This document discusses digital humanities (DH) pedagogy and contrasts it with traditional "ed tech" approaches. It argues that DH is local and contextual, involving specific configurations of tools, faculty, and students based on an institution's strengths and mission. DH emphasizes hands-on learning through making and production, using tools like programming, audio/video creation, and mapping in project-based ways. Examples provided include open-access textbook projects, rewriting Wikipedia, and digital mapping and narrative projects. The document advocates for DH approaches that encourage exploration, distraction, and making over purely delivering content.

1. Pedagogical
Provocations
Digital humanities as pedagogy
Dr. Jennifer J Dellner
Professor, English & Literature
Ocean County College

2. How [Not] to Think
“Undergraduates are
scarred by digitality.”
“Far from signaling our
cutting-edge research
and teaching, I suspect
that the phrase “digital
humanities” often
raises perfectly valid
worries with our
students, many of
whom have spent their
entire educational
careers sleepwalking
through ed tech
nightmares.”
Not to Panic ?
“… in fact DH is often
local and peculiar: a
specific configuration
of those multitudes that
makes sense for a
given institution, given
its faculty, staff, and
students, and given its
unique mission and
areas of strength.”
Ryan Cordell, How Not to Teach the Digital Humanities

3. What are these “ed tech” nightmares of
which you speak? Or: how is DH
different from Ed Tech?
MOOCs and other online delivery systems
Commercial hardware and software
E.g. powerpoint, professor using the projector or
document viewer, etc.
LMS –Learning management systems: content delivery,
assessment (this is how students see their grades, e.g.,
and interact with advising and registration).
Commercial e-text versions of textbooks and
supplementary material: are these bad or are these not
used well enough?
Generally, the use of tools to do what you’ve always
done,but, uh, differently.


4. Ed Tech vs. DH, cont’d
Watters, “The Algorithmic Future of Education:”
“Schools are now tasked to “do more with less,”
which is often code, if you will, for utilizing digital
technologies to curb “inefficiencies” and to “scale”
services. “
“Education technology is, despite many of our
hopes for something else, for something truly
transformational, often a tool designed to meet
administrative goals.”

5. What may become the
classic example
…of the shift of an idea from tech as
transformative to “an instrument of
consolidation.” *Phrase from Papert, The
Chldren’s Machine” (1993); used by Watters
Negroponte and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC):

6. Makerspace and Breakerspace: the
classroom as studio or “collaboratory”
HASTAC :Humanities, Arts, Science, Tech Alliance and
Collaboratory
Learning/writing as making, as production
Kean University Makerspace for writing/composition
It’s about breaking things: Jesse Stommel and Hybrid
Pedagogy: http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/digital-
pedagogy-lab-2016-institute/
“The keenest analysis in the digital humanities is born of
distraction and revels in tangents. The holy grail of this work
is not the thesis but the fissure.”
Back to Cordell: what students want to learn/do: engage with
the technology of the digital:
Programming language
Audio creation
Geo-tagging

7. Example Projects
Open access and changing the way text books are
formed -Robin DeRosa
http://openamlit.pressbooks.com/
Roopika Risam and Adeline Koh “Rewrite Wikipedia”
project:
http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/category/rewriting-
wikipedia-project/
Map of early London project (U Victoria, Jenelle
Jenstead)
Millican Riot Project (Amy Earheart, Texas A&M)

8. STEAM Segue
Art + Design STEM to STEAM
http://stemtosteam.org (RISD) ISEA International Society for Electronic Arts
Art, design, technology and digital fiction/ interactive art… Kate Armstrong
Grafik Dynamo (2005) Flicker comic: The work is currently using a feed
from Flickr. The images are accompanied by narrative fragments that are
dynamically loaded into speech and thought bubbles and randomly
displayed. Animating the comic strip using dynamic web content opens up
the genre in a new way
The Problem of Other Minds (2006) uses her background is in philosophy.
Robotic sculpture. Unspools a roll of paper when it hears words it
recognizes (gallery setting).
Pattern Language (2007) text, wireless network, custom software.
Location aware fiction project that attaches text to individuals as
they move in the city. The text accumulates into a linear narrative
unique to each person. Built on ten places in the city of Montreal; played
off of idea to have free wifi system that would cover the city of Montreal.
Pattern of where one sits down to get on the network drives the content of
the work that one experiences and accumulates and saves to you, e.g. if
one always logged on at the Atwater library, the text would be much more
delimited than if one went between different places. People had to sign in
to use the system, so they knew they were being tracked; text would only
pop up if one was in a location.

9. The local and particular:
one example in progress:
Course proposal - working draft of course description:
The Digital Life of the Humanities: HUMN 2**
This is an introduction to digital humanities course at the
undergraduate introductory level. This course blends the
study of digital and digitized objects and resources with a
production oriented approach, where students engage in
problem- and project- based learning in order to survey,
create, and apply digital tools, resources, and creative
pieces to the study of humanities disciplines including
literature, cultural studies, history, and the fine arts. There
is no prerequisite [students must be off limited load list?]
and no prior experience with technology is required beyond
the basic proficiency with a laptop or smart phone
assumed for students at Ocean County College.