We’re half-a-year into our 4-year Mellon DH grant. On my way back from DLF in Vancouver at the end of October, I got stranded in the Chicago airport for most of the day. Those “opportunities” provide plenty of time to think. For a couple of years W&L has been issuing an open call to faculty to submit proposals for incentive grants in DH. As I was sitting in the airport, I started to reflect on how we could take a more systematic approach to ensuring that the grant money contributed to structural changes in the curriculum. In other words, what is it that we’re trying to incentivize?
One of our goals is to introduce more first-year students to DH. Students encountering digital methods early in their academic careers are better equipped for handling DH assignments and projects appropriate for upper level courses. Our students are challenged to grasp the implications of a world mediated through technology. The digital environment is not in opposition to the critical thinking nurtured through the processes of close reading and composition. Rather, through software we find tools that are suitable for enhancing our understanding of the world around us and to present new forms of expression.
Our students have the opportunity in their lifetimes to creatively define how technology impacts not only their future but also that of succeeding generations.
As their careers progress into the mid-century, our graduates’ entrepreneurial instincts and leadership will identify solutions that can only be met through their critical understanding of digital information and technology.
The foundations for that digital mindset of addressing humanistic concerns starts in the first-year of college.
Our initiative is to collaborate with faculty teaching the first-year writing courses and seminars to craft an introductory set of DH assignments that relates the core concepts of these courses with analytical and creative methods within DH that establishes a baseline of the critical understanding needed for thriving in a digital society.
What type of DH assignments are suitable for first-year writing courses? We’re not yet sure. It’s not appropriate for librarians and technologists to say, “This is what you should do.” Over the course of the coming year we want to define that with the faculty teaching those courses. We’re going to do that through a series of conversations. Plus, we’ll seek the advice of faculty at other institutions that have explored the concepts and are further along that path.
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