projects for their intended audiences, including the public. If students understand that they are working on digital projects that are for the general public, their work quality changes to reflect that.
Collaboration and application are not as important when the project being worked on is relatively rudimentary. Instead, students need to be pushed to ask larger “what if” questions. They need to develop the keys of humanistic inquiry, the questions and arguments that follow a viable topic. According to historian Jim Cullen, “Good questions have the power to turn meaningless information into meaningful answers.”8 Choosing strong research questions provokes students into working through the topic.
Closely related to collaboration and application are skills and streamlining, tools that reveal how DH is more than website design. After students have been exposed to some of the basics of DH and they have used it in a structured, collaborative environment, it is valuable to push them to refine their skills and find the tools that they may need in their own work. The skills acquired in this component are often more in-depth and specific to certain platforms and projects as opposed to general tools. Skills and streamlining are part of establishing a set of digital tools for the students’ DH toolbox to use beyond the university setting.
Students gain an independence in their research and often take ownership of DH as they are gaining skills and streamlining their approaches. This is possibly the best area for extension outside of the traditional university classroom setting. Instead, as students progress toward independent projects they gain the ability to develop their own projects. The skills that make up the increasingly advanced and specialized parts of DH need to be the focus at this stage. Undergraduates can be introduced to the components of DH projects that seek to answer complex questions. For example, utilizing social network analysis tools may allow students to develop new historical questions to ask of people of the past. Similarly, students may incorporate historical GIS into projects that seek answers to relationships between space and time. Choosing the right set of DH tools to address the questions being asked, or at least point to a way that the question might be answered, is important and a topic that should not be introduced too early but only when students are developing their interests. It is at this point that the “toolbox” is sufficiently full so the student can choose the right resource or skill to answer the question that they are seeking to answer. To expand on one of the examples above, students seeking to figure out a relationship between space and time will choose the tool that best suits them rather than being told which of the many resources to use.
Some digital humanists with advanced knowledge in the technical side of DH projects have developed tools for others to use that may be accessible to students, at some point, but might have been too complex if introduced too early. For example, one of the first technical textual analysis tools, TokenX, required a significant technical understanding for writing and publishing. The code and technical understanding demanded more skills than most undergraduates might have, yet the end product was widely usable. While the technological skills needed to create TokenX several years ago were rarely seen in humanists, today many humanities scholars have developed their own tools from their understanding of computers and programming languages. Many of these tools are available through GitHub and other repositories.9
Getting students to explore difficult topics using digital tools is interesting, but getting students to ask new questions and incorporate new digital tools is exciting. The “Programming Historian” began as a website to explain the technological side of digital humanities tools and has expanded into various programming languages in a peer-reviewed online publication.10 William Turkel’s original idea that understanding computers and applying them to the humanities can be collaborative and invigorating appeals to many who see the link between humanities and computing. Similarly, the DiRT Directory of digital research tools was an attempt to break down the barriers of humanities computing and digital needs.11 The wide array of tools from website design to data management that was cataloged through the DiRT Directory allowed many humanities scholars to use digital tools of which they may not have been aware. While the DiRT Directory is no longer supported, the wiki is still available and useful. When projects like DiRT Directory and Programming Historian are combined, students will have access to skills and streamlining that they may need for their own projects.
As undergraduates begin refining their skills and streamlining their research interests, it is essential for them to be creating their own projects. Student projects in the digital humanities can ask innovative questions and seek bold answers that often go beyond the traditional research papers, yet the basic skills of humanities research and inquiry are essential. Students can interact with both traditional approaches and innovative applications of digital humanities. Students may be more comfortable writing traditional research papers than attempting to create digital humanities projects. When teaching with DH, it is important to ensure that the projects not be intimidating to students. Instead, DH can be applied after other research is completed. This way students may be interacting with the display and text of a DH project, for example, but not be using DH as a research component itself. In history classes, students can write a traditional research paper and apply DH tools after the initial project is completed.
When students engage with DH in gradually increasing measure, their long-term interaction will increase with their overall involvement. This process of “scaffolding” involves engaging DH students early with simple concepts and interactions and gradually getting those same students to apply and understand DH as a set of tools that the humanities can use to broaden research and understanding. The last step in the process of teaching with digital humanities is for students to create with DH. Student-generated projects should allow the student to develop a new idea but be based, initially, on prior research. This will be the culmination of the scaffolding effect on research. Students’ work can then focus on the DH components.
For the final step in teaching with DH, students’ previous research and technological understanding is foundational. Students need to learn more tools, but this might look more like the integration of various components. For example, one DH project might involve a timeline of the events surrounding John F. Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs invasion. A secondary DH project of the same Bay of Pigs invasion could create a KML file using Google Earth.12 At the end stage, the student might use a tool like MIT’s Exhibit to blend the timeline and the map into one coherent piece. Shifting the work to a combined project would take more technological understanding, but a student with the background of two relatively simple DH projects should be able to develop a more complex project using an increased level of technological knowledge.
Teaching with digital humanities broadens the usage and exposure of already important humanities research while developing skills that students may apply outside of the classroom. Students and instructors alike can create new understandings of information through digital humanities that the public may appreciate more than student papers. Many students appreciate humanities classes more when they are learning through DH. Reaching a point of student work that is primarily digital, while a new idea, is one that colleges and universities are embracing, even if it is challenging the traditions of the humanities.
NOTES
1. “Francis Bacon Network [2, 1562–1626, 61–100%],” Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, accessed May 17, 2018, http://www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/?ids=10000473&min_confidence=60&type=network.
2. “Mapping Occupation,” accessed May 17, 2019, http://www.mappingoccupation.org.
3. Stefan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell, “Voyant Tools,” 2016, accessed May 17, 2019, http://voyant-tools.org.
4. William G. Thomas III, “Railroads and the Making of Modern America,” accessed May 21, 2018, http://railroads.unl.edu.
5. “Google Sheets,” accessed May 21, 2019, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets.
6. “TimelineJS,”