorations in digital pedagogy enable faculty members to experiment in the classroom and then share the results with the wider community through publishing:

Each skill you learn and teach…should not be self contained, but rather, part of a life cycle. [By this] we mean that this skill should be adaptable for your other needs” in research and teaching.  (196)

Also, Joanne’s overview referred extensively to the book’s web companion, highlighting specifically “DH Tools and Tips for Conducting Research” as particularly helpful.

A few other things Joanne mentioned were of particular relevance:

• Think about the classroom as a lab [where you are doing] “empirical experimentation from which new and interesting results may be derived” (200)
  
  
• Practice-based vs practice-led research: Faculty who implemented new strategies with students have found that it has also led to new forms of research (practice-led) and also allows the activity itself to be treated as research (practice-based), (200)

Another important point: establishing ethical collaborative relationships among the participants of projects, especially when they involve students. The DH community has articulated these principles in a Collaborators’ Bill of Rights, but institutions have adopted them as well. UCLA’s Student Collaborators’ Bill of Rights is one example.