Ninety-Nine Problems: Assessment, Inclusion, and Other Old-New Problems

Developing less burdensome and more equitable ways to support scholarly difference is a preeminent challenge when thinking about the future of assessment and promotion in higher education. At stake in this is the very capacity of institutions to do the work of scholarly inclusion, to recognize the range of approaches well captured in the digital humanities caucus of the American Studies Association’s succinct 2016 characterization of humanities work that is “innovative, critical, boundary-pushing, justice-based, and experimental work—scholarship that takes a diversity of forms, that reaches and is produced by thinkers, teachers, practitioners, and makers from a wide range of communities and contexts.” Assessment potentially shadows or highlights scholarly identity at every institutional juncture, and this is as true for undergraduate research work as it is for matters of promotion, tenure, or contract renewal for faculty and staff. With that in mind, this article surveys responses to the challenges of assessing DH work in institutional settings, and also reviews the work of Five College Digital Humanities 2016 draft report on digital assessment, "The New Rigor.

Dreaming Big: Library-led Digital Scholarship for Undergraduates at a Small Institution

In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library piloted a student-focused, library-led initiative designed to promote creative undergraduate research: the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship. The fellowship is a ten-week, paid summer program for rising sophomores and juniors that introduces the student fellows to digital scholarship, exposes them to a range of digital tools, and provides space for them to converse with appropriate partners about research practices and possibilities. Unlike other research fellowship opportunities, the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship is programmatic, based on a curriculum designed to provide students a broad introduction to digital scholarship. Digital tools, project management, documentation, and the philosophy behind digital scholarship are equally considered. While a student-created, public-facing project is an expected outcome of the fellowship, the process of getting to that point is the primary pedagogical emphasis. Students are encouraged to use materials from Gettysburg College’s Special Collections & College Archives when conceiving their projects. Using our historic collections as the foundation of a digital project strengthens existing connections between the library and the academic curriculum and provides additional exposure to the library’s collections. The fellowship was inspired by digital scholarship initiatives at peer institutions and grew from the library’s position as a campus leader in supporting creative undergraduate research. By combining the best aspects from a variety of sources, we were able to create a new learning experience that allowed our students to start small and dream big

E-education in the UK

The paper outlines the results of a survey, by the EBONI project, of lecturers' use of and attitudes to electronic teaching and learning material, providing a snapshot of the current situation in UK higher education. Differences in the extent and type of e-content usage between academic disciplines, and lecturers' intentions for the future, are discussed. Based on an analysis of their hopes and concerns, recommendations are made for increasing the development, usage and effectiveness of electronic content

Digital Scholarship: Applying Digital Tools to Undergraduate Student Research Papers, A Proposal for a Freshman Seminar. Part I: Definition of Student Research Methodology

There are many digital tools that can be used for research and presentation in nearly every college discipline, including the social sciences and humanities. These tools hold the promise to radically change both the process and products of research. But in their application these tools have failed miserably to live up to their promise. This paper is based on the hypothesis that one reason these tools do reach their potential is that there is no systemic way to include them in research process, resulting in the tools being seen as ways to improve the final research product. This results in the tools becoming just an added on kludge, and leading researchers to the conclude that they are hard to use, full of bugs and other problems, and that they do not bring a lot of value to the research. This paper is an attempt to address this problem of including digital tools in a research process. It is part of a series of papers proposing a systematic methodology for including digital tools in a research process. This paper is the first, and outlines a methodology for the research process that allows the application of digital tools to a small area, undergraduate student research papers. It will outline a development process that will systematize the steps in the research process. These steps will then be used to classify the digital tools, and show how they can be applied to the research process. The final product of this paper will be a process methodology for creating student research papers to be used in a class to be run as a freshman seminar. The students will be taught this research methodology, and be led through the development of a research paper using the steps defined in this methodology. The steps in the process being enhanced using appropriate digital tools applicable to each step in the methodology. The ability of the students to do research using the research methodology and digital tools will be measured by the degree of success the students have in completing a humanities/social science research product as part of the class. The students will be followed in a longitudinal study by asking them to complete a short survey at the end of each year of their undergraduate education

Visualizing Fantasy Fiction: Design of a Class in Digital Scholarship and Visualization, including Research, Organization and Digital Visualization, that Does Not Require Programming or IT support

This paper outlines a course to integrate digital visualizations into undergraduate research. These visualizations will include mapping and timelines of events, and the ability to hyperlink the events, characters, and story lines in a fantasy fiction story such as Lord of the Rings or A Game of Thrones. The digital scholarship will involve the methodology for collecting, organizing, and representing the data for the visualizations. The topic for the visualizations in this paper is fantasy fiction; however the methods to develop these visualizations will be applicable to many academic disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences. The paper outlines the justification for this class, the appropriate audience for this class, and the tools needed. Types of projects and homework assignments to implement the visualizations are suggested. It concludes with a syllabus outlining a typical schedule for this class

The Future of Institutional Repositories at Small Academic Institutions: Analysis and Insights

Institutional repositories (IRs) established at universities and academic libraries over a decade ago, large and small, have encountered challenges along the way in keeping faith with their original objective: to collect, preserve, and disseminate the intellectual output of an institution in digital form. While all institutional repositories have experienced the same obstacles relating to a lack of faculty participation, those at small universities face unique challenges. This article examines causes of low faculty contribution to IR content growth, particularly at small academic institutions. It also offers a first-hand account of building and developing an institutional repository at a small university. The article concludes by suggesting how institutional repositories at small academic institutions can thrive by focusing on classroom teaching and student experiential learning, strategic priorities of their parent institutions

A Novel Application: Using Mobile Technology to Connect Physical and Virtual Reference Collections

This chapter describes an innovative implementation of the use of iPad kiosks to blur the lines between physical and virtual library collections. Providence College’s Phillips Memorial Library + Commons began lending iPads to students, faculty, and staff in 2012. In addition to lending the devices, library staff dedicated time to learning about both task-based and subject-based mobile applications that would be of use to our community. A small group of library staff tested, discussed, and vetted a variety of apps that would be deployed on the iPads to be lent out. Efforts were made to promote the use and discovery of various apps on the devices through thoughtful organization of the apps on the devices themselves, programming around applications, and the creation of an online research guide designed to teach more about the apps. Despite these initiatives, assessment data from the iPad lending program collected over the course of five semesters suggests that patrons borrowing the iPads are using them primarily for accessing the Internet (Safari, Chrome, etc.), social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and consuming media (YouTube, Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, etc.). With this data in mind, library staff began to think of alternative ways to connect our patrons with useful, content-based, mobile applications. Drawing on research around the Internet of Things and the integration of digital technologies with our physical lives, the Digital Publishing Services Coordinator suggested positioning iPad kiosks strategically within the library’s physical book collection as a means to connect patrons browsing a given area of the stacks with the library’s online resources related to that subject area. The library’s Commons Technology Specialist had experience with iPad kiosks and programming the iPads as he had managed the logistics of the iPad lending program since its inception. Working collaboratively, these colleagues devised a way to image the iPads for public use and load them with subject-specific apps as well as links to library databases and open web resources. The team chose to use Scalar as the primary content management tool for kiosk content. This chapter provides details about the selection and deployment of content for the Theology Kiosk, signage and communications created to attract patrons to the kiosk, and initial data about kiosk use. The piece concludes with a review of the kiosk project and an outline of future planning related to the project (staff time, hardware and software requirements, usability testing, scaling the project, etc.)

Claiming expertise from betwixt and between: Digital humanities librarians, emotional labor, and genre theory

Librarians\u27 liminal (intermediate) position within academia situates us to make unique contributions to digital humanities (DH). In this article, we use genre theory, feminist theory, and theories of emotional labor to explore the importance of discourse mediation and affective labor to DH and the interplay between these areas and academic structural inequality. By claiming our expertise and making explicit work that is often not visible, we can advocate for new and varied roles for librarians in digital humanities. Our analysis is informed by both theory and practice, and it takes a dialogic approach that depends upon the interactions between the two

Student Labour and Training in Digital Humanities

This article critiques the rhetoric of openness, accessibility and collaboration that features largely in digital humanities literature by examining the status of student labour, training, and funding within the discipline. The authors argue that the use of such rhetoric masks the hierarches that structure academic spaces, and that a shift to the digital does not eliminate these structural inequalities. Drawing on two surveys that assess student participation in DH projects (one for students, and one for faculty researchers), the article outlines the challenges currently faced by students working in the field, and suggests a set of best practices that might bridge the disparity between rhetoric and reality

Something for everyone? The different approaches of academic disciplines to Open Educational Resources and the effect on widening participation

This article explores the relationship between academic disciplines‘ representation in the United Kingdom Open University‘s (OU) OpenLearn open educational resources (OER) repository and in the OU‘s fee-paying curriculum. Becher‘s (1989) typology was used to subdivide the OpenLearn and OU fee-paying curriculum content into four disciplinary categories: Hard Pure (e.g., Science), Hard Applied (e.g., Technology), Soft Pure (e.g., Arts) and Soft Applied (e.g., Education). It was found that while Hard Pure and Hard Applied disciplines enjoy an increased share of the OER curriculum, Soft Applied disciplines are under-represented as OER. Possible reasons for this disparity are proposed and Becher‘s typology is adapted to be more appropriate to 21st-century higher education