Beauty and the beast: New approaches to teaching computing for humanities students at the University of Aberdeen

This paper reports on the history and development of a new undergraduate course teaching Computing for Humanities Students at the University of Aberdeen, and assesses some new teaching approaches developed on the course. It is noted that teaching computing to humanities students has sometimes been viewed with suspicion by both Computer Science and Humanities Departments. The two camps tend to fear, for different reasons, that issues and practices important to their disciplines will be compromised or watered down. Humanities students are often lacking in enthusiasm for computers. This paper describes an attempt to reverse any such attitudes on the part of staff and students and to take undergraduates considerably beyond mere word processing and computer literacy. Various methods and techniques used in the course are presented and their value assessed. The importance of using a consistent computer interface to helping students form a stable conceptual model of computers is considered. The value of teaching more about Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence than is usual in Humanities Computing courses is considered. A number of lessons are drawn from the course

Digital humanities: centres and peripheries

"This paper explores a history of humanities computing over the past decade as embodied in or represented by 'A Companion to Digital Humanities' (first published in 2004), methodologically, theoretically, and in terms of community practice. It explores digital humanities as an emerging discipline through changes in technology, as well as through evolving conceptions of the field, particularly through the lens of literary studies and new media. The article also explores how the field' s major conference Digital Humanities, but previously titled the Joint International Conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ACH/ ALLC), reflects these changes, through not only the themes presented in conference papers, but in the change of the title of the conference itself." (author's abstract

Representing information about words digitally

The late 1960s saw the start of the "electronic-dictionary age" (de Schryver, 2003). The growth in the use of computers has transformed all aspects of dictionary-making, from collecting data about word meanings and uses, creating a set of dictionary entries, and displaying, using, preserving and distributing these entries and the data on which they are based. This paper discusses the transformations, and considers the ways in which dictionaries for minority languages are leading or lagging in the electronic-dictionary age. Illustrations are taken mostly from the uses of digital sound in modern multimedia dictionaries.Australian Academy of the Humanities; Australian E-Humanities Network; Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sydney; School of Society, Culture and Performance, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydne

Why teach philosophy in a world dominated by science?

The significant benefits children gain from doing Philosophy together in the classroom are increasingly well-documented and include enhanced social skills, statistically significant improvement of measured cognitive abilities, and better performance in English, science, mathematics and computers. However, the present day emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects across Western schools is correlated with a decline in the relative importance given to Humanities, Philosophy included. This paper explores the reasons why teaching children to do Philosophy, and to do it collaboratively, is vitally important to the moral and intellectual health of future generations. In doing so, it notes also that doing Philosophy will improve appreciation of (and very possibly, performance in) the very STEM subjects that overshadow Philosophy and other Humanities subjects

Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes

In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10

Research on ICT in K-12 schools e A review of experimental and survey-based studies in computers & education 2011 to 2015

International audienceWhat is the role of a journal? Is it to follow the research or lead it? For the former, it is to serve as an archival record of the scholarship in a field. It can serve to permit the research community to engage with each other via the written record. But, for the latter, it can serve the research community by pointing out gaps in the research based on the archival record. This review is intended to do just that

The relationship between Higher Education and labour market in Greece : the weakest link?

The high level of graduate unemployment, even though it is acknowledged as one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Greek labour market, it has not attracted enough attention in the academic literature. This paper utilizes micro-data from the Labour Force Survey in order to investigate how the employment situation of young (aged 35 and below) graduates varies across fields of study. The findings suggest that graduates of disciplines that have high levels of private sector employment, such as Polytechnics and Computer Science, are in general better off in the Greek labour market. On the other hand, graduates of disciplines that are traditionally related to the needs of the public sector, such as Sociology and Humanities, face poor employment prospects. The findings of this study highlight the need for drastic reforms of the Higher Education system

Disciplined: Using educational studies to analyse 'Humanities Computing'

Humanities Computing is an emergent field. The activities described as 'Humanities Computing' continue to expand in number and sophistication, yet no concrete definition of the field exists, and there are few academic departments that specialize in this area. Most introspection regarding the role, meaning, and focus of "Humanities Computing" has come from a practical and pragmatic perspective from scholars and educators within the field itself. This article provides an alternative, externalized, viewpoint of the focus of Humanities Computing, by analysing the discipline through its community, research, curriculum, teaching programmes, and the message they deliver, either consciously or unconsciously, about the scope of the discipline. It engages with Educational Theory to provide a means to analyse, measure, and define the field, and focuses specifically on the ACH/ALLC 2005 Conference to identify and analyse those who are involved with the humanities computing community. © 2006 Oxford University Press