Registration now open for workshops to enhance teaching, research

8:26 a.m., Jan. 18, 2013--From incorporating maps into historical research, to analyzing text through the use of online tools, to visiting virtual exhibit spaces, digital techniques are increasingly important to scholars and teachers in the humanities.

For University of Delaware faculty members, graduate students and staff who want to learn more about the use of such tools in their humanities teaching or research, registration now is open for a spring semester workshop series, "Digital Humanities in the Classroom." Participants can register for any or all of the three workshops, which are free and do not require any previous digital experience.

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The introduction to each session is open to the public, but registration is required to participate in the workshops, which have limited space. To register, visit this website.

Those attending a workshop will use the hands-on session to develop a new classroom project and associated materials to integrate the project into the courses they teach.

"The goal of this series is to introduce digital technologies that can be used for scholarly and classroom use in the humanities," said Heidi Kaufman, associate professor of English who is the faculty leader for the series. "Workshop topics are designed to appeal to a range of humanities disciplines and to facilitate interdisciplinary work."

The first workshop, a one-day session titled "Getting Humanities Research 'on the Map,'" will meet Friday, Feb. 15, in the Morris Library, with an introduction from 9:30-10:30 a.m., followed by the workshop itself from 10:45 a.m.-4 p.m. The session will focus on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and offer hands-on work in ways to combine research and mapping. Instructors are Ben Mearns, UD IT specialist, and Shelly McCoy with the UD Library’s Student Multimedia Design Center.

The second workshop in the series, also a one-day session, provides an introduction to the kinds of digital resources available for teachers and students, including online tools for text analysis, collaborative wikis and digitized text repositories. "Digital Humanities in the Classroom: Tools, Tips and Tricks" will meet Friday, March 22, in Morris Library, also with an introduction from 9:30-10:30 a.m. and the workshop until 4 p.m. The instructor is Constance Crompton, assistant professor of digital humanities and English at the University of British Columbia.

The third session in the series is a two-day workshop Friday and Saturday, April 26-27, focused on the basics of using Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines to create digital editions of rare, fragile or important texts and manuscripts, which can then be used for scholarly or classroom projects. "Creating Digital Editions With TEI" also will meet in Morris Library, with the introduction from 9:30-10:30 a.m. on April 26 only. The instructors are Julia Flanders and Syd Bauman of the Brown University Women Writers Project. 

Also during spring semester, a series of lectures, "Perspectives of the Digital Humanities," will be held on campus beginning Wednesday, Feb. 20. For more about these talks, which are free and open to the public, see the events listing of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center.

Article by Ann Manser