Digital History in a Changing Scholarly Communications Landscape

Sharon M. Leon | Michigan State University | @sharonmleon

Bates College | March 1, 2018

Access and Abundance

http://www.americanyawp.com

Teaching and Learning with Digital Approaches

Digital Methods Courses

Courses where the primary learning goals involve digital theories and methods, and students produce a range of work that demonstrates their fluency with those techniques.

 

Digitally Inflected Courses

Courses that involve a unit or an assignment that asks students to employ digital methods in the service of mastery of other areas of content knowledge or other methodological approaches.

Threshold Concepts

  • Transformative
  • Troublesome
  • Irreversible
  • Integrative
  • Bounded
  • Discursive
  • Reconstitutive
Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (2003) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: linkages to ways of thinking and practising,
In: Rust, C. (ed.), Improving Student Learning - Theory and Practice Ten Years On. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development (OCSLD), pp 412-424.
See also for an on-line version: Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses, ETL Project, Occasional Report 4, May 2003 

What are your threshold concepts?

Close Reading

  • Annotation
  • Juxtaposition

http://juxtacommons.org

Close Reading Tools

Macro-level Analysis

  • Geospatial Work
  • Data Visualization
  • Computational Textual Analysis

Macro-Analysis Tools

Digital Exhibits

  • Collections of primary sources
  • Structured metadata
  • Multiple points of access (browse, map, search, etc.)
  • Narrative interpretation
    • Linear and/or non-linear approaches
  • Integration of visualizations

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/ethnic-los-angeles/index

Collections & Exhibit Tools

Publicly Engaged Projects

  • Public first (audience and relationships)
  • Clear outcomes and boundaries
  • Project planning skills
  • Multiple methods

http://coloredconventions.org/

Considerations for planning:

  • What is the skill you want to teach?
  • What method serves that skill?
  • Group work or individual work?
  • What is the scale?
    • Activity or Unit or Final Project
  • Duration?
    • Semester or Year or Multi-year
  • Collaboration?
    • Within the College or Community Partners

A Domain of One's Own

  • Experimentation space
  • Control over digital identity
  • Ownership of intellectual property

 

Further Reading

Scholarly Communications Landscape

How has the way you communicate your research changed in the last 20 years?

Public Scholarship

http://wiki.wcaleb.rice.edu/

Community Conversations

http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/

Digital Publishing

  • Peer Review Process
  • Open Access
  • Engagement tools

http://publicphilosophyjournal.org/about/review/

http://mcpress.media-commons.org/plannedobsolescence/

http://enchantingthedesert.com/console/

https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates?id=2

Review and Evaluation

What do you value when you evaluate other's work?

Post-Publication Review Guidelines for Digital Projects

Post-Publication Review Guidelines for Digital Projects

  • Consider the genre of work and it’s goals

  • Consider selection and framing of materials

  • Consider the ways that the project engages with related scholarly fields

  • Consider the usability of the work (navigation, layout, functionality)

  • Consider the types of technology employed and their appropriateness

  • Consider whether the project has a clear audience, and whether the work respond adequately to those audiences’ needs

  • Consider the nature of the collaboration that produced the work, and the other processes of production

Digital Dissertation Guidelines

Each project should:

  • make an original contribution to fields of scholarship through substantive analysis;
  • articulate the significance of work;
  • integrate original research adequate to supporting the key argument of the project;
  • engage with historiography for the related fields;
  • justify methodological choices (digital and otherwise);
  • and, present the work in a usable format.

https://historyarthistory.gmu.edu/graduate/phd-history/digital-dissertation-guidelines

Project Elements

  • Framing Introduction

  • 3-5 Core Modules/Units, which could include:

    • direct access to a repository of primary sources, compiled datasets, or materials with stable URIs:

      • described with adequate metadata to enable citation (using a consistent, standard schema is recommended) and potential reuse

      • accompanied by a clear indication of excerpting and editing of sources

      • demonstrating appropriate attention to copyright and fair use guidelines

    • application of digital methods. The selection of methods will depend significantly on the kinds of questions being asked, and by the types of evidence being examined. Possible digital methods might include (but are not limited to):

      • data visualizations

      • computational text analysis

      • geospatial analysis

      • social network analysis

  • Bibliography

  • Self-Reflexive Discussion of the Project Development Process

Promotion Portfolios

Evaluation of Digital Scholarship

 

Evaluation of Digital Scholarship

  • Definition of the issues:

    • Non-standard forms

    • Varying types of review (pre-publication, post-publication, grant review)

    • Open-ended work

    • Collaborative processes

Evaluation of Digital Scholarship

  • Responsibilities for creators:

    • Narrate individual roles and contributions to collaborations

    • Narrate process of development for everything

  • Responsibilities for departments and evaluators:

    • Be clear about expectations from the beginning

    • Review work in its native format

    • Include someone in the review process who actually knows something about digital work

    • Interpret impact broadly

What are your next steps?