Like Kate Singer, I too have been thinking about the rise of the Digital Humanities at MLA 2011. I agree, largely, that making should be a hallmark of identifying as a digital humanist but - like Kate - I wonder if making is limited to coding. Building or making may refer to the construction of scholarly and student communities.  Matt Kirschenbaum in "What is Digital Humanities and What's it Doing in English Departments?" makes the following claim:

Whatever else it might be then, the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally accustomed to, a scholarship and pedagogy that are collaborative and depend upon networks of people and that live an active 24/7 life online. Isn't that something you want in your English Department?

One way I try to engage in the collaborative infrastructure that Kirschenbaum imagines here is by publishing my syllabi on Scribd. Scribd is a website that allows you to upload, share, and embed .pdf files. Here is a copy of my syllabus:
[scribd id=46615462 key=key-1ila71b42dcxy3sh8q5p]

Scribd reformats your documents to allow them to be read on smartphones and tablets like the iPad, and any document type may be uploaded (.doc, .docx, .pdf, .ppx (for PowerPoint), xml, OpenOffice). Readers can, furthermore, share whatever documents they find on Scribd by "readcasting" them. Readcasting generates Facebook updates and Tweets with links to the document being read. Readcasting can, for example, be a useful way to have students engage in peer review and collaborative research.

Of course, copyright does become a problem with Scribd. Users have in the past violated copyright by placing protected documents on the server. However, I do feel that Scribd opens up some really interesting possibilities - especially for classrooms that wish to do away with paper.

I say this in response to a recent post on the NASSR listserv by Adam Komisaruk:

I'm slated to teach a graduate "readings" course in Blake this summer, and book orders are due soon.  As I contemplate and reject several alternatives (the Dover facsimiles are too sporadic, the Princeton facsimiles are too expensive, the Erdman/Bloom lacks illustrations, etc.), I'm wondering about the viability of "going paperless."  I've already requested a fully wired classroom--i.e., with individual iMac terminals, overhead projection, and a high-speed Internet connection--so, assuming my students have similar equipment at home, I could conceivably use the Blake Archive and eE as my texts.

The majority of respondents mentioned using the Johnson/Grant Norton edition in conjunction with The Blake Archive. While I largely agree that this is a great way to go (I'm currently using the Johnson/Grant edition in my Blake class), I feel that the current generation of students is too savvy with the internet and social media to passively accept the edition we order in the bookstore. For example, I ordered the Johnson/Grant edition, but I know that many of my students use the free Erdman edition of Blake on the Blake Digital Text Project, supplementing it with the Archive and tagging websites and .pdfs using Diigo or A.nnotate. I initially resisted this development in my class but inspired by Komisaruk's comment, an article by Leeann Hunter, and a revealing expose on the textbook industry by Anya Kamentz, I've decided to encourage the digital revolution percolating in my students.

Instead of assigning individual papers, I maintain a Wordpress site called William Blake and Media as a hub for my collaborative classroom. On the site, you can find my Scribd syllabus, a description of the first and second projects, a group blog maintained by my students, and a Twitter feed. I use these, in conjunction with papers distributed by Scribd, as a way to reduce (if not currently eliminate) paper in my Blake class. Check out the site and give me some suggestions.

I've been thinking a bit about some of the large claims trickling out of this year's MLA digital humanities panels--particularly one about how doing digital humanities means making something. Whether or not that definition holds (and whether or not making something demands a sophisticated knowledge of coding), I can't help but think about how that applies to pedagogy. Deidre's really thought-provoking post, "Poems to Remember (but how?)" led us to discuss how we might manifest and visualize the reading and note-taking experience. That is, reading is remaking a text with your mind, with a pen, and perhaps with a word processor or a wiki.

There are also some tools such as the NINES Collex where users can construct collections of materials from a patchwork or mash-up of various primary and secondary texts. Omeka's exhibit builder can be used in this way as well, though users need to bring their own texts, images, and so forth into the site, rather than accessing the group of nineteenth-century databases already filtered into NINES. Last year, as some of you probably read, Amy Earhart wrote a post for ProfHacker about using the NINES Collex as a tool to teach her students researching skills. But I wonder, too, if surfing through the Collex and collecting materials might also provoke a type of hands-on "distant" reading?

Has anyone used NINES, had their students do so, or would have a go at it now? How are these tools useful for our students or ourselves as a form of data or resource collection, a different kind of reading, or something else altogether? What other tools might we use, or what other types of making might we do in the classroom?

An excerpt of this post was previously published at TechStyle.

Although my course this semester focused on the poetry, art, and science of the Romantic period, the course was also the second in a series freshman composition classes that all students are required to take here at Georgia Tech. These courses aim not only to introduce students to specialized topics of study, but also the communication and research skills that they will need when they enter into science and technology fields. Consequently, courses like mine need to prepare students not only to write and research well, but also to communicate in various mediums, especially in digital mediums.

Because no matter what medium students are working in they need to be strong writers, I have continued to ask students to complete traditional assignments that help hone their writing skills: from practicing thesis statements, to crafting close readings, to summarizing scholarly sources. Additionally, whether they’re developing a traditional academic essay or a blog post, students need to know how to use reliable sources, and so my course aims to introduce students to how to find and best use the sources that are available through our library’s database, especially peer reviewed scholarly essays. And finally, I believe that reading and analyzing literary texts gives students a flexible framework for critical thinking in any discipline.

For me, however, the goal of asking students to develop their communication skills in digital mediums has opened up exciting new ways to get students to write and think about Romantic literature. This semester, my students worked in groups to develop interactive online exhibitions that mapped Romantic literary texts by drawing out their relationships to the scientific developments of the period. Near the beginning of the semester, I placed students in groups. I did this carefully: each student completed an application form that let me know what kinds of skills they had coming into the class as well as what kinds of skill sets they hoped to develop (were they especially confident about their writing, their research, their ability to design websites or did they want to improve on one of these in particular?). Even though students were placed in groups during the second week of the semester, the assignments they worked on throughout the first ten weeks were graded individually. These included assignments such as a close reading essay and an annotated bibliography, among others. The idea, however, was that students would choose what poems to read closely and what sources to examine for these assignments based on a shared group idea about what topic the final project would address. Doing assignments like these meant that students were still individually responsible for the bulk of their course grade and that each student not only had a stake in the final project but meaningful content that they could add to the online exhibition. Each group website, therefore,  reflects the work of all the group members. During the last five weeks of the semester, in addition to continuing to read and discuss Romantic works, we also devoted time to working on and refining the final project. We discussed strategies for refining topics, crafting careful analysis, using reliable sources, and using design elements to get our interpretations across to our audience.

When I explain my students' final projects to other instructors, many often admit that they fear that neither they nor their students have the technical skills to make these kinds of projects work. Granted, some of my students’ projects boast a technical know-how that’s not easy to replicate. Many students at Tech are self-described “code monkeys” and have a vested interest in learning to create innovative web technologies. I am always grateful for the expertise they bring to the class. However, having students who are expert coders is not a prerequisite for introducing these kinds of assignments in the classroom. In fact, only a handful of students in my courses have these skills. This semester, I had several groups use wix.com to build their websites. Wix is free, relatively easy to use, and creates professional-looking sites, and although I have some misgivings about the fact that Wix will advertise on my students’ sites, the capabilities for presenting and publishing their research for a wide audience seem to outweigh the ideological costs (although I’m curious to see how others feel about this).

I will admit that I love assigning these projects as part of my courses. My students, most of whom are freshmen, almost always create amazing sites.  Their websites are intellectually rigorous and creative; they feature student-authored, research-based analysis of literary works. These websites also allow students to draw on sources, including literary works, visual materials, and expert scholarship, that are newly available online. Additionally, hyperlinked mediums mean that students can make new connections between texts, disciplines, and historical periods. In undertaking these websites, many students realize that there is much yet to discover about the Romantics and that there is also a contemporary audience eager to read and think more about literature, be that audience one of academics who are browsing the web looking for more information or enthusiasts who are pursuing their favorite writer, artist, or topic. These assignments get students excited about their analyses as they realize that not only are there opportunities for them to discover new meanings, research, and even new literary works and previously undiscovered allusions, but also a wide range of venues and mediums that they can use to create and share their findings. At the end of the semester, each class always asks to see the projects the other classes completed, and I can tell by looking at my web statistics that many go home for the holidays and share their websites with their families.

In many cases, the students actually carve out unique research niches with these websites. For example, one project this semester on Humphry Davy’s poetry and his experiments on Nitrous Oxide seems to be the most comprehensive and reliable website on that topic of its kind. Likewise, another group decided to create a digital book about representations of sex in scientific discourses, complete with an index. Another project collected poems about astronomy from the period that might be useful for further study, and yet another collated data from literature as well as history and created charts that try to make sense of the material effects of Romantic science. All of the projects can be accessed here.

I'm eager to hear about the experiences others have had with assigning projects in their courses on the Romantics. Have others tried to have their students build websites? What are the pros and cons of such assignments? What are the specific challenges and benefits of such projects? What are some other creative strategies for assessment you've tried?

For my Spring class on "Blake 2.0," I've decided to engage in collaborative learning and model forms of collective intelligence. I like my assignments to have two separate characteristics. First, I like to show students that they can accomplish great things if they work together. Second, I like my students to produce something of value, something that they can be proud of after the end of the semester.

To this end, I've decided to take the three sections of my course and have a slightly different emphasis in each section. The first section will focus exclusively on William Blake himself and the historical context around which his poetry emerged. The second section will focus on the reception of Blake by authors and artists who lived after the Romantic period. The final section, a special section set up to be populated exclusively by computer science and computational media majors, will focus on Blake's relationship to textual studies and the digital humanities - moving from the print theories of figures like Essick, Viscomi, and Michael Phillips to the critical work surrounding digital initatives like The William Blake Archive, The Blake Digital Text Project, and (as suggested by Rachel Lee) Jon Saklofske’s data visualization tool.

In order to facilitate collaborative and decentered learning, I've decided to allow students to define course content. One of the major research projects of the course, therefore, will be the opportunity for students to teach a major topic of the course. These topics will be laid out by myself beforehand, but students will choose the reading assignment and will present their research to the rest of the class. They will also provide a document that sketches objectives and outcomes for their teaching session, and support why their readings will achieve the objectives. I determine their grade based upon how well they argue for their readings and outcomes, and how skillfully they conduct their teaching session.

Ideally, I would like for them to present to all three of my sections. This way, students can show their own individual skill and add to the collective intelligence of the course. In the book Convergence Culture (2008), Henry Jenkins defines collective intelligence through the work of Pierre Levy:

On the internet, Pierre Levy argues, people harness their individual expertise toward shared goals and objectives: 'No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity.' Collective intelligence refers to the ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members. What we cannot know or do on our own, we may now be able to do collectively. (26-7)

Following Jenkins and Levy, I propose that collaborative learning can model forms of collective intelligence - and that collective intelligence can enable students to achieve what individual students listening to lectures and writing individual essays, cannot.