Simple Strategies for Adding DH into your Pedagogy

UIC Spring 2020 DH Workshop Series

Kristen Mapes

Agenda

DH Pedagogy Lessons and themes

Trying out text analysis with Voyant

Creating an interactive timeline with Timeline JS

Creating your own DH activity or assignment for the classroom

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Themes in DH Pedagogy, or Lessons I have Learned

New activities and types of active learning in teaching usually prompt and/or are a reflection of good pedagogy

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DH methods tend to fall into this category

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Introducing DH methods and tools prompts discussion about social, technological, and power structures and context

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Including key themes of information and data literacy, awareness of accessibility, and audience in design

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These types of activities also encourage students to embrace failure and adaptation, and so require grading on process and reflection, not product.

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What type of learning goals are you hoping to have your students get out of their digital projects?

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Voyant for Text Analysis & More

voyant-tools.org

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Voyant Tools - Background

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• Developed by Canadian academics Stefan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell
• Audience is specifically digital humanists
• Advantages
• Disadvantages

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How to Get Started with Voyant

1. Find text that you want to study. It works best in plain text format, and can be one or multiple files.
2. Upload the file(s) or paste the text into the “Add texts” box and “Reveal”
3. Explore the default panels
4. Adjust the options and settings
5. Try out other panel visualization types
6. Export any one of the panels to an image file, html code, or spreadsheet
7. Share the interactive visualization by going to the blue top bar and exporting the URL

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Adjusting the options for a panel

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Switching out a panel for another tool type

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Exporting a url, data, from a panel

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Try the Dreamscape type �(See the guide for more info)

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Try the Knots type

(See the guide for more info)

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Activity!

Try it out for yourself

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voyant-tools.org

Take 5 minutes to load in text and begin playing, �focusing on text analysis tools (frequency, topics, contexts, etc)

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Activity!

Mix it up

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voyant-tools.org

Take 5 minutes to experiment with at least 1 other tool type (knots, dreamscape, links, etc)

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Interactive Timelines

timeline.knightlab.com

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Timeline JS - Background

• Knightlab at Northwestern
• Primary audience - journalists
• Advantages:
• Free & browser based
• Non-commercial & open source
• No coding needed
• Easy to embed or share the link and easy for people to understand what it is
• Collaboration with Google Sheets
• Pushes students to think about credit and captions, and opens up the conversation about metadata
• Pushes students to think about issues of uncertainty with dates
• Lively substitute for powerpoint slides

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Timeline JS - Background (cont)

• Possible drawbacks/challenges:
• Not easy to customize the look without coding knowledge
• Was developed a number of years ago, so documentation is slightly dated (ex: references to Storify and Vine)
• Media items must have correct URL structure to display properly (e.g. end in .png etc)
• Forces a linear, narrative structure
• Uncertainty with dates might be difficult to handle
• Cannot handle large amounts of data (recommended no more than 20 slides)
• May or may not be robust enough to be a stand-alone large project

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vietnamproject.archives.msu.edu/timeline.php

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How to make a Timeline - Overview

1. Make a timeline and click ‘Get the spreadsheet template’
2. Make a copy
3. Rename the spreadsheet and start adding content into the rows of the sheet
4. File → Publish to the Web
1. Then, close the ‘publish to the web’ window
5. Copy the URL of the sheet
6. Paste the URL in the “Generate your timeline” section of http://timeline.knightlab.com/#make
7. Adjust the optional settings as you
8. Copy the “share link” or “embed code” to see your timeline

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How to make a Timeline - Content

Things to keep in mind:

Fundamentally, this is about storytelling, so what is the clear, succinct scope and message?

Is this message suited to a narrative timeline?

What media items are suitable? What are the rights to use them? How to cite?

What will be the context, if any, for a user encountering this timeline?

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Activity!

Create your own timeline ...

In groups

→ Choosing topics and items

Spend 3 minutes brainstorming a simple topic and 3 slides for the timeline

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Activity!

Create your own timeline ...

In groups

→ Making it digital

Spend 10 minutes brainstorming creating the timeline and finding media images

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Design your own assignment or activity

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