Digital Humanities
Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain
March 05, 2013 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
by Jesse Stommel
Digital pedagogy is not a dancing monkey. It won’t do tricks on command. It won’t come obediently when called. Nobody can show us how to do it or make it happen like magic on our computer screens. There isn’t a 90-minute how-to webinar, and we can’t outsource it. We become experts in digital pedagogy in the same way we become American literature scholars, medievalists, or doctors of sociology. We become digital pedagogues by spending many years devoting our life to researching, practicing, writing about, presenting on, and teaching digital pedagogies. In other words, we live, work, and build networks within the field. But digital pedagogy is less a field and more an active present participle, a way of engaging the world, not a world to itself, a way of approaching the not-at-all-discrete acts of teaching and learning. To become an expert in digital pedagogy, then, we need both experience and openness to each new learning activity, technology, or collaboration. Digital pedagogy is a discipline, but only in the most porous, dynamic, and playful senses of the word.
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Digital pedagogy is not a dancing monkey. It won’t do tricks on command. It won’t come obediently when called. Nobody can show us how to do it or make it happen like magic on our computer screens. There isn’t a 90-minute how-to webinar, and we can’t outsource it. We become experts in digital pedagogy in the same way we become American literature scholars, medievalists, or doctors of sociology. We become digital pedagogues by spending many years devoting our life to researching, practicing, writing about, presenting on, and teaching digital pedagogies. In other words, we live, work, and build networks within the field. But digital pedagogy is less a field and more an active present participle, a way of engaging the world, not a world to itself, a way of approaching the not-at-all-discrete acts of teaching and learning. To become an expert in digital pedagogy, then, we need both experience and openness to each new learning activity, technology, or collaboration. Digital pedagogy is a discipline, but only in the most porous, dynamic, and playful senses of the word.
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The Hybrid Scholar
January 04, 2013 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete RorabaughOn my campus, and on many others, there are two entirely different units -- the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education -- suggesting, somehow, that the activities of one are wholly separate from the other. “Learning how to teach” happens in one while “analysis” (or something like it) happens in the other. The problem is that all of those Arts and Sciences grad students have to do something else in addition to the scholarship they are being trained to compose. They have to teach, and, considering the current job market and the landscape of traditional academic publishing, they are probably going to rely much more on their teaching at the start of their career than on their research. Do these carefully groomed grad students ever set foot in the teaching college a block down the street during their four years (or six or eight) years as doctoral students? On my campus, they do not. Read More...
Online Learning: a Manifesto
December 03, 2012 | Filed in: Online Learning
by Jesse Stommel
Since I started teaching in 1999, I've frequently encountered an anti-pedagogical bent amongst fellow teachers and faculty, a resistance to thinking critically about our teaching practices and philosophies, especially regarding online learning. What we need is to ignore the hype and misrepresentations (on both sides of the debate) and gather together more people willing to carefully reflect on how, where, and why we learn online. There is no productive place in this conversation for exclusivity or anti-intellectualism. Those of us talking about digital pedagogy and digital humanities need to be engaging thoughtfully in discussions about online learning and open education. Those of us in higher ed. need to be engaging thoughtfully with K-12 teachers and administrators. And it’s especially important that we open our discussions of the future of education to students, who should both participate in and help to build their own learning spaces. Pedagogy needs to be at the center of all these discussions.
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Since I started teaching in 1999, I've frequently encountered an anti-pedagogical bent amongst fellow teachers and faculty, a resistance to thinking critically about our teaching practices and philosophies, especially regarding online learning. What we need is to ignore the hype and misrepresentations (on both sides of the debate) and gather together more people willing to carefully reflect on how, where, and why we learn online. There is no productive place in this conversation for exclusivity or anti-intellectualism. Those of us talking about digital pedagogy and digital humanities need to be engaging thoughtfully in discussions about online learning and open education. Those of us in higher ed. need to be engaging thoughtfully with K-12 teachers and administrators. And it’s especially important that we open our discussions of the future of education to students, who should both participate in and help to build their own learning spaces. Pedagogy needs to be at the center of all these discussions.
Read More...#digped Storify: On the Deformation of New Media Citation Practices
November 06, 2012 | Filed in: #digped
by Jesse Stommel
In "Notes towards a Deformed Humanities," Mark Sample writes, "I want to propose a theory and practice of a Deformed Humanities. A humanities born of broken, twisted things. And what is broken and twisted is also beautiful, and a bearer of knowledge. The Deformed Humanities is an origami crane—a piece of paper contorted into an object of startling insight and beauty." Citation practices on the web have begun to contort and twist like the origami crane Sample describes here. For many, this leads to a certain despair, but I find myself reveling in a moment, a threshold, across which our scholarly practices now teeter. Citation is becoming less about name-dropping and positioning and more about generosity and collaboration. On 11/2 we had a raucous #digped discussion about the changing shape of citation in the wake of digital scholarly practice. The results were Storified.
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In "Notes towards a Deformed Humanities," Mark Sample writes, "I want to propose a theory and practice of a Deformed Humanities. A humanities born of broken, twisted things. And what is broken and twisted is also beautiful, and a bearer of knowledge. The Deformed Humanities is an origami crane—a piece of paper contorted into an object of startling insight and beauty." Citation practices on the web have begun to contort and twist like the origami crane Sample describes here. For many, this leads to a certain despair, but I find myself reveling in a moment, a threshold, across which our scholarly practices now teeter. Citation is becoming less about name-dropping and positioning and more about generosity and collaboration. On 11/2 we had a raucous #digped discussion about the changing shape of citation in the wake of digital scholarly practice. The results were Storified.
Read More...Editorial Pedagogy, pt. 1: A Professional Philosophy
November 04, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Cheryl Ball
Sometimes, my esteemed colleague, Jim Kalmbach, understands my academic identity better than I do. His most recent revelation for me was this: “I see you transforming yourself in ways you don't understand yet. It is true that your definition of DH will be richer than most people if for no other reason than it will include comp. You should stand in front of a mirror and say ‘I am a digital humanist.’” He’s right. My academic identity most easily fits into a digital humanities notion of technology-infused writing, publishing, and pedagogy. And in the month since I got Jim’s most recent identity-cometojesus-email, I’ve been able to reconcile these sometimes-competing disciplinary identities to form a holistic approach to my teaching, research, and service. In revising my teaching philosophy recently, I realized that my pedagogical approach wasn’t limited to classroom-based teaching, the typical scope of such statements. Instead, my philosophy -- an editorial pedagogy -- is fundamentally linked to my academic identity and performance as an editor, scholar, teacher, mentor, and administrator in digital writing studies. Or, more specifically, a juggling act of digital writing studies and digital publishing under the big tent of digital humanities.
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Sometimes, my esteemed colleague, Jim Kalmbach, understands my academic identity better than I do. His most recent revelation for me was this: “I see you transforming yourself in ways you don't understand yet. It is true that your definition of DH will be richer than most people if for no other reason than it will include comp. You should stand in front of a mirror and say ‘I am a digital humanist.’” He’s right. My academic identity most easily fits into a digital humanities notion of technology-infused writing, publishing, and pedagogy. And in the month since I got Jim’s most recent identity-cometojesus-email, I’ve been able to reconcile these sometimes-competing disciplinary identities to form a holistic approach to my teaching, research, and service. In revising my teaching philosophy recently, I realized that my pedagogical approach wasn’t limited to classroom-based teaching, the typical scope of such statements. Instead, my philosophy -- an editorial pedagogy -- is fundamentally linked to my academic identity and performance as an editor, scholar, teacher, mentor, and administrator in digital writing studies. Or, more specifically, a juggling act of digital writing studies and digital publishing under the big tent of digital humanities.
Read More...Digital Writing Uprising: Third-order Thinking in the Digital Humanities
October 08, 2012 | Filed in: Literacies
by Sean Michael Morris
As a self-proclaimed Internet non-user (a proclamation that elicits hoots and howls from my friends), the allure of digital writing for me does not lie in its medium; instead, I’m tantalized by the proposition that digital writing is action. Not that the writing inspires action, or comes out of action, or responds to action. But that the words themselves are active. They move, slither, creep, sprint, and outpace us. Digital words have lives of their own. We may write them, birth them ourselves, but without any compunction or notice, they enact themselves in ways we can’t predict. And this is because digital writing is communal writing.
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As a self-proclaimed Internet non-user (a proclamation that elicits hoots and howls from my friends), the allure of digital writing for me does not lie in its medium; instead, I’m tantalized by the proposition that digital writing is action. Not that the writing inspires action, or comes out of action, or responds to action. But that the words themselves are active. They move, slither, creep, sprint, and outpace us. Digital words have lives of their own. We may write them, birth them ourselves, but without any compunction or notice, they enact themselves in ways we can’t predict. And this is because digital writing is communal writing.
Read More...Collaborative Teaching, Shared Pedagogies: a #digped Discussion
July 18, 2012 | Filed in: #digped
by Jesse Stommel
Why should we collaborate in the classroom (or online learning space)? What strategies can we devise to disrupt the convention of one teacher, one class? What work needs to be done at an institutional level to facilitate this? How can collaborations between teachers work to encourage (or in concert with) collaborations between students, or between teacher and student? This Friday, July 20 from 1:00 - 2:00pm Eastern (10:00 - 11:00am Pacific), Hybrid Pedagogy will host a Twitter discussion under the hashtag #digped focused on collaborative teaching and shared pedagogies. In “Digital Humanities Made Me a Better Pedagogue: a Crowdsourced Article,” we assembled ideas on the subject from a team of authors, who surveyed the thinking of a much larger group via hyperlinks, crowdsourcing on Twitter, and workshopping at several THATCamp un-conferences.
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Why should we collaborate in the classroom (or online learning space)? What strategies can we devise to disrupt the convention of one teacher, one class? What work needs to be done at an institutional level to facilitate this? How can collaborations between teachers work to encourage (or in concert with) collaborations between students, or between teacher and student? This Friday, July 20 from 1:00 - 2:00pm Eastern (10:00 - 11:00am Pacific), Hybrid Pedagogy will host a Twitter discussion under the hashtag #digped focused on collaborative teaching and shared pedagogies. In “Digital Humanities Made Me a Better Pedagogue: a Crowdsourced Article,” we assembled ideas on the subject from a team of authors, who surveyed the thinking of a much larger group via hyperlinks, crowdsourcing on Twitter, and workshopping at several THATCamp un-conferences.
Read More...Digital Humanities Made Me a Better Pedagogue: a Crowdsourced Article
July 10, 2012 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
by Leeann Hunter, Pete Rorabaugh, Jesse Stommel, Robin Wharton, & Roger Whitson
Pedagogy is inherently collaborative. Our work as teachers doesn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in a vacuum. In “Hybridity, pt. 3: What Does Hybrid Pedagogy Do?,” Pete and Jesse write, “Teaching is a practice. Good teaching is an engaged, reflective, and generous practice. Pedagogy is not just talking and thinking about teaching. Pedagogy is the place where philosophy and practice meet (aka “praxis”). It’s vibrant and embodied, meditative and productive.” There is an important distinction here between teaching and pedagogy, between work that is productive and work that is productive and also reflective.
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Pedagogy is inherently collaborative. Our work as teachers doesn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in a vacuum. In “Hybridity, pt. 3: What Does Hybrid Pedagogy Do?,” Pete and Jesse write, “Teaching is a practice. Good teaching is an engaged, reflective, and generous practice. Pedagogy is not just talking and thinking about teaching. Pedagogy is the place where philosophy and practice meet (aka “praxis”). It’s vibrant and embodied, meditative and productive.” There is an important distinction here between teaching and pedagogy, between work that is productive and work that is productive and also reflective.
Read More...#digped Storify: Teaching Naked
June 10, 2012 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris
On Friday, June 8, Hybrid Pedagogy hosted a discussion on Twitter focused on the subject of "teaching naked" as presented in Paul Fyfe's article "Digital Pedagogy Unplugged". We thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the ways in which all classrooms are necessarily both digital and analog, in-person and virtual. Inspired by the notion that we might be able to re-imagine digital pedagogy "without the potentially limiting factor of electronics," we set out to discuss what the truly hybrid classroom was made of.
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On Friday, June 8, Hybrid Pedagogy hosted a discussion on Twitter focused on the subject of "teaching naked" as presented in Paul Fyfe's article "Digital Pedagogy Unplugged". We thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the ways in which all classrooms are necessarily both digital and analog, in-person and virtual. Inspired by the notion that we might be able to re-imagine digital pedagogy "without the potentially limiting factor of electronics," we set out to discuss what the truly hybrid classroom was made of.
Read More...Teaching in the Digital Tornado
June 06, 2012 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
by Sean Michael Morris
In preparing for the Teaching Naked #digped Twitter discussion on Friday, June 8, I reviewed what felt like a massive number of possible topics, discussable literature, and the broad face of educational technology. Out there on the Internet, something is happening that feels a lot like evolution, but which can also feel like survival of the fittest. One idea gives rise unto uncounted more ideas; one tool for organizing spawns a dozen new ways to communicate, and simultaneously a need for new organizational tools. It’s positively autocatalytic.
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In preparing for the Teaching Naked #digped Twitter discussion on Friday, June 8, I reviewed what felt like a massive number of possible topics, discussable literature, and the broad face of educational technology. Out there on the Internet, something is happening that feels a lot like evolution, but which can also feel like survival of the fittest. One idea gives rise unto uncounted more ideas; one tool for organizing spawns a dozen new ways to communicate, and simultaneously a need for new organizational tools. It’s positively autocatalytic.
Read More...Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 3: Degree Requirements
March 13, 2012 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
by Jesse Stommel
Now, I’d like to turn this crowdsourcing project toward the degree requirements for the major. The intention for this program is to have its content (literary studies) and its medium (the internet) be thoughtfully connected. This is not just a simple English degree delivered online. In addition to more traditional study of literature, we will also consider the evolution of our various technologies of text, thinking critically about what happens to literary texts when they are made digital and when we engage them via digital interfaces.
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Now, I’d like to turn this crowdsourcing project toward the degree requirements for the major. The intention for this program is to have its content (literary studies) and its medium (the internet) be thoughtfully connected. This is not just a simple English degree delivered online. In addition to more traditional study of literature, we will also consider the evolution of our various technologies of text, thinking critically about what happens to literary texts when they are made digital and when we engage them via digital interfaces.
Read More...Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 2: Design Principles
February 23, 2012 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
by Jesse Stommel
I’ve been thinking about my audience for this series of posts. Initially, I had thought to bring digital humanities, literary studies, and educational technology experts into conversation, allowing my ideas for the program to be considered and influenced by a much larger network. I’m realizing, though, that there’s another group of experts from whom I particularly want feedback and suggestions: students. Ideally, this would include input from prospective students for the program, but since the program is only just barely beginning to germinate, what I’d like to do here is ask both students and teachers in existing programs to think about how literary studies is being transformed by digital technologies and about how online learning can be re-imagined through the use of new (and increasingly social) media.
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I’ve been thinking about my audience for this series of posts. Initially, I had thought to bring digital humanities, literary studies, and educational technology experts into conversation, allowing my ideas for the program to be considered and influenced by a much larger network. I’m realizing, though, that there’s another group of experts from whom I particularly want feedback and suggestions: students. Ideally, this would include input from prospective students for the program, but since the program is only just barely beginning to germinate, what I’d like to do here is ask both students and teachers in existing programs to think about how literary studies is being transformed by digital technologies and about how online learning can be re-imagined through the use of new (and increasingly social) media.
Read More...Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 1: Program Name
February 20, 2012 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
by Jesse Stommel
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be working to get feedback on the program I’m directing and helping to develop at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR. Marylhurst is a small liberal arts university focused on non-traditional students and adult learners. I teach (both in the classroom and online) for the English Literature & Writing department, which currently has concentrations in Literature, Creative Writing, and Text:Image. The new online degree program, which opens January 2013, integrates literary studies and the digital humanities with a focus on service and experiential learning. My goal in crowdsourcing the curriculum for this program is not only to get feedback on its design but to open a larger discussion about what happens (or should happen) to English programs as digital pedagogy continues to evolve.
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Over the next few weeks, I’ll be working to get feedback on the program I’m directing and helping to develop at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR. Marylhurst is a small liberal arts university focused on non-traditional students and adult learners. I teach (both in the classroom and online) for the English Literature & Writing department, which currently has concentrations in Literature, Creative Writing, and Text:Image. The new online degree program, which opens January 2013, integrates literary studies and the digital humanities with a focus on service and experiential learning. My goal in crowdsourcing the curriculum for this program is not only to get feedback on its design but to open a larger discussion about what happens (or should happen) to English programs as digital pedagogy continues to evolve.
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