Using digital humanities in the classroom

Troubleshooting 105In case of total failure 107Conclusion 110 Further reading 110 7 Creating Digital Assignments 113 General principles for creating digital assignments 113Common types

Using Digital Humanities in the

Classroom

LON DON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SY DN EY

Using Digital Humanities in the

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2017

© Claire Battershill and Shawna Ross, 2017 Claire Battershill and Shawna Ross have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs

and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior

permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on

or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be

accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors.

British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978- 1- 3500- 2975- 0 PB: 978- 1- 3500- 2974- 3 ePDF: 978- 1- 3500- 2977- 4 eBook: 978- 1- 3500- 2976- 7

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Names: Battershill, Claire, author | Ross, Shawna, author.

Title: Using digital humanities in the classroom : a practical introduction for teachers, lecturers and students / Claire Battershill, Simon Fraser University, and Shawna Ross,

Texas A&M University Bloomsbury Academic

Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, [2017] |

Includes index

Identifiers: LCCN 2017003367 | ISBN 9781350029750 (hb) | ISBN 9781350029774 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Humanities–Study and teaching | Humanities–Study and teaching–Technological innovations | Digital humanities

Classification: LCC AZ182 B37 2017 | DDC 001.3071–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003367

Cover design by Eleanor Rose Cover image © Damaratskaya Alena / Shutterstock Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events

and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

How to use this book 6The Web Companion 9Developing your own digital pedagogy 10Conclusion 11

A short guide to citation and copyright 34Conclusion 39

Further reading 39

3 Ensuring Accessibility 41

Universal Design 41Facilitating lectures 43Promoting universal interactivity 46Providing accessible resources 48Privacy, safety, and account management 52Adapting policies for individual students and student bodies 56

Conclusion 57Further reading 58

Anatomy of a syllabus II: Course policies 74Conclusion 77

Further reading 77

5 Designing Classroom Activities 79

Activities as exploration 80Activity design: Balancing integration and flexibility 81Ten- minute exercises 83

Half- hour exercises 85Whole- class exercises 87Weeklong exercises 89Writing effective prompts 91Conclusion 94

Further reading 94

6 Managing Classroom Activities 97

Working with existing or free resources 97Many ways to secure equipment 100

Troubleshooting 105

In case of total failure 107Conclusion 110

Further reading 110

7 Creating Digital Assignments 113

General principles for creating digital assignments 113Common types of digital assignments 116

Writing effective assignment sheets 123Conclusion 126

Further reading 127

8 Evaluating Student Work 129

The importance of explicit assessment criteria 130Anatomy of a rubric 131

Competencies: A language for indicating success 136Involving students in evaluation processes 138Thinking beyond the rubric 140

Coping with failure during assessment periods 141Conclusion 144

Further reading 144

9 Teaching Graduate Students 147

The role of technology in twenty- first- century graduate education 147

Graduate students versus undergraduate students 149Incorporating DH into graduate course work 150External opportunities 156

Professionalization and the job market 157

A note on alt- ac careers 162Conclusion 163

Further reading 164

10 Finding Internal Support Communities 167

A note on the variety of support systems 167Faculty and staff in humanities, social sciences, and STEM 168Libraries and special collections 170

IT services 173

Financial and material resources 175The ethics of collaboration 177Conclusion 179

Further reading 179

11 Finding External Support Communities 181

Social media 181Twitter for the uninitiated 182Academic organizations 188Events: Conferences, unconferences, workshops, and institutes 189Academic publications 191

External grant funding 192Conclusion 193

Further reading 193

12 Connecting to Your Research 195

Counting more than once 195Incorporating digital methods in your research 196Producing research on digital pedagogy 197Broadening the scope of your research 202Collaborating with students 204

Conclusion 207Further reading 207

Conclusion 209

Index 213

2.1 Public domain guidelines by country 37

3.1 Ensuring multiple means of representation 49

3.2 Ensuring multiple means of expression 50

3.3 Ensuring multiple means of engagement 51

4.1 Platforms for course websites 64

4.2 Characteristics of courses by amount of DH 72

We stress throughout this book the importance of communities Like all of our work in digital humanities (DH), this volume has benefited tremendously from the feedback and support of many friendly colleagues

We would therefore like to thank our peers at our own and neighboring institutions who have taught us so much about digital humanities by practicing innovative digital pedagogy themselves Claire would like to thank her colleagues at Simon Fraser University, particularly Colette Colligan, Rebecca Dowson, Mary Ann Gillies, Michael Joyce, Michelle Levy, Margaret Linley, John Maxwell, and everyone at the newly formed Digital Innovation Lab She would also like to thank the folks at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria, as well as Alex Christie, Matt Huculak, Stephen Ross, and Lynne and Ray Siemens, for all that they’ve taught her about DH, and the Modernist Archives Publishing Project team— Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Helen Southworth, Alice Staveley, Mike Widner, Nicola Wilson— for their ongoing collegiality, friendship, and collaboration Shawna would like to thank Amy E. Earhart, Laura Estill, Maura Ives, Laura Mandell, and Sarah Potvin for creating such a robust community of DH women at Texas A&M

We would like to particularly thank our team at Bloomsbury Academic, David Avital, Lucy Brown and Clara Herberg, for their hard work and faith in the project Thank you as well to our three anonymous reviewers at Bloomsbury whose feedback has immeasurably strengthened this book We are also grateful to our own friends and colleagues whose comments on the full manuscript and the Web Companion helped us with revisions: Lindsey Eckert, Megan Faragher, Margaret Konkol, and Alexandra Peat

Thanks to our families, especially Andrew and Cillian, for their loving support of us in this work, as in all things

Finally and most importantly, we would like to thank our students We especially thank Philip John Hathaway, Britanee Smith, and those who submitted their work from the Spring 2016 Virginia Woolf course for inclusion in the Web Companion Claire has had the pleasure of working with and learning from wonderfully creative students at the University of Toronto, the University of Reading, the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and Simon Fraser University, and Shawna at the Pennsylvania State University, Arizona State University, and Texas A&M You are the reason we love what we do, and this book is dedicated to you

When we think about using new technologies in the classroom, the hardest part is getting started This is not because of a lack of available tools and methods, but rather a surfeit:  when there are so many possibilities for activities, platforms, and resources, it can be tremendously difficult to separate the useful from the useless and the time- saving from the time- consuming Meanwhile, the digital humanities (DH)— an interdisciplinary field that uses digital technologies and quantitative methodologies to further humanistic research— has opened new possibilities for teaching but does not always share the nuts- and- bolts, on- the- ground, day- by- day advice you may need Where can you find a good mapping tool? How do you organize your digital files? What’s the best way of encouraging student discussion outside the classroom? Why might you choose a particular software application over another? These kinds of questions can take a lot of time and energy

to answer and, therefore, can present a barrier to trying new instructional

methods Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom is meant to help

you answer these questions, provide you with a number of shortcuts, and point you to the new resources and frameworks you’ll need in order to confidently incorporate more digital approaches, methods, and tools into your classroom

Because digital technologies are increasingly central to the way we do our work as humanists, we all have a responsibility to keep pace with the information technologies that are changing the landscapes of higher education We wish this book to serve as an introductory guide to digital tools you can use in your teaching, so we avoid technical jargon that may

be prohibitive to you or your students Instead we use plain language to introduce and discuss DH approaches that can enhance what we are already doing as we teach using databases, search engines, and sophisticated library and information systems Although there are certainly kinds of projects in this book that seem most immediately accessible to those with some formal

training or prior experience in computer programming, Using Digital

Humanities in the Classroom shows that there are many more that require

nothing more (beyond the basic, everyday computer competencies that we more or less all possess) than simply an openness to new strategies.

We see DH not as an exclusive or unified discipline, but rather as

a constellation of practical ideas, technologies, and tools that can be incorporated in a modular fashion into your own classroom practice And all

of them can relate to your existing interests, passions, and goals as a teacher Your expertise in, for example, Shakespeare studies or Socratic thought is more important in your classroom than your competent use of bibliographic management software or your ability to create fancy network visualizations, but there’s no reason why the thoughtful and judicious application of that software can’t facilitate and enhance your teaching of early modern drama

or Greek philosophy In other words, whether or not you intend to become

an expert in the digital humanities, you should be able to benefit from some

of DH’s offerings, finding not only exciting possibilities for new classroom activities and assignments, but also inspiration to reconfigure your vision

of your own discipline and its relationship to new media and technologies

Who is this book for?

We intend for this book to help anyone who would like to increase, rethink,

or complicate the ways they incorporate technology in the classroom Perhaps you currently use PowerPoint for your lectures; work with students virtually through your university’s internal grading, chatting, and work- sharing systems; or collect assignments through Turnitin These familiar technologies allow us to easily incorporate images, share notes, and communicate simply and quickly with our students They also, of course, cause their share of frustration (this book cannot, alas, entirely prevent such glitches, though it does offer practical tips and tricks for solving common technical problems) And, yet, even those technologies that work flawlessly can become a source of problems as we become habituated to them— to the point of feeling uninspired or using these tools uncritically

To recapture an inspired and critical use of technology in the classroom, perhaps you would like to know more about technologies, resources, and software that have not yet become quite so familiar or ubiquitous Perhaps you want to learn about new kinds of assignments and learning outcomes that digital platforms can enable Perhaps you suspect that there are new online resources and digital projects that your students might find useful in their research essays, but you do not know where to find them Perhaps you would like to know the latest thinking on the sometimes- thorny issues of copyright, privacy, integrity, and labor that arise in digital contexts Perhaps your students have expressed interest in using digital tools, or perhaps they have come to expect from your own institutional culture that there will

be some sort of technological integration in every classroom Whatever the case may be, we hope you use this book as a primer designed to enhance

your teaching in the humanities classroom by integrating digital tools and methods that fit with your pedagogical goals The book is not designed for digital humanities specialists; in fact, it requires no existing knowledge of the field at all, but instead offers an introduction to the digital humanities through and for the classroom In other words, this book will not explain

how to teach the digital humanities, but rather, how to teach with the digital

humanities

You do not need any specialized technical skills in order to use this book, and neither do your students Where some training is necessary we provide brief, practical explanations of how to go about using a tool, or we provide resources that will allow you to undertake further advanced training later if you so wish For now, all you need is an interest in digital developments in pedagogy and a desire to think about how your teaching might be enlivened with some new tools, tricks, and ideas

What are the digital humanities?

Before we get any further, there are two crucial questions to address: What exactly are the digital humanities (commonly abbreviated to DH, as we will

do throughout this book), and why do they matter to teachers of humanities courses? Like many newly emerging and rapidly changing fields, the digital humanities are full to bursting with definitions Like many foundational disciplinary queries (“What is literary studies?” for example, or “What is criticism?”), defining the digital humanities is at once fundamental and complex Ideas about the nature of DH range from the broadest and simplest

of definitions— humanistic research of any kind that uses digital methods

or tools— to more specific disciplinary constructions that see participation

in the field as something that requires a standard set of technical skills Since scholars in the field have grappled with this question at length in other venues, both print and digital, we’d like here to suggest that there are so many ways of defining this field that there is bound to be something of use

in it for just about anyone who teaches today in a university classroom

In a suitably digital answer to the proliferation of definitions for the field, a website by Jason Heppler, whatisdigitalhumanities.com, generates a random new definition every time you refresh the webpage in your browser One click might get you a broad definition that stipulates any cross- fertilization between technology and the humanities, while another might reference particular technologies (such as data mining or visualization) Another might be pointedly inclusive (by mentioning nonacademic institutions and members of the general public, for example), while another might focus

on DH as a field of research The spirit of that multivoiced generator is something we’d like to maintain here in our own thinking about DH For us, digital humanities simply represents a community of scholars and teachers interested in using or studying technology We use humanities techniques to

study digital cultures, tools, and concepts, and we also use computational methods to explore the traditional objects of humanistic inquiry This book

is not concerned specifically with teaching DH itself as a subject field, though we do provide some resources for that purpose Further resources

on the definition of digital humanities and the many debates about the boundaries of the field can be found in our Web Companion (www.teachdh.com), categorized with the materials associated with the Introduction and organized under the heading “Debates and Conversations.”

Key concepts

Each section of this book addresses a separate topic but invokes a few central motifs and recommendations that we return to again and again For example, we emphasize that you always need to know precisely what you are

using digital humanities methods for Rather than engaging with new tools

for their own sake, we recommend that you ground all your experiments and exercises in your course content This will allow you to design your course carefully, on a case- by- case basis, so that particular exercises are suited to the particular course topic or text For example, it is for good reason that mapping some region or aspect of London— an activity that was popular in many humanities classrooms when only paper maps and atlases of London were available— continues to flourish as a popular (and useful) digital humanities assignment You will have more success if you choose activities on a day- by- day basis so they make sense for the particular readings at hand However, we suggest that you also be willing to return

to activities that a particular class has enjoyed and may want to revisit Likewise, you should be willing to drop plans for a new activity if students are struggling with course content

The purpose of combining specificity, clarity, and flexibility is to ensure that your digital content always connects to course objectives and can adapt in case of equipment failure or miscommunications In fact, you may want to begin an exercise by explicitly telling your students how this tool or method relates to the learning objectives you have stated on your syllabus Although you may rely on implicit learning objectives that guide you through each semester, you should consider devoting quite a bit of your syllabus- construction time to drafting course objectives Connecting digital activities or assignments to these objectives can help to persuade a resistant student (or fellow instructor), and also provide insurance in case an exercise

or assignment doesn’t quite go to plan If the students’ efforts meet stated course objectives, then the activity is a success regardless of the outcome on the screen

Clearly stating these course objectives, despite the drearily bureaucratic connotations they might have for some, provides you with a powerful safeguard Some DH skeptics worry that teaching with the digital humanities

can quickly shade into a dubious use of student labor This ethical concern matters; it may not, for example, be wise to ask students to perform, on

a regular basis, crowd- sourced labor for a project you are personally

connected to Yet there are some digital scholarly projects that students can

usefully contribute to— and learn a lot from— so you can use your course objectives as guidelines to gauge the appropriateness of any assigned tasks.Beyond placing course objectives at the core of your activities in order

to emphasize the humanistic aims behind digital experiments, you can also assign reflection papers Whether as short as a few sentences scribbled during the last minutes of class or as long as a formal essay that represents a noteworthy chunk of their final grade, these reflection papers should ask the students to connect their digital work explicitly with the other assignments and texts in the course Even the most eager or digitally savvy student might otherwise complete the task without considering its purposes beyond creating a graphic or producing statistics And even the best- designed activity will not automatically result in students considering its broader implications for the entire course Asking students to weigh in on the advantages (and disadvantages) of using DH in the classroom not only allows them a context for articulating their victories— and for venting their frustrations— but also helps you revise the course prompt or assignment sheet for the next time around

Reflection is particularly crucial with DH approaches because frustration

is a common feeling attendant on digital humanities experiments In DH,

certain kinds of failure are not only understandable:  they are expected

Hypotheses or research questions that generate ambiguous or statistically insignificant results might never be fully proven or disproven Faulty equipment or messy data can prevent students from finding any results whatsoever, as can inadequate instructions or poorly formed teams And,

as with any class activity, a whole constellation of constraints, from time to space to material resources, could limit your students’ success With enough forethought, with a creative use of available resources, and with tips from this book, you can solve many of these problems Still, even the most well- prepared activity can fail, and when that happens, you will want to minimize the negative effects on students by giving them credit for their efforts And, perhaps more importantly, you can productively turn the conversation to diagnosing the sources of that failure, using it to find new ways to solve the problem, whether by identifying a technological solution or by approaching the problem through other humanistic skill sets

Many activities in the digital humanities similarly require adaptability, creativity, and openness Indeed, a resolutely cheerful and optimistic attitude animates our approach to the digital humanities We value the unforeseen, accidental, and contingent So long as you continue to be guided by your course objectives, this openness need not be a weakness or a distraction Indeed, it can foster opportunities for reassessment and revision Remember that you can rely on your subject knowledge and that your students will learn

valuable skills if you are willing to model problem solving and resilience Sometimes, you will be compelled to make these revisions in the middle of

a semester— or in the middle of a class session— but, with the tools we give you, you can minimize any potential negative effects for your students

How to use this book

Just as your own digital humanities activities and assignments will be subject to revision, all of the material that follows in this book is similarly customizable Mixing and matching the assignments and activities suggested here will greatly increase the book’s usefulness At their core,

these sample prompts, guides, assignment sheets, and rubrics are simply

techniques— approaches, not rigid formulas, that work best when tailored

to fit a particular course For example, we arrange our suggestions for activities and assignments by the length of time they require (or, sometimes, by cost), but you can revise these suggested templates to suit any particular technique into virtually any length or type of assignment Most activities can be configured to be executed remotely or in class, completed by a group or by a single student, or finished over the course

of a week, a unit, or a semester

We have organized the book into short chapters, each one divided into small, clearly identified sections, so that you can easily dip in and out Chapters have been designed as freestanding units that can be read on their own, in any order Suggestions for further reading are given separately for each chapter so that you can find further resources quickly and easily

We have privileged practical advice over theory— not because theoretical approaches to pedagogy are uninteresting (and indeed, you will find relevant theoretical arguments in the further reading sections), but because this book

is meant, first and foremost, as a hands- on introductory guide As you build more confidence with designing assignments and activities, the book will also provide signposts for ways to reinforce and diversify your use of digital humanities in the classroom

Chapter 1, “Overcoming resistance,” explains how to overcome the fear of failure that often threatens our creativity as we contemplate technologically experimental pedagogy It then debunks common myths about DH, focusing first on your own misgivings, followed by those of your students, and ending with those of your colleagues Chapter  1 closes by discussing the preventative habits that will reduce the number of times that you experience technical glitches in the classroom, as well as strategies for overcoming any unavoidable issues that crop up during a class session

At the core of a DH- inspired class is its digital resources Chapter  2,

“Finding, evaluating, and creating digital resources,” shares practical tips for finding the digital texts, files, and other assets necessary for innovative

DH pedagogy We first explain the advantages of using digital resources,

then discuss how to find and evaluate them, ensuring that you choose the most robust resources at your disposal For instructors who cannot locate suitable digital resources, we provide instructions for creating them for your students, as well as advice for creating them alongside your students The chapter ends with a discussion of citation and copyright issues.

Chapter  3, “Ensuring accessibility,” applies concepts from Universal Design to recommend ways to make your class work optimally for all of your students It explains technologies, such as text- to- speech and multimodal recording, that maximize the accessibility of your lectures, then turns to strategies for universal interactivity, which will give your students the tools

to participate fully in each course session Much of this information is organized into tables to make information tailored to particular issues (e.g., student presentations, late work, assignment design) easy to find Finally, Chapter 3 turns to issues of safety, privacy, and economic inequality

These accessibility issues will affect all of the decisions you make for your course, including your syllabus construction Chapter  4, “Designing syllabi,” opens by arguing in favor of providing online syllabi and course websites and by suggesting simple but effective means to construct them

We then discuss the prospect of teaching a course specifically on the digital humanities before explaining the ways in which you can incorporate

DH in a “light,” “medium,” or “heavy” dosage It then provides detailed suggestions for writing the necessary components of a syllabus— such as contact information, course descriptions, and learning objectives— in ways that account for the DH elements you are using

Chapter  5, “Designing classroom activities,” begins by theorizing in- class activities as exploratory operations that emphasize play, failure, and skill acquisition over mastery or “results.” Next, it discusses the necessity

to maintain a balance between flexibility and consistency so that you can respond productively to last- minute problems or ideas while not introducing too much chaos in the classroom or departing too wildly from your carefully laid plans It then catalogs a dozen sample in- class DH activity options, arranged by the amount of time they require, and ends with advice for writing effective prompts

Because the execution of a well- planned activity also requires a good deal of thought, Chapter 6, “Managing classroom activities,” explains how

to facilitate these activities It first advises using free or already existing resources at the core of your activities so that resource difficulties are less likely to disrupt your plans Still, not all DH activities are free, so we then discuss how to secure facilities, equipment, and other resources to which you might not normally have access, all arranged from least to most costly

To help you react to the many problems that may crop up during activities,

we share techniques for troubleshooting and strategies for rescuing a class session— even when your planned activity is irrevocably pushed off course

In Chapter  7, “Creating digital assignments,” we first share general tips for designing technologically innovative assignments, making sure

to foreground principles that derive from the values and practices of the

DH community, so that your assignments are clear, useful, and exciting for both you and your students The bulk of the chapter catalogs a set

of assignment ideas, arranging them from the least to most complex and linking them to sample assignment sheets and rubrics in the Web Companion (as we also do in Chapter  5 on activities) Chapter  7 ends with a detailed discussion of how to write effective assignment sheets and an exhortation to provide examples of previous student work or to complete the assignment yourself

The peculiar demands of DH- inflected assignments will influence your grading processes as much as they do your construction of assignments,

so Chapter 8, “Evaluating student work,” explores the ways in which you will want to clarify and modify your approach to assessment It begins by discussing the significance of sharing explicit criteria with your students, and then walks through the construction of analytic and holistic rubrics We share some approaches that have developed within the DH community and some ideas for involving your students in the evaluation process Finally, we discuss alternatives to rubric usage, and end with advice for helping your students (and you too!) cope with failure

Chapter 9, “Teaching graduate students,” turns to the particular issues

at hand when teaching graduate courses and advising graduate students

It considers the differences between undergraduate and graduate students from the vantage point of the digital humanities, then it elaborates the many ways in which DH can be incorporated into a graduate course A detailed table provides advice for graduate students and for their mentors; it is tailored to each stage in a grad student’s progress toward degree Next, graduate mentors are encouraged to connect graduate students to external opportunities, such as conferences and fellowships, that center on DH Chapter 9 ends with advice for helping graduate students in the job market

to leverage their DH experience

Chapter  10, “Finding internal support communities,” and Chapter  11,

“Finding external support communities,” stress the importance of reaching out to others as you experiment with DH in the classroom Chapter  10 focuses on finding (and giving) help within your own institution, from the faculty and staff in your own department and other humanities departments

to those in STEM and computing fields, and from administrators throughout your institution to librarians and special collections It also discusses how best to interact with information technology (IT) staff, as well as how

to find the material and financial resources you need to pursue your DH pedagogy Finally, Chapter  10 ends with an extended meditation on the ethics of collaboration so that your attempts to receive support are mutually beneficial

In contrast, Chapter  11, “Finding external support communities,” moves outward We begin with a consideration of social media, as it is an extremely user- friendly and quick way to build a community of DHers

An in- depth discussion of Twitter befits this platform’s significance as

a primary disseminator of DH news and scholarship To gesture toward the many ways to interact with the global DH community, we survey the academic organizations, conferences, and events that have emerged around the digital humanities, including DH’s range of institutes, workshops, and seminars Chapter 11 concludes by sharing digital humanities journals and summarizing grant- funding opportunities

Chapter 12, “Connecting to your research,” lays out options for making your efforts in DH pedagogy work double for you by contributing to your scholarship We first discuss using DH methods and tools to make your existing disciplinary research more efficient and reliable Next, the chapter explores options for publishing works about your DH teaching experiences, before considering how current scholarship in the digital humanities can transform your research by broadening its content and scope Chapter 12 ends by considering possibilities for bringing your students into this research process by using DH methods It stresses the significance of bringing your students in as collaborators rather than workers and shares ways for acknowledging your students’ efforts

Whereas this Introduction has acquainted you with the features and information offered by this book, the Conclusion offers suggestions for moving forward, beyond the confines of this book and our suggestions In our conclusion, we exhort you to experiment and, by responding to the needs and interests of your particular student body, to forge your own approaches

to DH pedagogy Throughout this collaboratively written volume, when we use the third- person plural, we refer to ourselves, Shawna Ross and Claire Battershill, and when we have distinct opinions or anecdotes about our individual teaching, we distinguish ourselves by our initials: S and C

The Web Companion

To provide more inspiration beyond the confines of the chapters described above, and to situate this book in the digital context from which it arose,

we have also created a Web Companion (www.teachdh.com), which we reference throughout This companion includes a curated, annotated bibliography of relevant sources for each chapter Each chapter’s annotated bibliography in the companion is organized into categories (such as software tutorials, sample syllabi, and digital pedagogy theory) and then described in paragraph form (rather than presented as a list, which sometimes can be overwhelming and uninformative) to provide a supplemental 2,000- word bibliographic essay for each chapter The websites mentioned in each chapter here are also reproduced in the digital companion, providing convenient clickable links to important resources Beyond providing a list of links, though, the annotated bibliography for each chapter also provides short essays on important debates, issues, or concepts that we could not address

in the book itself To provide a few examples, “Does digital scholarship count?” provides a consideration of the value of DH- inspired research that is paired with Chapter  12, “Connecting to your research”; “Digital humanities and social justice,” which introduces the reader to one strand

of DH research, is matched to Chapter  3, “Ensuring accessibility”; and

“Experimental grading methods” are shared in the bibliographic resources for Chapter 8, “Evaluating student work.”

In the Web Companion, we also provide activity sets and assignment sets for methods that we have particularly highlighted in this book, such as maps, visualization, text capture, and text analysis The sample classroom activity sets are downloadable and customizable; each consists of a slideshow tutorial, a prompt to share with students, and a detailed explanation of how to prepare and manage the activity This tripartite activity set structure ensures that you have the resources to learn (and teach) the methods that you can then ask your students to learn We also provide a cluster of sample assignment sheets that you can download, then either distribute with no additional work or customize according to your needs Finally, we include some examples of actual student work to use as samples These sample student assignments, all produced by our own students from a single course, demonstrate the broad range of student uses of social media, infographics, flowcharts, listicles, timelines, surveys, quizzes, and other artifacts that use interactive media or visualization techniques

To make the best use of these supplementary materials, we suggest that you read this book with a smartphone, laptop, or other internet- enabled device close at hand This will be particularly useful as you read Chapters 5 and 7 That way, you can refer to the digital materials as they are referenced

in the book (Alternately, you could, of course, download the materials in advance.)

Developing your own digital pedagogy

We encourage you, essentially, to use this book in whatever way you find

it most helpful In Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom, we have

deliberately designed a primer that supports a variety of approaches and suits a variety of purposes We recognize that we all teach with our own motivations and with our own styles, and this eclecticism is what makes conversations about the classroom so exciting Hopefully, what motivates you to teach in the first place, and what drives you to be bold and try new things in the classroom, will also be what leads you to engage with digital humanities in a way that suits your own ideals and your own classroom philosophy

For C, having students work with authentic forms of digital media has allowed them to do some of their most creative work They have done everything from building their own holograms that represent the transitional

nature of the bildungsroman to inhabiting the characters of contemporary fiction through the use of social media to using digital images and timing tools to discover the relationship between typography and reading time Working with collaborative digital publishing projects has allowed her students, some of whom have had graphic design and arts backgrounds,

to see the links between their own artistic disciplines and the literary texts they study in English classes and write in creative writing workshops Since imaginativeness, risk taking, and innovation are at the core of C’s teaching philosophy, her students’ use of digital technologies has brightened and diversified the creative classroom

For S, digital humanities methods allow her to ask students to approach questions of style, textuality, history, and philosophy in unexpected ways Wading out to strange new regions— of graphs and visualizations, numbers and algorithms— destabilizes the literary concepts and texts that her students often regard as all- too- familiar The inevitable “return to” traditional modes of humanist inquiry is thus meant to defamiliarize the humanities while humanizing the technologies with which our students live so intimately

These are our own values in the classroom, but the digital has the potential to adapt itself to nearly any philosophy Whether you believe strongly in collaboration among your students and creating a dialogic environment or you favor rigorous individual student work, each of these needs can be specifically addressed with reference to digital methods and tools

of experimentation, openness, and newness, can spark new approaches to our most important problems and questions Using new technology won’t change the purpose of your teaching or substitute for your other activities

as a teacher Nor does it stand in for or replace the values you currently

hold It does, however, give you new ways to see those goals, facilitate

them, and share them with students

Overcoming Resistance

As we discuss in the introduction, getting started with digital humanities (DH) methods can often be the most difficult part of the process In many cases, the psychological and social barriers to the use of innovative digital methods can present far greater obstacles than any real (or perceived) lack of technological know- how A little demystification and a few simple tricks will help put your fears to rest Whereas in Chapter  3, “Ensuring accessibility,” we address the financial, cultural, and physical barriers that may put certain students or institutions at a disadvantage when it comes

to technical access, in this chapter we help you tackle the fear of failure, sharing a few key strategies that we have developed Next, we address common arguments against using DH in the classroom by sharing— and then refuting— common objections to digital pedagogy First, we tackle your own potential reservations, then we move on to your colleagues’ potential rebuttals, after which we explore your students’ resistance Finally, we share some practical tips for preventing technological failures

Conquering the fear of failure

In the digital humanities, failure is just a fact of life— almost a way of life For many DHers, this is not a source of fear but indeed one of the best features

of the field, as the digital humanities emphasize process over product, or,

in other words, learning skills, methods, and thought processes instead of creating flawless objects In “This Is Why We Fight,” an article proposing

a “values statement” for the field of digital humanities, Lisa Spiro points

to experimentation as one of the core values of the discipline (her other core values, which we also touch on throughout this book, are openness, collaboration, and diversity) With experimentation comes the possibility that your project, whether in the classroom or in a research setting, might not turn out quite the way you had hoped One of the primary benefits

of DH, from our point of view, is its willingness to place real value on

experimentation and, in doing so, reframe our understanding of what

“failure” actually means As Spiro points out, “the digital humanities community recognizes the value of failure in the pursuit of innovation” (18) This might sound terrifying to a perfectionist, but pedagogically, DH’s risk- taking ethos and its rethinking of “failure” is one of its most useful— and, as strange as it sounds, most comforting— ideas

Frequently in DH, articles focus on the process of building a tool or creating

a resource as much as (if not more than) the eventual outcome or product This process- oriented writing translates beautifully into the classroom; our students can benefit from exposing and analyzing the processes of their own learning sometimes just as much or more than they benefit from producing crystalline prose to fit a standard essay structure For your students and for you, an assignment that doesn’t quite go as planned, or a tool that doesn’t work, need not correlate at all to failure in evaluative terms As long as you and your students can articulate the process and critically assess the value

of the assignment, you will have found, as many DH scholars have found,

a new kind of success Emphasizing process over product ensures that you (and your students) foreground what your students have learned, rather than what they have not

If the specter of failure still looms large for you, it can be helpful to remember one of Spiro’s other values: community We have reached a point

in DH teaching and research now where a lot of material is available to help you get started (much of it in this book’s Web Companion) Adapting assignments or activities that other DH pedagogues have already successfully used is a very common, practical, and efficient approach to start your experiments in digital pedagogy What might feel risky to you in your own classroom can feel less so if you know how others have managed similar leaps, and the openness of the DH community means that you should always feel that you have a supportive group of people to help you through even the toughest of challenges that new approaches present Being confident in this community, as well as in your students (and the skills and knowledge they already have) and in yourself (and your own disciplinary knowledge) can help you overcome the fear of failure

Your own resistance

Although the fact that you are reading this book suggests that you would like to incorporate DH strategies in your classroom, you may still be struggling with some fears or problems that have prevented you from making experiments

in the past Keep in mind as you read the following list of common obstacles that many a DH pedagogue still struggles with the same issues, so you will find supportive peers if you want to discuss your worries

“I’m bad with computers.” Likely you’ve had a student come to your

office hours with common anxieties about their work in your class: “Tests

make me nervous,” “I don’t understand philosophy,” or “I’m not a good writer.” Recall the arguments you have at your fingertips when this happens, and adapt them to your own misgivings Overgeneralizations may accurately reflect the strength of your resistance— not your actual skills or abilities We are only “bad at” things we haven’t yet tried, haven’t found the right help for, or have not reframed in a more practical way Try recasting this general fear into precise terms that reflect specific situations, which will cut your worries down to size It is difficult to handle “being bad at computers,” but

“needing to create a course website on WordPress” or “figuring out how to make an infographic” (or indeed finding out what an infographic is!) is far easier, and a far more accurate characterization of the task in front of you

On a more practical note, as long as you can use basic software, like web browsers and word processors, you have the skills to oversee most of the activities and assignments described in this book The tutorials in the Web Companion will teach you how to facilitate the activities and assignments

we recommend And searching Google, making simple queries in colloquial language, can generally yield the answers you need You can believe you are “bad at computers” until the end of time, but as long as you know the particular programs that you personally select— which you can practice ahead of time— your students never need know

“I don’t have fancy equipment.” In the digital humanities, expensive

devices and advanced techniques, such as 3D printing and physical computing (sometimes involving specially designed workshop spaces called “maker labs”), draw a lot of attention, but that does not mean they alone are worthy

of the term “digital pedagogy.” Most of the activities and assignments we describe only need a device capable of accessing the internet In some cases,

a single cell phone is sufficient; in others, a keyboard and shortcut CTRL +

F to search in a text; and in still others, two or more editions of a particular text, even if they are all made of paper Sitting your students in a computer laboratory, handing them expensive video cameras, or giving them access

to specialized software is all to the good, but it isn’t strictly necessary for experimenting with digital pedagogy In fact, it is good practice to make

use of whatever technologies are (for your students and your institution)

considered banal, typical, or accessible, giving your students a critical perspective on them and finding new uses for them Chapters 10 and 11,

“Finding internal support communities” and “Finding external support communities,” can help you find financial or in- kind support for your digital pedagogy, but, beyond this help, most of the activities and assignments found here deliberately make use of open- access or free resources that are otherwise within your reach

“I don’t have the time to learn computer programming.” It has been

many years since the scholar Stephen Ramsay famously declared that “real” digital humanists build tools (through computer coding), not just use them Not coincidentally, it’s also been many years since digital humanists began qualifying or refuting this assertion Put simply, you do not need to know

any programming languages to begin teaching with digital humanities tools

and methods, although it is true that not all of the available options would

be open to you If you do not have a degree in computer science, it may seem that learning how to code is an impossibility; given enough time, this

is certainly not true, and many a nascent digital humanist has used free programs to learn coding at her own pace C, for instance, had no formal training in coding beyond a secondary school computing class when she began to experiment with digital humanities projects and tools through online resources and digital humanities workshops These resources include general coding education sites like Codecademy, a trusted program that many digital humanists have used successfully and recommend to neophytes Workshops at annual digital humanities conferences or camps, such as the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, are also excellent choices for DH- specific sessions that offer training for all levels

of technical ability, as we discuss further in Chapter 11, “Finding external support communities.” A hybrid of online and in- person instruction comes from the Digital Pedagogy Lab, which offers online courses and in- person courses Links to these (and further options) are found in the Web Companion

to this volume, under Chapter 1, “Resources for learning coding.”

If you do not have the time or inclination for a workshop or Codecademy, two options still present themselves:  first, disregard the monolithic (and largely mythical) construction of “coding” in general and identify one particular language or platform that will accomplish any specific goal you

have now You can set yourself manageable goals, learning one new skill

per semester (or year!) to build your knowledge slowly Setting up a website with WordPress’s simple, no- programming- knowledge- required template and then, once you are comfortable with your site, looking under the hood

at the code, is a perfectly good way to begin, and it requires little more than the same pattern recognition skills you use in your own research Alternatively, you could forget about coding completely! Using WordPress, spreadsheets, and approachable text analysis tools (such as Voyant) can get you and your students very far If you exhaust these resources and desire something more powerful, then you can reevaluate your options and devote time to learning how to code (ideally, with the support of the communities and funding sources discussed in Chapters 10 and 11)

“There’s not enough room in the syllabus to teach new skills.” Out of the

four objections that we suggest you may harbor against using the digital humanities in your classroom, this one may be the hardest to overcome The responsibility to provide “coverage” for your students— to teach them a hundred years of Russian history, encapsulate two thousand years of political philosophy, or introduce all the major concepts of cultural anthropology— seems an impossible goal if you must teach technological skills on top of your disciplinary mandate Nevertheless, the lure of coverage is itself a siren song, an impossibility even if your students are required to undertake

only the conventional activities of taking tests and writing papers Given this impossibility, we believe that the excitement and critical possibilities offered by the digital humanities will amply reward the small percentage of the coverage that you have sacrificed Moreover, if you consciously select analytical skills, texts, or concepts that are important for you in a particular class, then using DH to reinforce them will not be a sacrifice; it will increase the odds that your students will remember these important skills, texts, and concepts once finals week has passed.

In addition, choosing tools or methods that your students already know how to use, whether because your students use them in their daily lives

or because they were taught in other courses, can reduce the amount of instructional time you devote to training and allow students to play to their strengths (S, in her course on Virginia Woolf, discovered she had two students with digital graphic design experience, which they offered to share with the class Results from these collaborations can be found in the Web Companion, under “Sample student work.”) Most of the activities and assignments discussed in this book can be configured as group work, or even as a semester- long project that the whole class participates in, so that

no single person needs to master every single tool and concept Applying these strategies to streamline or minimize the amount of technical training you do in your course sessions does not make you less of a digital pedagogue

or your activities or assignments less provocative The point of digital pedagogy, after all, is to illuminate your course content in new ways, not

to use “the digital” for its own sake Make no mistake— you will lose some

texts or concepts or conversations, and confronting this fact early on in your syllabus construction will ensure that you manage this loss in a way that you find acceptable— but we strongly believe the trade- off is worth it

Your colleagues’ resistance

We have encountered very different attitudes regarding DH on the part of colleagues in the many institutions at which we have taught Sometimes,

we have encountered a welcoming community of pedagogues who have already experimented with DH in the classroom, while at other times, our experimentation has been politely tolerated (with eyebrows raised when the topic of technology- centric activities and assignments comes up) or regarded with suspicion and even disdain If your colleagues are in this latter category,

we provide the following talking points for you to consider

“This is just the next new thing, and we’ll be sick of it soon.” This

assertion that digital humanities is a short- lived trend is, sadly, quite common (Stanley Fish has famously joined this fray, with a series of blog

posts for The New York Times.) However, many of the assignments, tools,

and methods we suggest in this book are, as we emphasized at the outset, designed to further your existing (and presumably long- lasting!) pedagogical

goals within your discipline As long as you are adopting technologies and using digital methods that suit your fundamental needs as an instructor and align with your values, you will simply be enhancing your own approach, not adopting a suspiciously snazzy and potentially volatile method Another counterargument you can develop involves pointing out the widespread and nearly unconscious adoption of research technologies we all use; online library catalogs, grading software, e- mail servers, and PowerPoint were once also described as possible flash- in- the- pan technologies, and they are now quite clearly here to stay.

“We have enough trouble teaching our own curriculum as it is.” As

we show in Chapter  3, “Ensuring accessibility,” digital methods need not be complicated, costly, or tremendously difficult In fact, once some thoughtful design work at the syllabus stage has been done (more on this in Chapter  4, “Designing syllabi”), the implementation of many

of the approaches we suggest here is just as simple as, if not simpler than, other in- class or take- home assignments you might undertake in your classes We would also suggest that the benefits to your students

of ensuring that you are up- to- date with the most helpful software and techniques available will far outweigh the extra effort in course design

As always with sound pedagogy, reflecting on the learning objectives of the course, as well as the broader objectives of your major (or the core curriculum courses your department covers), will reassure you and your colleagues And, at best, you can argue that your DH methods can help you and your students overcome existing problems or obstacles, such as

a lack of primary sources (which you can ameliorate through the use of digital archives) or an unfamiliarity with the basic word- processing and spreadsheet software that even your colleagues wish your students had more proficiency with

“Let the computer department deal with this.” Sequestering all use of

technology and thoughtfulness about its implementation in the computer

or information technology (IT) department at a university ignores both the ubiquity of digital uptake in our everyday lives and the power of the humanities to shape our use of technology productively and ethically The critical reflections on technology that we can encourage in a classroom— about the nature of digital textuality and reading, the commercialization

of digital structures, and the impact of technology on meaning- making and discourse reproduction— are all conversations perfectly suited to humanities classrooms Furthermore, digital literacy is becoming a requirement of nearly any job your students will seek after they finish their degrees, and encouraging students from any humanities field to have strong basic skills and a high level of comfort in this area can be a selling point for your own department when it comes to student uptake and enrollment At a time when many departments are sustaining significant losses in their numbers of majors and student credit hours, being able to articulate the marketability

of humanities skills is a valuable asset

“Will this cost the department money?” The short answer is that it doesn’t

have to The open- access movement and Creative Commons licensing, which

we discuss further in Chapter 2, “Finding, evaluating, and creating digital resources,” have opened up a wealth of primary and secondary materials for teaching that might actually save basic costs on, for instance, photocopies and textbooks Many (indeed the majority) of the resources, activities, and methods we recommend in this book are achievable for free or with existing departmental resources Make the most of these available resources

by consulting with your department’s or college’s IT staff to learn the full extent of what you have at your disposal; you might even find existing resources that are currently underutilized If you wish to use programs or

technologies that are costly, you can apply for internal or external support

for doing so (see Chapters 10 and 11), and in that case, you will be bringing

in new resources for the department, as well as positive attention within your institution, which should quell your colleagues’ fears

Your students’ resistance

Most of your students will probably be too polite or reserved to communicate clearly their doubts, concerns, and fears to you at the moment you introduce the question of DH- enabled work in your classroom, but others may express their fears to you, whether privately during office hours or publicly during class discussion Even if your students do not actively exhibit signs

of resistance in their conversation, body language, or performance on assignments, consider the following arguments, and try to incorporate the rationale of these rebuttals as you introduce DH work That way, you can prevent student problems before they emerge Much of their resistance will

be rooted a fear of failure, in which case you can share the counterarguments mentioned in the previous section on failure For example, high- achieving or anxious students who are focused on their grades will feel comforted if you explicitly emphasize the significance of process over product at each stage

in the project (from introducing the assignment sheet to working on skill acquisition to turning in final versions) On the other end of the spectrum, some students may not have the same technological skills as most of their peers; in this case, research what kinds of remedial aid are available at your institution Many colleges and universities subscribe to tutorial services in the same way that they subscribe to databases, so see if your institution provides access to these programs (S’s university, for example, provides Lynda educational subscriptions for students and faculty.) Other institutions may fund free tutoring services that are related to computer or engineering courses and work in a similar way to campus writing centers In this case,

it is worth finding out if your students would be able to access this service Finally, asking students to work in groups and (occasionally) giving students one- on- one help during office hours will help

Once you have reassured anxious students and helped others find remedial technology instruction, you may still have students who are not yet convinced of the utility of using technology- based approaches in the humanities classroom, so familiarize yourself with the following common sources of student resistance.

“I wanted a normal class What does this have to do with what I signed

up for?” Although the vast majority of our students now have always lived

in a world with laptops, the internet, and smartphones, many of them are still uncomfortable with any kind of coding and with more complicated technical projects Indeed, some will have chosen classes in humanities departments in order to avoid the technical requirements of the sciences

To counter this resistance, the best defense is, first, to have set your students

up for success by thoroughly preparing them for their tasks and, second, to have designed your course in such a way that the technology clearly relates

to and enhances the humanistic materials If you can show your students real humanities research and real primary materials hosted on websites and digital archives, for example, you will be able to also show them that a lot

of research and cultural heritage work is taking place online using digital

methods Just as they might read the New York Times online or find out

their news on Facebook, so they will find the most up- to- date and easily accessible links to the literary, cultural, or historical materials they care about by paying attention to digital developments

“I’m not a computer science major I’ll never use this.” From understanding

content management systems like Drupal and WordPress to knowing how

to interact with databases and produce spreadsheets, basic digital literacy is required now in nearly every profession Though the tech sector itself is one possible area of employment after graduation (even for humanities majors), areas such as the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) sector, nonprofits, government agencies, and retail companies all require facility and comfort with digital systems Whatever their professional aspirations after graduation, students will benefit from learning as much as they can about working together with others on technology- oriented projects After all, even artisanal broom makers and freelance nonfiction writers keep and often manage their own websites, Twitter feeds, Facebook accounts, and financial programs At the beginning of the semester, if you tell students that they will be able to add new digital skills to their resumes in a few months’ time (and explain why this is just as necessary for artists as for engineers), you will find most of your students motivated and willing to learn

“I don’t think this stuff should count toward my grade.” We discuss

the matter of evaluation further in Chapter 8, “Evaluating student work,” but, for now, you should know that it will reassure the majority of apprehensive students to know that digital assignments often come with clear rubrics that show exactly how their grades are derived Indeed, most often you will not be grading your students on their technical competence

in and of itself, but rather on their critical thinking around their projects,

their presentation skills, their participation in in- class assignments and workshops, their resilience when encountering technological difficulties, and their ability to link course content to technological issues Making

it clear that students will not be unduly penalized for not already being computer wizards will reassure them on this front If they are still resistant to the idea of receiving grades on digital assignments, you may wish to spend some extra time explaining your criteria and going over your rubrics with your students to ensure that they understand what is being asked of them and how they will be assessed Doing so will not only allay their fears, but also improve the quality of the students’ work and remind them of the value of the assignment And, in some cases, particular students will have their own unique technological skills and competencies gained from other courses or from their hobbies If you find these skills, and point out that they merely have to apply them to your course content, you fill find students eager to display their skills and— better yet— teach them to fellow students

“I hate group work.” Because of the unusual nature or unusual breadth

of the skills needed for many DH- inflected tools, you may find yourself assigning group work more frequently than usual There are two possible ways to counter group- work resistance from your students One is simply

to uncouple the digital from the collaborative, saying (quite truthfully, since many humanities classrooms have a prominent cooperative component) that group work would have been part of your course even if technology

or a digital component was not Another method is to point the student

to the myriad studies demonstrating the effectiveness of group work in promoting student success, achieving positive learning outcomes, and developing greater empathy and social development among participants

If necessary, you can always offer alternatives for individual work; for example, S has assigned students solo research work, which they then hand off to a relevant group, which applies this research to create a digital resource S has had other, similarly shy students individually create artwork

or write copy that is then used as an accompaniment for another group’s work, while others have served as eagle- eyed copy editors who check the accuracy and grammar of other students’ labors or confirm the accuracy

of any research materials incorporated into the project (Further advice about and research on group work can be found in the Web Companion materials related to Chapter 6, “Managing classroom activities.”)

The best cure is prevention: Establishing

good habits

Once you have managed to convince yourself, your students, your colleagues, and your institution that some digital experimentation is a

good idea for your course, there are a few things you can do to help assuage any remaining fears you might have yourself about implementing and executing digital activities and assignments The following tips are rigorously practical ideas that have helped us to feel more prepared

to tackle the specific challenges that can arise when trying new digital methods in the classroom

Material considerations can be especially important (and sometimes anxiety provoking) when you’re thinking about how to incorporate these new DH dimensions into your course Although you do not, as we mentioned earlier, necessarily need any specialized equipment to undertake digital projects, you will need reliable access to a basic IT setup for most of this kind of work Perhaps more importantly, with digital projects, if a piece

of technology fails, it can derail the lesson more catastrophically than if you had planned, for example, to have all of your students turn to page 87 and

close read a passage about the physiology of whale flukes in Moby Dick For

this reason, we want to share some strategies for minimizing this risk For example, you can create your own short checklist of equipment and resources that you will need for every class These needs will vary from classroom to classroom and person to person Ensuring that you are comfortable with your equipment and material (for example, by taking advantage of training courses offered by your library or following institution- specific instructions online) is crucial to a smooth and anxiety- free experience in the classroom

We cover matters of equipment and outline the resources you might need in more detail in Chapter 6, “Managing classroom activities.”

Equally important, however, is the way you organize your own digital materials once you start teaching with them One of the areas in which digital tools really excel, even for researchers who are more interested

in manuscript illuminations than in topic modeling, is in bibliographic management: keeping track of references, documents, and files Maintain a tidy and organized digital filing system for your images, videos, presentations, and digital editions and back it up not only on your institution’s Learning Management System (LMS) or online repository, but also, crucially, on your own cloud- based or hardware- based backup system Productivity tools, especially those that are designed specifically for academic use— including reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, and Refworks— and even general, open- source software like Google Docs and Google Drive, can help you make the most of the new digital teaching content you are generating, and, crucially, can help you reuse, adapt, and share materials in future iterations

of your courses For a further description of these tools and links to guides and tutorials for using them, consult the Web Companion’s list of resources under Chapter 1

Beyond these nuts- and- bolts considerations, there are some further strategies that will increase your chances of success In general, prepare for your activities and assignments well in advance, keep a keen eye on your students’ reactions and problems as they do their work, and then initiate

some kind of reflective process afterward Rehearse any software process or activity yourself, using the tutorials and instruction sheets on this book’s Web Companion when appropriate Sometimes, you will be tempted to skip this step, as it does take time, but even though fumbling in front of our students can be a productive, teachable moment and can help model resilience and problem solving for your students, neither of us enjoys it when it could have been easily avoided if we had just practiced This practice can seem onerous, especially when software programs updated to the next version render the rehearsal you did for last semester’s class obsolete, but if the activity bears some sort of grade or evaluation for the student, your students need your instruction to be as useful and accurate as possible.

Above all, record what works and, perhaps more importantly, what does

not Put it all in writing as soon as you can, as you will soon have to move

on to the next activity or class (S keeps a paper copy of each syllabus on her desk specifically for annotating it with these revisions, and C keeps a Google Doc open for each section of each class in order to record reflections and thoughts for next time.) Ask for student feedback not just when the semester ends, but also mid- semester or mid- project Sometimes, even if you have all the right equipment and have practiced the activity multiple times, problems still occur Nonetheless, if you have done the best you can, approach class

with confidence, and give yourself a break when (not if, but when) an

activity flops Not every demonstration has to work, nor every activity result

in a brilliant thesis, for your students to learn from the experience Using the strategies from this section will help to minimize these occurrences, but

if the worst does happen, consult the “In case of total failure” section of Chapter 6, “Managing classroom activities.”

Conclusion

Resistance to incorporating digital humanities in the humanities classroom

is perfectly understandable Many of us suffer from a fear of failure—

a fear that is all the more intense because, as a college or university instructor, you have probably met with a lot of scholarly and pedagogical success in your life and have no desire to end your streak Your resistance might stem from uncertainty in your technological prowess, from your lack of access to resources or enough room on your syllabus, or from your belief that you do not have sufficient time to learn how to use a lot of new, advanced software; but you can minimize these problems by following the straightforward, practical advice we give in the rest of the book Meanwhile, you might fear the judgment or incredulity of your colleagues, whose resistance could make you feel uncomfortable or even (in the case

of an administrator) prevent you from teaching a class you want to teach; but you can combat this by knowing how to refute their misconceptions

In the case of your students, you can avoid their resistance by carefully

organizing your syllabus, providing the right kinds of resources, and explaining the relevance of DH for your course Above all, don’t let this resistance get you down Experiments with digital pedagogy are both fun and productive, and by starting slowly and preparing sufficiently, you can chip away at this resistance and begin enjoying your DH endeavors in the classroom.

Further reading

Brown, George, et al Assessing Student Learning in Higher Education

Routledge, 2005.

Clement, Tanya “Digital Humanities in the Undergraduate Curriculum.” Teaching

DH: On Pedagogy and Digital Humanities, Feb 23, 2012, blogs.ischool.utexas.

edu/ teachingdh/ Cordell, Ryan “How Not to Teach Digital Humanities,” Feb 1, 2015, ryancordell org/ teaching/ how- not- to- teach- digital- humanities/

Davidson, Cathy, and David Theo Goldberg “A Manifesto for the Humanities

in a Technological Age.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 13, 2004,

chronicle.com/ article/ A- Manifesto- for- the- Humanities/ 17844.

Fish, Stanley “The Old Order Changeth.” The New York Times, Dec 26, 2011,

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2011/ 12/ 26/ the- old- order- changeth/

Greetham, David “The Resistance to Digital Humanities.” Debates in the

Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, U of Minnesota P, 2012, pp

438– 51.

Hirsch, Brett D Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics

Open Book Publishers, 2012.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in

English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, vol 150, 2010, mkirschenbaum.files.

wordpress.com/ 2011/ 03/ ade- final.pdf.

Ramsay, Stephen “On Building,” Jan 11, 2011, stephenramsay.us/ text/ 2011/ 01/ 11/ on- building/

Reynolds, Michael Groupwork in Education and Training Routledge, 2008.

Spiro, Lisa “‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital

Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, U

of Minnesota P, 2012, pp. 16– 35.

Unsworth, John “What Is Humanities Computing and What Is Not?”

Distinguished Speakers Series of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the

Humanities, Oct 5, 2000, hwww.people.virginia.edu/ ~jmu2m/ mith.00.html.

DH waters in a simple, straightforward way: by including them in your syllabi

as course readings and other objects of study In this chapter, therefore, we recommend reliable, stable sources for digitized literary and historical texts, archival objects, and maps We also provide simple step- by- step instructions for creating your own digital text from nearly any primary source, and for involving students in the process We conclude with a practical guide to copyright and citation practices for the use of digital resources

Why use digital texts (and other assets)?

Electronic texts can serve many functions in your classroom: as a source

of course readings; as a provocation for discussing mediation, technology, book history, scholarly editing, typography, and design; as part of a class trip

to your local libraries, museums, archives, and special collections; or as the focus for in- class activities, student presentations, or graded assignments

We discuss particular activities and assignments in Chapter 5, “Designing classroom activities,” and Chapter 7, “Creating digital assignments,” but for now, we cover how to find appropriate resources and how to create them when no such resources exist

We strongly support the use of— and particularly the creation of— free,

open- access electronic resources for teaching the humanities These include not only electronic editions of primary and secondary texts (including photographic images of important documents and editions, as well as complete, corrected, searchable texts), but also digital images of historical objects, such as maps, artifacts, and buildings, as well as audio and video

assets As many of the costs related to higher education soar, we as teachers can help reduce students’ textbook costs (and relieve some pressure from library resources) by assigning free digital reading and resource materials Indeed, many of the literary and historical texts we teach are readily available online already, while others are currently coming out of copyright Beyond the issue

of textbook cost, the issue of variant and variable- quality print editions can cause practical difficulties in the classroom Our students, unaware of the legacies of scholarly editing and reliant on Amazon, often will purchase poorly or sparsely edited works, or will, being justly concerned for their bottom lines, choose inaccurate open- access editions whose provenance is unclear By helping to promote or even create new, carefully curated digital

resources, we can guide our students toward affordable and reliable sources.

Digital resources also have some inherent advantages over paper anthologies or textbooks when it comes to teaching They have a far greater capacity for high- quality, full- color illustrations; they are often transferable between devices and forms (that is, students could view them

on a smartphone as easily as on a library computer, or they can even print them out); and they are helpful for students who will not or cannot carry bulky, heavy textbooks to class Although we often (and usually, correctly) assume that access to technology is difficult for underprivileged students, the internet is more ubiquitous than access to well- furnished libraries in some parts of the world, and many students who cannot afford laptops

or home computers do own smartphones capable of loading electronic texts (Cerwall 6), as we will discuss further in Chapter  3, “Ensuring accessibility.” For us, the convenience of the digital repository— that is,

an aggregation of many, many texts in one database (or many networked databases)— is one of the key reasons we find teaching with digital texts attractive, as is the simplicity of the open systems that humanist academics increasingly rely on It is worth noting, too, that digital texts and objects can fruitfully be used alongside scholarly editions and paper textbooks in order to enrich and broaden student experiences of historical texts and objects For teaching newer forms of media, digital sources are sometimes also primary sources

We advocate not only using such sources as digital text repositories and scholarly digital archives, but also contributing to them as well Contemporary publishing structures make our participation necessary; it is important to represent the interests of humanist scholars in these matters, rather than allow libraries, institutions, publishers, and corporate bodies to determine how our cultural record is digitized and curated We can adapt streamlined, easy- to- use tools for analyzing or creating electronic texts so that we (in many cases, with the help of our students) can take control over our course material This is especially important because, as Jerome McGann

explains in A New Republic of Letters, “the migration of the paper- based

archives to digital forms” is often “undertaken by agents of commercial entities like Google, Chadwyck- Healey, Gale, and Kluwer” (21) Despite

the good faith with which these entities often approach digitization, relying implicitly on them can be problematic because, as McGann continues,The commercial examples are the most troubling from a scholar’s and educator’s point of view since these entities operate to maximize profit Their work on our cultural inheritance, while often very useful, is always marked by cost- cutting procedures that damage or endanger the cultural record (21– 22)

By actively contributing to the creation or maintenance of digital pedagogical materials, we can help ensure their integrity

If you cannot participate actively in the creation of digital materials, you can nonetheless further the humanist mission to preserve our cultural record

by emphasizing the quality of the sources you adopt as course materials and

by teaching students how to evaluate these materials After all, evaluating the quality of existing digital texts and archives is not merely what a good instructor does when selecting course readings but indeed, we would argue, part of being a good scholarly citizen in general If you ask your students questions about these resources— including interrogations about what is or

is not available, and why— digital resources become an object as well as a mode of inquiry Using and discussing electronic texts with your students can, in other words, provoke important conversations about scholarly values and the commercialization of knowledge if you consciously reflect

on the digital nature and provenance of your resources When you actively critique the resources you use, and when you participate in the creation of the resources you recommend to students, you ensure that the texts your students encounter conform to your scholarly standards of completeness and representativeness

Beyond these questions of accuracy and rigor, though, digital maps, images, texts, and audio/ video assets are especially useful for teaching because

of the activities they make possible For example, searching is facilitated

in digital objects, allowing your class to find what they need quickly and efficiently You can simply execute a simple search command rather than flip pages hurriedly for that quotation about history as a gallery in Alexis

de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, manually count the number of

references to “arms” in the Declaration of Independence, or ask students to reread all of the Federalist Papers, highlighter in hand, to discover if “rule

by majority” tends to be accompanied by positively or negatively charged phrases And with digital texts, “text analysis” does not refer to close

reading appropriate passages in, say, The Portrait of a Lady, but to a host

of approaches that allow machine reading— that is, approaches that rely

on computers to identify patterns that the scholar or student interprets in order to drive future research With software- based approaches like distant reading, corpus analysis, and topic modeling, which we will describe further

in Chapter  5, “Designing classroom activities,” and Chapter  7, “Creating