Can we use out of-the-box software to communicate our research findings and represent the fuzzy logic of the humanities?

Cartographers and artists have long made sentimental and subjective maps that portray the emotional states of individuals and communities. The Google N-grams viewer is another successful attempt at making subjective information visible to the broader public. These hijackings of the tools of scientific inquiry for qualitative research remain relatively rare and will not develop further unless they are adopted more broadly by researchers and in humanities classrooms.

This is a pity because there are so many simple tools like Google Fusion Tables and Tableau Public they are fun to play with. They could make for excellent teaching tools, or even make humanities research findings go viral in the way that scientific studies often do. But there is a big problem: visualization tools generally require precise locations and numbers, so we need to come up with new ways of thinking about data for qualitative research.

Which software packages have you used to visualize data in class? Have you come up with innovative ways to present qualitative research? Is there a body of qualitative research that you would like to see as a bar chart, map, or scatterplot?

Bring at least one idea for a subjective or emotional dataset. We will play with some online visualization tools, brainstorm uses for them, and execut a few small projects.

I propose a conversation about incorporating multimedia assignments into humanities courses. As director of the University of Alabama Libraries’ Sanford Media Center, I’ve helped design and support a number of assignments in areas such as English, art, dance, and multiple modern languages classes. Although these assignments are across many divisions, the assignments have a common thread no matter the type of class or technological tool used; they are either asking students to make an argument (defining argument as a composition intended to convince or persuade) or demonstrate a skill outside the classroom.

Some examples of successful integration of multimedia assignments in humanities classes include an instructor in the art department who has dropped paper summaries of projects in favor of digital slideshows that exhibit the creation process, including planning, construction, and completion of a sculptural object, accompanied by comprehensive evaluation of the project. Instructors in English have students making websites to distribute their research and writing instead of traditional papers and instructors in modern languages have students filming themselves speaking in the assigned language for self-evaluation and instructor feedback.

In addition to using multimedia as a way to delivery the primary learning objective, students are also learning a valuable communication skill that is becoming more necessary as they enter the professional world–the ability to communicate beyond writing. As technology progresses and affects the workplace, the ability to successfully engage in multi-model communication will continue to increase inn value. These multimedia and communication skills are most clearly evident in the assignments that require students to present an argument of some type.

Possible suggested discussion topics include why even bother with media assignments, different types of assignments (e.g. video, audio, web, etc.), creating achievable assignments by determining useful expectations, rubric elements for assignment evaluation, and discussing some of the many tools that can be used for multimedia projects.

As an archivist, I post content to my website but have fallen behind a bit in knowing the tools my users use and how to prepare my materials for them. As a teacher, F2F and online, I want to know how to integrate digital tools into my coursework and which tools I should teach to my students. As a community historian, I hope to provide info to a rising generation of avocational historians and need to know how they access that info. I need to listen more than talk, and though other sessions cover at least some of my personal concerns, I’d love the opportunity to hear about more tools and strategies from the makers and users assembled here.

In some realms of the academy and administration, we are having more and more discussions about technology/content accessibility and universal design. We are seeing tremendous growth in the use of instructional technology, but little to no consideration for giving access to everyone. For instance, we upload videos all the time with no captions, which automatically makes the content inaccessible for a growing number of users. Even complicated language use (Yeah, I’m guilty of it.) makes our work less available to the world. Many of us are advocating inclusive, universal design for learning and research. I would like for us to talk about what this means, what is practical, and how to move forward to help more tools and content be accessible from the outset through universal design.

One of my UDL/A11y idols: Howard Kramer – UDL/A11y from 2013 AHEAD Conference

UPDATE: Here’s a link to our conversation about accessibility

As an instruction librarian, I have been doing a lot of experiments to try to make my classroom more interactive. Clickers and Poll Everywhere haven’t worked for me. My classes are usually very discussion-based, but in the discussion I felt my students were THINKING but not DOING, and I needed a solution!

Recently, I’ve been using a combination of google drive and bit.ly to facilitate workshop-style in-class interactivity. It has worked great, and I would love to show you how I do it!

A lot of noise is being made about this on a national level, and we are starting to talk about it on a professional level, but I would really like to have a local conversation about it. Our initial reaction to these questions might be defensive and negative, but the level of disruption that the national conversation is having on us leads me to believe that the issue is eminently approaching a critical juncture (the Horizon Report suggests that MOOCs are the number one thing to watch during the 2013 academic year…)

On a traditional campus such as UA, where we are currently not working on a MOOC scale, students still assume that they will  have perpetual electronic access to all of the resources they need to complete their coursework, turning to the internet even before searching the library. Studies show that the cost of textbooks is a great burden on students, often affecting retention.  All of this is affecting the role of the traditional library, and whether universities such as UA are involved with MOOCs currently or not, the MOOC model of accessing resources is disrupting the traditional model of higher education and is affecting the expectations of our students.

As a result, some teaching faculty have begun looking towards the library to help find solutions; librarians have begun partnering in various levels of alternative textbook creation using resources available at the library, and serving as a facilitator for the exploration and vetting of Open Access sources.

MOOCs put a lot of emphasis on Open Access. Most of what I have encountered in the newly-emerging Alternative Textbook movement is leaning towards Open Access as well. Lets get together and discuss the value of traditional vs. Open Access for alternative textbooks, specifically in the humanities classroom, and the challenges of finding quality Open Access resources for a humanities courses.

Questions I propose:

1. Can a student adequately complete coursework in an upper-level humanities course without access to the scholarship that is published through traditional and often proprietary publishing?
2. What are the standards that librarians and teaching faculty agree on regarding appropriate textbook resources for a course? Are the standards for textbook materials different from the standards for the sources used by a student in a paper?
3. When MOOCs with their emphasis on Open Access are getting so much attention, what is the case that librarians and teaching faculty can make to justify the millions of dollars spent on (for lack of a better term) “closed access” resources?

I am sure other folks can come up with even better questions, and if this conversation happens I am really looking forward to hearing a variety of perspectives and ideas on this issue (honestly, it is swirling around in my head in a big jumble at the moment!)

So my 15-year-old son and his friends attended a science camp this past summer. Their running joke was that they’d decided they could get away with nearly anything if they cried “For Science!” as they did the deed. I’m going to try it with one of my guilty pleasures–the digital knit and crochet community Ravelry.

Proposing a Ravelry session–for THATCamp!

I love this site. I refer to it every time that I think about beginning another knitting project. I look for patterns, yarn suggestions, and photos of other knitter’s projects. The site’s founders have done a brilliant job of identifying the different points during a project where one might want to consult a community of users. How might this site be used as a model for digital humanities projects or digital humanities support? What does the success of this site suggest about how we might construct digital support structures for our own communities? What other websites out there might we use as models for our work? Share your guilty pleasure, and let’s see if we can find some models for our DH work.

And, heck, bring your knitting or crochet projects along. You know you want to.

When people talk about digital storytelling, they usually mean the use of some form of media production to share a story. I want to propose a session in which we explore possibilities for designing assignments that ask students to present information with digital tools and share their artifacts publicly. Thus, we will think about the process of digital story telling broadly, as a synthesis between research (or information gathering) and narrative (or argument).

For example, I’ve been working with a history professor at my school to develop an assignment where students practice historical reflection with data sites like Google’s Ngram Viewer, Baby Name Wizard, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the U.S. Census Bureau. Students can create narratives that show changes in time, and with tools like Timeline JS, they can create a product that looks good and can be shared almost anywhere online. My example looks at the language we use to describe people who serve us on airplanes.

In this workshop, we can talk about digital tools that invite students to locate information, ideas, and data and construct narratives that can be presented to others on websites. We can also look at other tools like Storify, History Pin, Sliderocket, and others, and we’ll actually try to build some content (so you may want to bring a laptop or tablet).

Has anyone else used web tools to have students generate digital stories? What are some of the challenges involved in facilitating digital storytelling projects?

I’m interested in developing online spaces for student learning and collaboration throughout their university careers.  I’m imagining an interactive space that students can access as needed to supplement research instruction, learn about and discuss digital tools in their disciplines, plus [your activity idea here].

Currently, these types of communities  might be created in Blackboard or other learning management systems for specific courses, but I’m interested in developing them for specific majors, especially interdisciplinary programs.

Let’s work out this idea together:

Has anyone developed these types of communities (library-based or based on majors, interdisciplinary programs) or have examples?

What platforms are best for hosting these types of communities?

What is the role of the community builders (librarians, subject faculty): facilitator, guide on side, info provider, discussion leader, respond to questions?