Presenters and Presentation Abstracts
|
|
The School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology is participating in a fundamental reconfiguration of the role of humanities education in an increasingly technological, multicultural environment. The school's faculty share a commitment to interdisciplinary work at the theoretical and applied levels, and the integration of new electronic technologies and media into humanities, communication, and cultural studies. LCC's graduate and undergraduate curricula comprise a distinctive program of interdisciplinary inquiry in humanities-infused science studies, engineering, and digital media production, while increasing critical communication skills in both conventional and electronic modes of discourse. In particular, the freshmen undergraduate writing program provides a dynamic technology-driven educational environment, which allows students to explore communication and composition fundamentals in state-of-the art computer facilities. While deploying custom-designed synchronous, asynchronous, and hypertext applications within the curricula, the program also offers an innovative and intensive electronic-pedagogy support system. Lissa Holloway-Attaway, Electronic Pedagogy Coordinator for LCC, and Brandy Walker, electronic pedagogy specialist and freshman writing instructor in LCC, propose a multi-media poster presentation that highlights the LCC program and the expanding electronic-pedagogy support system as an example of exemplary work in combining humanities and computing curricula.
The integration of computers into humanities-studies requires the development of attendant pedagogical methodologies to support the new discourses and media that result, and LCC's interdisciplinary writing program provides a critical and instructional framework to support the rich educational opportunities it creates. Instructors in the LCC writing program examine with their students the diverse writing strategies that cultural studies researchers use and, bringing these strategies to bear upon a variety of texts, assist students in developing their own critical perspectives by incorporating similar strategies within their own writing modes. By providing students with a cultural studies perspective, taught within a computer-mediated learning environment, the notion of "texts" is expanded to include rhetorical, literary, material, digital, bodily and performative practices, which students read both for their symbolic meaning and for what they reveal about the cultures and discourses in which they circulate. By combining reflective and recursive rhetorical practices enabled by the study of cultural practice and combined with a variety of educational technologies, we increase our students' comprehension of the complex and strategic processes necessary to create effective critical prose. This poster presentation will provide a thorough overview of the specific work being done in the freshman undergraduate writing program and the innovative ways in which humanities and computing are being developed in LCC’s undergraduate curricula.
Although it is clear that Humanities Computing is now able to exist as an independent subject with graduate students, specialist faculty and coherent systems of peer review and granting criteria, there are many institutions that cannot support this kind of focus. Nevertheless, humanities computing is of increasing importance to the future careers of students. In this paper we would like to discuss the Humanities Computing components of the the undergraduate Bachelor of Arts in English and the Interdisciplinary Master of Arts Degree at the University of Northern British Columbia. This will be done from the perspective of an instructor who has designed and taught these courses over the past seven years (Stan Beeler), and from the perspective of a former student who has gone on to a Doctoral program in English and part time teaching in distance education in the UK (Deneka MacDonald). We will be considering practical and theoretical components of these courses and the educational benefits of life long learning using skills acquired in courses with humanities computing components.
This paper will outline a possible solution to the need for Humanities students to be familiar with, and to question, the new electronic media. It proposes a course that will provide an opportunity for students in the Humanities to reach a level of computer literacy that will make them fully aware of the capacity of the computer to enhance study and research in the Humanities; at the same time, the course will encourage students to engage the implications of the computer processes in their own work and in society. As a Humanities course, it will require the development of critical thinking not only about the content the computer mediates, but about the medium itself. The course will be made up of separate modules, each designed for students to complete in their own time. The main principle will be "mastery learning" where students complete assigned tasks; thus the course will be evaluated as pass/fail only.
This paper is available at the following URL: http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Annex/Articles/Nanaimo/index.html
A poster-discussion of the Internet Shakespeare Editions, the aim of which is to make scholarly, fully annotated texts of Shakespeare's plays available in a form native to the medium of the Internet. See http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/.
This poster presentation will describe and illustrate how two very different manuscript extracts (from John Lydgate's 15th c. Fall of Princes and Robert Graves's 20th c. diary) were marked up using the TEI XML DTD, then rendered into dynamic Web pages using the Microsoft XSL processor to produce interactive Websites using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The resulting Web pages are highly interactive, with popups and mouseovers providing information about individuals, publications, annotations and corrections in the body of the text, as well as direct linking between the text and graphics of the original documents and enclosures.
The call for a defense of a broad (liberal) education has been often and ably answered in the last two and a half thousand years. From Aristotle's program to train the guardians, to the trivium and quadrivium of the medieval schools, to More and Erasmus and other Renaissance defenders, to Newman at the dawn of the revolution in modern science, to Dawson in the 20th century and Pelikan at the end of it, some of the greatest minds and most eloquent pens in our tradition have wrestled with this problem: what is the just balance between a broad education which purposes the whole life, and the demands of a practical grounded training that fits a person for his or her work.
The present age is one of unrivalled triumphs from the practical application of knowledge. Cures are everyday headlines. Communications technologies like the Internet have yielded productivity gains which have fuelled astonishing world-wide economic growth. Such an age, which praises efficacy and worships results, is difficult to arrest with arguments about the whole person and the educated citizen. The consequences for understanding, respecting and resourcing humanities education have been disastrous, as is now being publicly recognised (for example, "Cutting at the Core: University funding policies and the erosion of liberal education", Patricia Clements, Alberta Views Mar/April 2001, 21-26).
Our experience at the University of Alberta over the past few years reveals that some liberal arts graduates have been emerging to work in academia and business with a combination of highly-prized IT skills and that broad view and critical sense for which the liberal arts have been long championed. A formal academic programs has been developed to encourage and cultivate these interests. The rationale and curriculum of this graduate program highlights the unique combination of practical skills and broad judgement which these students will possess upon graduation.
This paper will discuss the development of the curriculum of the new Humanities Computing MA program at Alberta, in light of an integrated understanding of the tools and techniques of the information economy. This program of studies (at the intersection of a critical appraisal of, and a facility with, information technology) will position these humanities computing graduates to take on roles of leadership in society.
It is reflective exercises such as this that will contribute, I believe, to the new defense of the liberal arts as essential to our collective future.
This paper will outline experiences from a 3-year endeavor to provide and promote the use of computing in humanities-based teaching and research. The University of Oregon’s decentralized model of computing support has developed along disciplinary lines, carving out niches for faculty in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the professional schools (law, business, journalism, architecture and allied arts), and now the humanities. The
Wired Humanities Project, conceived in 1999 as a joint venture of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS), began as an effort to furnish computer support to humanities faculty and humanities departments, a client base traditionally mystified, and thus hindered, by the research and teaching possibilities that the computer generates.
Now at the end of its third year WHP is seeking to expand its role on the UO campus, and is looking to the burgeoning field of humanities computing to help guide this expansion. We find ourselves at a critical juncture – one in which we seek to strike a balance between a successful model of user support services and the design and implementation of an innovative humanities computing curriculum. As we embark on this endeavor to create an M.A. certificate program in humanities computing, we are faced with some key questions from faculty and administrators, not least of which are "What is humanities computing?" and "What will one be able to do with an M.A. certificate in humanities computing?" These are issues of self-identification and self-promotion, and unlike many traditional disciplines, must rely currently on ingenuity and a multiplicity of voices and opinions to be answered. As is evidenced from a recent Humanist discussion thread on obstacles to humanities computing, parlaying these multiple ideas and opinions into a curriculum proposal promises to be our first challenge. That said, however, it is still very important to retain the sense of serendipity that comprises even the most well-thought- out humanities-based multimedia projects. In other words, how do we decide on what constitutes a core curriculum in humanities computing, which focuses on information organization and delivery, without losing the richness and intellectual rigor of the content, and thus possibly losing the interest of our faculty colleagues?
This paper will address, then, these beginning phases of implementing a humanities computing curriculum in Oregon. It will look at our ideas for interweaving workshop-style technical training courses together with seminars in the cultural studies of technology to build a strong transdisciplinary program that draws on the strengths and interests of Oregon’s faculty.
A new course of study, leading to the degree of Master of Arts in Humanities Computing, will be offered to students at the University of Alberta, starting in September 2001. The programme has been created to equip students with the critical and practical tools they need in order to engage with new research methodologies in their academic study, and to enter the workforce with knowledge as well as technical skills in the area of electronic communications and digital media.
The initiative for this degree programme came from Professor Susan Hockey, at that time Director of the Canadian Institute for Research Computing in the Arts (CIRCA) at the University of Alberta. Funding was secured from the provincial government to initiate this new programme of study at the Masters level. The anticipated enrolment is up to 15 students per year; the course of studies is a two-year long, culminating in a MA thesis (dissertation).
The development of this programme has been a model exercise in interdisciplinarity, and the nature of the course of study broadens the scope of Arts degree at our institution. The programme raises interesting challenges on a technical front as well, opening up the possibility of the development of a suite of software tools which will have interest to many arts disciplines as well as the wider humanities computing community.
Much current research on pedagogy in higher education supports a de-centered, or problem-based, approach to teaching which makes students responsible, active learners. Computing offers one of the best ways to use a problem-based approach in the classroom; however, incentives in humanities teaching have tended to be conservative: placing discussion or peer review groups within the context of traditional lecture courses. This paper will describe the process by which traditional humanities courses at the University of Toronto at Scarborough were redesigned to focus on de-centered learning using computers--focusing both on course and assignment design, and on the outcomes of working with these classes.
The central feature of computer-focused humanities courses at UTSC is that students define a personal research interest and then devote the majority of their class time to designing and implementing a web-based project. Rather than dispensing knowledge, the professor acts as a coach, helping students refine their ideas or think through organizational problems. In this paper, I am particularly eager to document the broad effects of shifting from an instructor-focused classroom with traditional essay assignments, to a student-centred classroom with web-based assignments. For students already used to producing essays, these courses require some radical rethinking about how to present critical ideas or arguments in a different media. While much research on computer literacy has been critical of the effects of new media on writing, our experience has been that when students are encouraged to think comparatively about the writing, researching, and critical thinking process, their traditional and computer-based skills improve. This presentation will focus both on student outcomes and on pedagogical issues for professors teaching such courses.
One of the challenges of any humanities computing center lies in integrating its faculty research projects with the larger goals of humanities education in digital culture and technologies. This paper explores several techniques used at the Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities at Virginia Tech--some derived from models of learning familiar in academic humanities settings, some from apprenticeship patterns more common elsewhere--for helping faculty and students bridge the divide between critical, historical, and philosophical inquiry conducted in the digital domain, and learning the intricacies of exploiting digital technologies to their fullest extent in these pursuits. Our results thus far, both in the research, and in the courses and the students' learning experiences, are quite encouraging.
Drawing on the author’s experience of teaching humanities computing (including programming, text analysis, markup, digital library technologies, electronic editions and digital imaging) at Oxford University (1975-91), at the University of Alberta (1997-1999) and at University College London (from 2000) as well as co-director of an annual international summer seminar on Methods and Tools for Electronic Texts in the Humanities in New Jersey in 1992-6, this presentation will examine the role of computing in the humanities curriculum at undergraduate and graduate level.
Some initial questions:
- How well do technical developments in humanities computing match up to current trends in humanities research and what impact might this have on teaching?
- What should be the major learning outcomes from a humanities computing course or programme?
- What methods of assessment are appropriate for humanities computing and what criteria can be applied for marking and grading?
- How far should the design of the curriculum be influenced by student employment prospects?
- What key skills do students acquire through humanities computing?
And the final big question:
- How far can the need for analytical and critical thinking in the humanities be reconciled with the practical orientation of much work in humanities computing?
One of the core courses for the new Masters in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia will be MDST 585, Software Engineering for the Humanities. This course is being developed jointly by Media Studies and Computer Science faculty, and is aimed at providing students with an innovative opportunity to acquire software development skills beyond those of an individual programmer. The discipline of software engineering focuses on technological and managerial aspects of software development, and it is concerned with the systematic production and maintenance of software products. We expect that our graduates will sometimes work in team environments to create large software-based systems, requiring careful analysis of system needs and requirements, high-level system design, and system verification. In addition, they will need to understand managerial or “process” techniques for planning, monitoring and evaluating a team-based project.
In this course, software development process issues must be addressed, including common life-cycle models such as the waterfall, spiral, and iterative development models. We will discuss models for team organization and management. Risk management (which many regard as a crucial concept for successful engineering) will be introduced. Core concepts in requirements identification and documentation will be addressed, including how requirements should be used throughout in the project. Effective but simple methods for gathering and documenting requirements will be examined, including use-cases and rapid prototyping. We will study high-level design by proposing systems that can be built from components important in many humanities applications (e.g. a databases, XML and XSLT, cgi scripts, and Web-based delivery). We will talk about various aspects of software testing, especially verification of products against requirements and validation that completed systems truly meet user needs. The importance of system maintenance will also be addressed.
While we are convinced of the value of including formal instruction in software engineering in our program, we are not oblivious to the challenges this presents: the vocabulary and culture of the discipline are rooted in computer science and engineering; its product-development world-view may be foreign to humanities students; a certain level of programming expertise is assumed by most books, articles and existing courses. We will need to adjust the course to the needs and backgrounds of humanities students without unduly diluting its software engineering content. One way to accomplish this may be to base the course on case-studies in which we examine the software engineering aspects of large humanities computing projects. Hands-on learning will also be important: a series of individual and group assignments will lead up to the completion of a semester-long group project based on actual computational needs of an ongoing computationally oriented humanities research project. The evaluation of this final project will include written responses from team members, the client, and independent outside reviewers.
Fifteen years ago I proposed that humanities scholars who engage in computer-assisted research should have an understanding of basic programming principles. My argument at the time was that without this kind of background, the required methodology remains opaque, and as a result, applications of computing techniques to humanities topics risk being naive. Over the past several years, the computing environment has changed radically, and my views on this issue have similarly changed. Programming skills, in particular, are no longer necessary to provide the kind of methodological and conceptual framework in which to conceive and carry out computer-assisted work. Furthermore, advances in the technology, such as the development of digital image capability and the World Wide Web itself, have opened up entirely new areas of what we regard as humanities computing, and these applications of computing to traditional humanities subject matter broaden the range of skills that may feed such research. Nonetheless, it is still often the case that applications of computers to humanities research are fundamentally naive and do not exploit advances that have been made in other closely–related fields. Why is this so? In my presentation, I will outline what I believe to be the underlying reasons for this phenomenon, as well as the kind of training I believe humanists need as background for computationally-based work.
Slides for the presentation are available at this URL:
http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~ide/transparencies/HC-vancouver.ppt
Although the abilities to use and to program a computer are important to a program in ``humanities computing,'' the present paper argues that they are surprisingly unimportant relative to interpretive knowledge. Drawing a tripartite distinction between the training needed to use a prepackaged commercial program, the skills necessary to write a program, and the knowledge of when such a program is relevant, important, or even appropriate, the author claims that the mathematical knowledge is the most important of the three for a humanities scholar.
The work of Borteiwicz on the Poisson limit and its interpretations shows this clearly. Originally developed as a simple approximation to another high-order abstraction, the binomial distribution, he showed that the Poisson limit is itself of independent interest and can describe a wide variety of situations, from alpha radiation, computer chip failures, the length of lines at a supermarket, or he number of cavalry soldiers kicked to death by their horses, in terms of a few simple descriptive ``assumption.'' In 1989, much of the United States telephone system crashed -- with attend anthistorical and social consequences -- largely due to a misapplication of Poisson mathematics.
Another example, cited by Kahn, is the work of Rejeweski and ``the theorem that won World War II'' (Kahn, 1991). Rejeweski forever changed cryptology, a discipline traditionally populated by literature and language scholars, by applying a simple theory from higher algebra to the solution of the main German cryptographic system. In particular, a theorem from group theory permitted him to untangle the unsolveably complex system used to encrypt
data into two complex but independently soluble subsystems on the basis of the theoretical transformations they performed. Although this type of divide-and-conquer approach was not unusual in cryptological analysis of the time, the Rejeweski's mathematical sophistication was both unusual and crucial to the success of his analysis. Furthermore, this sophistication is specifically mathematical, as opposed to the ``merely'' statistical.
Underlying these and other examples is the need for the ability to go beyond the calculations the computer can perform, to what a computer cannot perform -- an understanding of the strengths and limitations, the validity or inappropriateness of the calculations themselves. It is less important to know the parameters of the best Poisson curve describing data than to know if the theory of the data fit the underpinnings of Poisson curves. Implicitly, a curriculum in "humanities computing'' should cover not only the use and development of software, but also criteria for evaluating the appropriateness and correctness of particular tools and/or techniques in the light of domain expertise within the humanities. One possible method to incorporate this material into a curriculum is the "Great Problem'' approach used in the Computational Mathematics program at Duquesne University. In this M.S. program, techniques are presented in the pedagogical context of a particular problem, drawn from and situated within a field well-understood by the students. Techniques can be taught along with an analysis, both theoretical and practical, of why a particular use is or is not appropriate in this situation. This paper describes some of the strengths and weaknesses of this method in accord with some proposed general curriculum design principles, and describes some possible other pedagogical approaches to cover "humanities mathematics'' as an extension of or alternative to computing skills.
It is difficult to define a single “humanities computing curriculum”, partly because there already exists in the academy a range of different tasks, tastes, and tools. In the typical English department, for example, undergraduate teaching focuses on composition, rhetoric, reading and literary interpretation, and literary theory; adding graduate courses and faculty scholarship, various levels of textual editing and publishing may also be included; and when one considers departments that historically often grew from English departments, the range includes social theory (women’s studies, First Nations studies) and creative writing. There is no “humanities curriculum”, let alone a “humanities computing curriculum”! Still, we can return to some core activities of the humanities for some clarity: finding and preparing texts, reading and interpreting texts, and creating new texts.
I propose a paper that reviews the tasks of the humanities, and follows that with some reflection on the power of taste or preference: not every “scholar” is a textual editor; not every discipline specialty requires literary interpretation. In other words, different bodies of text dictate different tasks.
Next, I will consider the tools the computer provides for dealing with the tasks; how the nature of “text” is changed and what the implications might be; and the potential for broadening the possibilities facing the individual studying in the humanities. This part of the paper will include recommendations on pedagogy: the “humanities computing curriculum” as it might look in the department of Media Studies here at Malaspina University-College.
Peter Liddell: The University of Victoria IT Plan.
The University of Victoria IT Plan has student competency as its highest priority -- competency for academic purposes, but, as the rationale particularly stresses, for life. This is to be achieved by a grass-roots approach, not top-down policy edicts. As the first (of eight institution-wide) Goals indicates, the means to this is to "Integrate information technology into all programs by establishing information technology competency goals for graduates in every discipline and profession."
This presentation will describe how the programs in the Faculty of Humanities defined their goals in September/October 2001. A variety of approaches were necessary, to inform and help focus the process. For planning purposes, the Faculty as a whole will provide the University with a broad overview of goals and strategies; but for this initial stage, and the regular reviews that will follow, the emphasis remains at the program and department level.
In this paper, I draw upon the development of McMaster University's BA programme in Multimedia and recent academic granting programmes to illustrate how the creation of curriculum in humanities computing and multimedia potentially exceeds the boundaries that have traditionally defined the field of the arts and humanities. I argue that we are in the best position for curriculum design and implementation when we understand how technology and practice relate to the dynamic and intertwined hierarchies of cultural, symbolic, and economic value that constitute the field of arts and humanities production.
The major parts of this paper are:
- Practice, Theory, and the Field of Arts and Humanities Production: The recent emergence of new university programmes in humanities computing and multimedia is clear evidence of substantial legitimization of technology instruction and scholarship in the arts and humanities. Although these programmes focus on diverse elements of computing in the arts and humanities, they share the common inclusion of practice in the curriculum. Indeed, like McMaster University's proposal for its BA programme in Multimedia, many of these programmes' curricular documents state explicitly the goal to create a balance between practice and theory in academic faculties where theory and criticism are normally privileged over practice and technical skill. This section of the paper explores the question of why the convergence of technical and intellectual skill in the broadening practices of information technology represents for some academics a threat to the cultural space of the arts and humanities.
- Academic Capitalism: At the same time that technological practice is poking up its head, universities are facing new financial challenges and consequent pressures to partner with industry. It has become a common feature in academic financial granting agencies to require connections to industry in the form of co-investment, technology transfer, and student training in employable skills. These new funding formulas figure in what Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie call "academic capitalism," or the process by which academics become producers of specialized knowledge and skill supported and sold to industry as a commodity.[1] While academic capitalism has been rooting in the practical sciences for some time, the arts and humanities have traditionally positioned themselves as the voice of social protest against market-oriented economic interest. Social theorists like Pierre Bourdieu and others argue that, in the face of increasing global economic forces, the arts and humanities need to resist industry relations and strengthen the borders that define the field of arts and humanities production as autonomous.[2] I argue that we need to think differently about the flow of influence between fields.
- Humanities Computing and Multimedia: Between a Rock and the Hard Place: Designers of curriculum in humanities computing and multimedia, therefore, are in a potentially conflicted situation: their courses, programmes, and research may be seen as economically valuable by granting agencies and industry interests who see applied knowledge in technology as potentially market-friendly, but their peers in the arts and humanities may see the same work as dangerously infected by practice and market imperatives. While the addition of technological practice in the arts and humanities may result in increased student enrollment and other signs of financial success, for some academics it also signals the dissolution of the arts and humanities autonomy.
- Concluding Questions: Rather than chart out clearly defined paths for navigating this conflicted space, I urge course and programme designers to imagine ways in which the arts and humanities can intersect fruitfully with industry so that influence is not simply a one-way flow from industry to academe, where industry gains control over academic structures. Indeed, we might consider how relations with industry can satisfy both the pressure to partner with industry and the desire to maintain autonomy. Alternatively, we might imagine ways in which diluting the autonomy of the arts and humanities could lead to social improvements in the face of globalization's threat to social equalities. Would it be so bad if the humanities addressed social ills more directly by participating in relationships with industry? Indeed, might not such a dilution of autonomy increase the humanities' power to affect change?
A recent survey, Humanities computing units and institutional resources, suggests that assimilation of computing into the disciplines is sharpening rather than satisfying the question of its institutional home. Experience suggests that from an interdisciplinary perspective computing reveals a substantial common ground of mechanical techniques by which the major types of data may be processed. Furthermore particular examples show that by applying these techniques we are able to raise better questions about the artifacts of study than formerly. Thus three fundamental problems: (1) a model for humanities computing adequate to what we know is actually happening, and one that is flexible enough to accommodate differences in the various institutional and academic cultures; (2) a research agenda of questions belonging to humanities computing; and (3) a curriculum; particularly at the postgraduate level, that adequately covers what we think a computing humanist should know.
This paper draws on six years of experimentation with project-based instruction in humanities computing to describe a fruitful model in which the integration of faculty research into the curriculum intersects with the evolving environment of humanities computing practice. I have been teaching humanities computing since 1995 to graduate students and senior-level undergraduate students, and structuring the curriculum around real-world scholarly research projects in which I have been at the time engaged, including an online conference and three digital edition projects.
Students who enroll in these project-based courses become part of a research team, in some cases one coterminous with the class, in other cases an existing team with members who are not students. They begin by receiving classroom and lab instruction in some basic technologies and approaches for humanities computing, learn some of the history and current state of the field, and then are relatively quickly formed into groups with determined research agendas constructed so as to give them exposure to the practical use of a number of current methods for digital scholarship in the humanities. The class ceases meeting according to hours set by the Registrar and begins working as a series of teams with my participation. The teams are balanced (using a skills inventory that draws on students' work and personal experience as well as educational background) so as to include in each team equivalent amounts of student expertise in computer technology, humanities research methods, knowledge in the particular field of the research project, and general office and organizational skills. Each team has a number of set tasks to accomplish and an end product to aim for, but is given a wide rein to develop its own organization of the work and its own schedule of meetings and deadlines. Students learn by doing; they learn at least as much from each other and the work itself as they learn from the professor. The product is not an artificial make-work project but one that will form part of an actual research publication. This kind of course is more time-consuming for the professor than a three-hour a week classroom course, but the students are contributing to the advancement of the professor's research project (and will be credited for their work). The paper explores the successes and limitations of this instructional model, speculates on further possibilities for its expansion and improvement, and concludes by describing these pedagogical experiments as realizations of many of the goals of the report of the Boyer Commission on the Curriculum of America's Research Universities.