In the History and American Studies 2009 Departmental Strategic Plan my department said that, in addition to other skills and literacies, we wanted all majors to develop the following abilities:
n Digital Literacy
o The ability to find reliable, scholarly, information on topics:
§ Within gated, subscription databases and in the larger, disorganized online world.
§ In online archives, museums and institutions of higher education.
o The ability to assess and evaluate the reliability of online sources bringing to this newer source of information the skills of judicious, critical skepticism that have long been an indispensable historical tool.
o The ability to produce creative, scholarly materials for the digital world that require the same level of rigor historians have applied to writing and publishing traditional papers, presentations, and monographs
When we developed learning outcomes for the history major, we incorporated these concepts into 8 of the 14 objectives, including the most obvious one:
- Ability to utilize technological resources in research, data analysis, and presentation.
Now, we are looking at revising our department’s long standing methods course, HIST 299, into a two semester class (HIST 297 — Colloquium and HIST 298 — Practicum) for a number of reasons, among them the desire to be able to fully integrate all of the aspects we believe necessary to be a successful history major in our upper-level classes, in graduate school, and beyond.
At our last department meeting, the department agreed to include the following ideas, concepts, and assignments into the two classes:
HIST 297
n Finding and evaluating sources online
o How do we find and evaluate online materials for scholarly uses? How does one begin to sift through the massive content that is available in a systematic and/or creative way? What are the pitfalls and perils, the promises and potentialities of the online information experience?
§ Learn library databases
§ Advanced scholarly searching
§ Evaluating sources online
n Discuss new forms of scholarly communication and methodology, including digital history projects, collaborative writing, blogs, text-mining/topic modeling, mapping/GIS [1]
n Digital identity
o How should we present ourselves to the online world (personally, professionally, and intellectually)?
n Potential assignments for HIST 297:
o E-portfolio/digital resume
o Public writing (reflective blogs or individual/group resource sites on historical topics)
o Some kind of public history assignment
HIST 298
n Review, as needed, concepts of source location and evaluation (focusing on primary sources), digital identity, and new forms of scholarly methods and communication.
n Potential assignments
o Minimum level:
§ Public writing (Research log or resource site on topic)
o Innovative level:
§ Multimedia version of their research project.
§ Contribute to a larger digital project in a small way
· Partnered with James Monroe Papers, James Monroe Museum, and/or Library’s Special Collections, students could make small contributions to larger projects, getting a sense for what goes on behind the scenes and contributing to a larger good.
We’ll have to see how it actually plays out in classes, but I’m glad to see our department working on practical ways to implement digital fluency into the core classes of our curriculum.
[1]Here I’m talking about, at minimum, exposure to the complex new approaches to research in the some exposure to the complex new approaches to research in the discipline offered by recent advancements in computing, including text-mining or GIS (if only because that those methods are influencing a new generation of scholarship that students will need to understand to assess). As they become more accessible and widely used, there will be more opportunities for students to also engage in the application of these tools in their own work.
