Teaching Philosophy for the Digital Humanities
Embracing the interdisciplinary approach to Digital Humanities bridges the connections between fields of knowledge that many consider unrelated. In the case of unfamiliarity of students with either side of the Digital Humanities I demonstrate with examples with which all students are familiar, such as how Shakespeare has been determined as the author of most of his plays, or how a medieval text may be identified as a guild accounting text within a compendium of other medieval manuscripts. Students must then supply additional ideas from their academic backgrounds for engagement. They work as groups to establish a well thought out plan for resolving the exigence of the overall project according to a project guideline.
As a teaching instructor for the Digital Humanities, I attempt to remove me as the professor who stands as a gatekeeper to the students' futures and to position me as a mentor among them. My students are encouraged to work on their own, but the key to understanding in the digital humanities results not from critical papers of individual students done in isolation. The meaningful and remembered education comes from teamwork that leads to completion of a wholly synthesized class project. Students unite with each other and with both the quantitative (the digital) and qualitative (the humanities) sides to form one whole research project. I further situate the context of their course project into a broader scope of how research projects at universities operate. Rather than an instructor, I become the project leader of the project the students create and complete.
Focusing students on the learning process, help them to understand the criteria that influence my assessment of them. The students decide which team they become part of. Those with either technology backgrounds or English backgrounds may choose to stay in their disciplines, while others as a challenge may choose a team focused outside of their frame of reference. Knowing from reading the syllabus ahead of time of what my grading policy allows those who choose a team outside of their discipline to enter into a new field without the fear of being disadvantaged by a grade that doesn’t recognize their courage and willingness to move beyond their comfort zone.
Digital Humanities requires teams made up of many individuals all who concentrate on finding the unknown solution that lies within them. It is not about having students concentrate so they may receive the best grade. Individual team projects and the members of teams of approximately 4-6 students gradually adjust their project ideas to a given project outline. The project may have 4-5 teams focused on such things as quantitative analysis and deformance criticism, female writers, gender, identity and so on, but whatever they choose, whether it be deformance criticism or gender, the students connect with technology through the Ryver online collaborative project software. A requirement of regularly posting their teams contributions to the project website keeps all teams informed of progress. By monitoring the discussions on Ryver, I can judge who is studying, contributing, and thus learning and which direction the students need to go to achieve their team goals. Often with minimal guidance students reach that “aha moment” and race to detail to the rest what they’ve found. And sometimes I’ve seen several students from one team tell the others what their team has found. Thus, grades become subordinate to the spirit of research and students understand the meaning of being a Digital Humanities researcher.
Where doubt may lead a student away from opening an intriguing door to programming, or to a meaningful pathway into the humanities, I'm there as a guide. By placing the light on the other side of a few foreknown solutions, ones that may yet be more eloquently resolved by the students that I've concluded, I bring what is in the student to connect with the self-guiding nature of learning. Each time I find a student that lights up with the revitalizing energy of knowing they are the source of that living process of learning which seems to magically open doors before them, I wonder if they question whether the Digital Humanities may become the bliss in their life as it is for me. It is at those times that I too know what it means to be alive. The valuable resources that students provide to the educational process, with their ideas, questions, and results, widen the horizon of the Digital Humanities to the benefit of the next class that I teach. Their projects inspire my research and my life.