{"id":29437,"date":"2020-05-06T15:08:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T15:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=29437"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:30:17","slug":"crafting-digital-learning","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/crafting-digital-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafting Digital Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Crafting Digital Learning\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

The COVID-19 health pandemic has challenged postsecondary institutions to extensively reconfigure their teaching and learning models. And while there has long been impassioned discussion on how the contemporary university might continue to evolve to match our increasingly digitally centred realities, the health crisis necessitated that all classes move online in the span of about a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMoving everything to the web all at once presents a challenge for teachers and students,\u201d says Professor of History and Digital Humanities, Shawn Graham<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“This isn\u2019t \u2018online learning\u2019; it\u2019s emergency content delivery. Either way, the result can feel like it\u2019s divorced from the person who created it, and their intensely personal research and teaching style.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Carleton University\u2019s faculty and instructors have answered the call, made sacrifices, and prioritized students\u2019 wellbeing while working through this unprecedented full transition to online teaching and learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily for Graham, he has had\u00a0several years\u00a0to fine tune his online course, Crafting Digital\u00a0History<\/a> (which was first developed courtesy of an eCampusOntario grant). The\u00a0third-year\u00a0methodology course\u00a0is, in part,\u00a0a reflection of\u00a0Graham\u2019s\u00a0own\u00a0trajectory as\u00a0both\u00a0an\u00a0academic and teacher of Digital History.\u00a0\u201c\u2018Digital history\u2019 isn\u2019t just the history of the internet or the web; it\u2019s also about how what we can know or what questions we can ask are changed by the fact of the digital. What does history look like when you can \u2018read\u2019 tens of thousands of documents at once, right? It\u2019s also about what a historical perspective implies for the future<\/em> of digital technologies and how knowledge is constructed,\u201d explains Prof. Graham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Professor Shawn Graham puzzling over python code. Photo by Fangliang Xu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Course Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Taught over six weeks, the course fosters authentic student experiences and collaboration, breaks down digital literacy barriers, helps students cultivate a professionalized presence online, and celebrates \u201cglorious failures\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond teaching students how to use digitized historical resources, it offers many more lessons during these uncertain times about flexibility, personal growth, and compassion for oneself and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThings might be chaotic in the rest of the world, but in this course it\u2019s okay to \u2018fail\u2019,\u201d says Graham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe learn so much from our mistakes. That is to say, it\u2019s when things \u2013 the tech, the approach, the workflow \u2013 break that we really see what the digital is doing to our historical senses, or what a historical sensibility offers our digital culture. A glorious failure is when we use our fails to push others further.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Failing as learning is a concept that lies very close to Graham\u2019s heart. His 2019 book Failing Gloriously and Other Essays<\/em><\/a> is an honest, humorous, and modern take on the academic memoir which documents his personal \u201codyssey through the digital humanities and digital archaeology against the backdrop of the 21st-century university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graham acknowledges that students will be approaching the course with varying levels of digital literacy and historical research practice. He says students needn\u2019t be \u2018techy\u2019 to be successful, but that they do need to be open and discuss what\u2019s worked and what hasn\u2019t. In this way, the exercises each week should push them out of their comfort zone, and into the zone where real learning happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe point is to push yourself until you get stuck, sort out how and why you\u2019re stuck, and talk to others,\u201d he says. \u201cDigital History is a team sport, and the students have to come together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each week builds on the previous week\u2019s work, and students need to set up the course communication and collaboration essentials – Discord<\/a>, Github<\/a>, and Hypothes.is<\/a> – before diving any deeper. All necessary links and instruction can be found on the easily navigable course site Graham built using Github\/Hugo. Graham is part of the \u2018open science\u2019 movement in digital archaeology, and so his course materials are meant to be reusable and sustainable. They are written as simple text files that then get pushed through a series of HTML templates using the Hugo static site building engine. All the source files are hosted on the code sharing site Github, which allows other people to take copies of his materials for their own work. \u2018Crafting Digital History\u2019 isn\u2019t just a course website; it\u2019s a living document that models how actual digital historians do their craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks two and three launch participants into an overview of basic tools and methods utilized by digital historians; this also includes a series of exercises associated with them. For many course participants, this will be the first time they have encountered such tools or thought about how they might make use of them when conducting historical research and showcasing findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples include implementing regular expressions, or \u2018regexes\u2019 which can be used to find patterns in many text and document editors (imagine a complex version of CTRL + F that allows you to search for patterns<\/em> rather than keywords: [0-9]{4} will find every <\/em>year in a document, whereas CTRL + F \u20181999\u2019 will only find that one year), and OCR (optical character recognition) and machine learning — a suite of technologies that enable you to convert images of handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In week four, a lesson titled \u2018Of Macroscopes and Microscopes<\/a>\u2019, Graham explains how these tools can help students toggle between both close and distant readings of materials. Zooming out assists historians to identify broader patterns, while zooming in helps them to understand why patterns exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Student Success Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Part time undergraduate student Jeff Blackadar<\/a> took an earlier iteration of Graham\u2019s course in 2017, and says it fundamentally changed how he studies history. Working fulltime in IT, and with years of experience programming computers, Blackadar says the course has also expanded other skills he can apply to his work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRecently we had a challenge \u202fat work to mask confidential data in a bunch of documents,\u201d he says. \u201cThat project was stuck, and we were looking at hiring a specialized firm to \u2018find and replace\u2019 the confidential information. \u202fUsing regular \u202fexpressions that I learned about and practiced in Crafting Digital History, I was able to craft a program to locate the confidential information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, Blackadar has applied similar digital methods for projects in other university courses which helped him uncover new insights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor one project, I was able to map the spread of potato blight in allotment gardens in Wales by text mining the official Gazette for garden closure orders, and then plotting them on a map of Wales,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blackadar says he has also had the chance to do interesting follow up research with computer vision, and that he often uses the R language he familiarized himself with in Graham\u2019s course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Blackadar text mined from digitized newspapers to map the spread of a potato blight in Wales.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What began as a part-time effort in 2015 to complete remaining credits for his undergraduate degree, has transitioned into the pursuit of a Master\u2019s in History<\/a> with a specialization in Data Science<\/a>, along with various publications and conference contributions. Unsurprisingly, his supervisor is Prof. Graham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The methods and programs Blackadar will employ for his Master\u2019s work will be well documented and reusable by other researchers down the line. This generosity of practice comes naturally to Blackadar, but was also encouraged by Graham\u2019s course. In fact, the latest version of Crafting Digital History is now open to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve made the course open so that materials can be remixed, reused, and reach beyond Carleton University,\u201d says Graham.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The open access version<\/a> is available for the general public to follow along week by week and to participate. Graham even offers a \u201csocial chat\u201d and \u201cquestions chat\u201d for open access participants to discuss their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. Graham\u00a0has built\u00a0an online learning community where learners also help provide answers to questions\u00a0and thus learn more,\u201d says\u00a0Blackadar. \u201cWe were\u00a0encouraged\u00a0to \u2018work in the open\u2019\u00a0and our\u00a0work was shared in a supportive environment. The\u00a0course is in a league of its own, and\u00a0I think there should be more like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Professor Graham presents his talk “Failing Productively in Digital Archaeology.” Photo<\/a> by Jackie Belden Hawthorne, Michigan State University.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evaluating the Pedagogical Approach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the readings for Graham\u2019s course is a 2017 white paper called Digital<\/em> <\/em>History and Argument<\/em><\/a> which features this quote from the late Dr. Roy Rosenzweig:  \u201cOne of the most vexing and interesting features of the digital era is the way it unsettles traditional arrangements and forces us to ask basic questions that have been there all along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graham kept Dr. Rosenzweig\u2019s quote in mind as he concurrently developed his course and self-evaluated his pedagogical approach. Given our current moment, teachers worldwide are undoubtedly faced with similar considerations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt occurs to me that the shift to emergency online content delivery, which is a different thing entirely from \u2018online teaching\u2019, offers us an opportune moment to reassess what is most important or powerful about our pedagogy and to reconsider what precisely a university education is supposed to achieve,\u201d says Graham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you pay for your tuition, you\u2019re not \u2018buying\u2019 a degree,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about what you\u2019re learning from your instructors along the way. You\u2019re paying for ice time with the coach; you\u2019re not buying the Stanley Cup.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The final requirement of the course is for students to share what they\u2019ve learned throughout their six week journey. Graham calls it the \u2018Exit Ticket\u2019 \u2013 a concept he came across in a book by Cathy N. Davidson called The New Education<\/em><\/a> <\/em>in which she discusses how the university as we know it has come to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a weekly podcast component of the course (which Graham has recorded himself), he discusses \u201cupending the game of being a student.\u201d The Exit Ticket<\/a> is intended to provide an opportunity for students to frame their own learning and their personal journey, encouraging them to reflect on their successes, their failures, ways they\u2019ve helped others and ways they were helped along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graham asks students to compare where they were, as historians, and their relationships with the digital in the beginning of the course with where they are now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s your opportunity to set the terms for how the story of your time in this class gets told,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStudents will know whether this class has changed their approach to history. And this class was never about assessing whether they could write Python code or not. It has been designed to challenge student habits of thought, and to help them learn how to learn, and develop resilience in the face of \u2018fails\u2019 of all kinds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Crafting Digital History, Graham offers wisdom and compassion in equal measure. A section of the course site labelled Learning Outcomes includes a subsection titled \u201cWhen Life Intervenes\u201d and encourages students to reach out if they\u2019re struggling \u2013 no questions asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing we can\u2019t roll with in this class,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The COVID-19 health pandemic has challenged postsecondary institutions to extensively reconfigure their teaching and learning models. And while there has long been impassioned discussion on how the contemporary university might continue to evolve to match our increasingly digitally centred realities, the health crisis necessitated that all classes move online in the span of about a week. \u201cMoving everything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[621,576,585],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-29437","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-current-students","cu_story_type-digital-humanities","cu_story_type-history"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/29437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/29437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32097,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/29437\/revisions\/32097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=29437"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=29437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}