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.

The rise of social media has allowed scholars and students to connect and discuss texts, events, and issues in ways that were previously unimaginable. Synchronous and asynchronous discussions can spark at any moment and connect learners across time zones and disciplines. But each new tool comes with its own set of challenges.

Rates of popular participation in discussions of society, culture, media, and social justice online are astounding, but many of the tools used to foster those discussions seem to encourage sound bite replication instead of dialogue. Those with unpopular views are sometimes silenced through network attacks or even violent threats, and users are likely to only follow and participate in groups of those with whom they already agree. How do we foster meaningful dialogues and promote critical thinking skills for students in the middle of a tl;dr culture?

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

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.

The question I would like to mull over with you is how can we use social networking and data gathering techniques to determine what are the practical virtues of a discipline? I am curious about this because of the resurgence of virtue ethics as an alternative to rule-based and consequence-based systems of ethics that we all have received almost by default from the 18th and 19th centuries. The virtues are those things at which we desire to be excellent and help us fulfill our chosen purpose. Developing a virtue ethics approach gives us a new way of solving ethical dilemmas based on fulfillment of purpose rather than adhering to rules or trying to predict outcomes. Introspection can reveal one’s own chosen virtues, but finding out a group’s virtues takes a great deal more cleverness and inventiveness, and if you are willing I would love to borrow yours for a while.

I’d like to have a brainstorming session about how to build a network of collaborators for digital work on a particular campus or in a particular area. What kinds of skills and interests might you seek out and where within various institutions might you find these skills? What are some of the most useful ways to maintain relationships with these folks during and after the life of a project? How can you go about getting institutional support for these projects? I’ve had some experience building community around digital humanities this year but I’d love to think about how different models could work at different types of institutions too.

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?