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The Digital Humanities Summer Scholars Idea Incubator

Developing Programming To Onboard Undergraduates �into DH Research

Angela Perkins, Research and Instruction Librarian (perkinsa@lafayette.edu) �and Janna Avon, Digital Initiatives Librarian (avonj@lafayette.edu)�Skillman Library, Lafayette College

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Agenda

The Digital Humanities Summer Scholars (DHSS) program
Application Patterns: desire to learn, little experience
Concept: DHSS Idea Incubator
DHSS II Successes and Challenges
Future Development

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What is DHSS?

Digital Humanities Summer Scholars (DHSS) is a research program started in 2015 as a result of a Mellon grant, now funded by the Lafayette Libraries.�
Structured as a six week course, with an emphasis on original research and introduction to DH methodology. Summer Scholars execute and present a digital research project within that time.

The DHSS syllabus includes diving into the craft of the research process, as well as DH concepts like text analysis, topic modeling, mapping and GIS, network analysis, Digital Storytelling, Augmented/Mixed/Virtual Reality, etc. Popular digital tools discussed include Voyant, ArcGIS, R, Omeka, Scalar, Tableau, etc.

Cohort meets three times per week (MWF), twice per day, with classes/workshops generally in the morning, and a two-to-three hour lab in the afternoon.

The program often hosts workshops led by DH practitioners outside of Lafayette College. For example, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., visited via Skype in 2019 for a workshop on his use of text analysis in Shakespeare’s plays. In 2020, a Bucknell University Social Sciences Librarian and a Professor of Comparative and Digital Humanities and German discussed facets of their work on their DH project, Moravian Lives, via Zoom.

2020’s cohort was the first to attend the program fully remotely.

DHSS program directed by myself, a Research and Instruction Librarian who specializes in film/media/DH.
Small cohort chosen through a selective application process (in 2020, 37 interviews were held, and 8 Summer Scholars chosen out of 31 applicants); begins at the beginning of the spring semester after a CFP
Candidates required to interview to express their interest in the program before gaining access to application.
In interview, students share their research interests, including what project they may want to work on in DHSS; their experience to date with DH, digital scholarship, and/or digital technology.
After the interview, the student is invited to apply online.
Committee including myself and library colleagues review and assess which applications are strongest; then a new DHSS cohort is chosen.

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Application Patterns

- Students almost unanimously expressed explicit desire to learn about the fundamentals of conducting independent research.

- Research proposals were frequently weak in their application of DH as a disciplinary lens.

- Unrealistic expectations of available data, or the question of data was not thought through.

- Could we address this information desire in a lower stakes way for a broader audience?

- Could we address this development gap in the applications we were seeing with supplementary programming aimed at a broader audience?

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DHSS Idea Incubator

Four sessions:

introduction to the humanities and digital scholarship
introduction to conducting academic research
introduction to digital humanities data and research data management
writing and pitching a research proposal

Workshop Structure:

general discussion of research ideas and homework assignments
short lecture
collective work on problems that apply the lecture
homework to apply the lecture to their research ideas

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Piloted in January 2021

Successes:

relatively strong interest from students.
demographic data supported our assumptions around broad interest.
tangible growth in students' abilities to think through their ideas into doable research projects.
Students enjoyed the experience and opportunity to learn.

Challenges:

technical difficulties.
conflicting time obligations.
sessions were long, and lectures in particular were hard to actively engage with in Zoom delivery.
pitching activity planned for the last session was not of interest to the students in the way it was presented.

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Future Development

brainstorm ways to break up the sessions to shorter commitments that can be more flexibly accessed, with options for asynchronous and alternative formats for content delivery, particularly of lecture content.
Explore how a flipped classroom model could work in this context given how much synthesizing and condescing we did of a large selection of materials in order to deliver concise and focused lectures.
Explore folding this content into the DHSS schedule.
Develop partnerships with other campus bodies to promote future iterations.
Decide whether to continue with digital delivery, and if so, how to improve it.

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Questions?