Pedagogy and public-funded research: an exploratory study of skills in digital humanities projects
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-06-2018-0094 |
| Date | 13 May 2019 |
| Published date | 13 May 2019 |
| Pages | 550-576 |
| Author | Deborah A. Garwood,Alex H. Poole |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Pedagogy and public-funded
research: an exploratory study of
skills in digital humanities projects
Deborah A. Garwood and Alex H. Poole
College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Public-funded research in digital humanities (DH) enhances institutional and individual research
missions and contributes open data to a growing base of globally networked knowledge. The Digging into
Data 3 challenge (DID3) (2014–2016) is an international, interdisciplinary and collaborative grant initiative,
and the purpose of this paper is to explore skills that faculty and students brought to projects and others they
acquired and shared on collaborative teams.
Design/methodology/approach –Rooted in the naturalistic paradigm, this qualitative case study centers
on semi-structured interviews with 53 participants on 11 of the 14 DID3 projects. Documentary evidence
complements empirical evidence; analysis is constructivist and grounded.
Findings –Hailing from diverse academic research institutions, centers and repositories, participants
brought 20 types of discipline-based or interdisciplinary expertise to DID3 projects. But they reported
acquiring or refining 27 other skills during their project work. While most are data-related, complementary
programming, management and analytical skills push disciplinary expertise toward new frontiers. Project-
based learning and pedagogy function symbiotically; participants therefore advocate for aligning problem-
solving skills with pedagogical objectives at home institutions to prepare for public-funded DH projects. A
modified content analysis juxtaposes DID3 skills with those advanced in 23 recent DH syllabi to identify
commonalities and gaps.
Originality/value –Pedagogy has an important yet under-researched and underdeveloped role in public-
funded DH research.
Keywords Skills, Data handling, Data literacy, Information literacy, Digital humanities pedagogy,
Information and library science, Public-funded research
Paper type Research paper
Technology has to be learned. It’s not like opening the refrigerator. (P11-02)
1. Introduction
Combining disciplinary expertise and computational science, digital humanities (DH) is
interdisciplinary, data-driven, usually collaborative and heavily indebted to library and
information science (LIS) (Poole, 2017). DH received international recognition in 2009 when a
consortium of three funders in the USA, UK and Canada announced the two-year Digging
into Data Challenge (DID1). DID1 encouraged scholarly experimentation. Propounding “one
culture”embracing both humanities and science research, it hailed a “new paradigm: a
digital ecology of data, algorithms, metadata and visualization tools”(Williford et al., 2012,
p. 3). Such public-funded projects mandate that teams refine data sets for open access,
enabling the public as well as scholarly communities of practice to benefit.
The third round of the Digging into Data Challenge (DID3) (2014–2016) featured ten
funders from four nations (the Netherlands joined the original three). DID3 funders
enjoined student participation on projects: Master’s and doctoral students as well as
post-doctoral researchers played crucial roles in the projects, and undergraduates also
assisted. DID3 represents an especially rich contemporary environment for examining
collaborative interdisciplinary research (IDR) practices and skills (Garwood and Poole,
2018; Poole and Garwood, 2018a, b).
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 75 No. 3, 2019
pp. 550-576
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-06-2018-0094
Received 16 June 2018
Revised 29 October 2018
Accepted 31 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
550
JD
75,3
Investigating international research teams’skills pedagogical and training practices, this
qualitative case study relies upon interviews with and documentation produced by 53
participants representing 11 of the 14 DID3 teams (Drexel University IRB 1601004139).
Research questions include:
RQ1. What skills and expertise do scholars bring to projects from their home institutions
and previous experiences whether individual or collaborative?
RQ2. What skills do they acquire and what skills do they impart to others on
international, collaborative, interdisciplinary projects such as DID3?
RQ3. How do they acquire and impart these skills?
RQ4. How does pedagogy inform DH and IDR more broadly (and vice versa)?
First, a literature review examines research on DH pedagogy. Second, a methods section
discusses the qualitative case study approach used. Findings, third, explore participants’
comments on acquiring skills individually and collaboratively, formally and informally.
Fourth, in the discussion, the blended learning processes and skills evident in the case
study are juxtaposed with a content analysis of DH syllabi. Fifth, a conclusion offers
recommendations, and suggests avenues of future research.
2. Literature review
Research on DH pedagogy is wanting. Hirsch (2012) rues the prevalence of “bracketing”:
“the almost systematic relegation of the word ‘teaching’(or its synonyms) to the status of
afterthought, tacked-on to a statement about the digital humanities after the word ‘research’
(or its synonyms), often in parentheses”(p. 5). Other scholars express similar concerns not
only regarding the lack of research on DH pedagogy, but also the concomitant lack of
agreement on what DH curricula should include (Brier, 2012; Clement, 2012; Davis et al., n.d.;
Losh, 2015; Spiro, 2012). Complicating matters, few DH instructors were themselves
educated in DH graduate programs; they may well have more to learn than their students
(McCarty, 2012; Rockwell and Sinclair, 2012). The lack of precedent for preparing students
for careers related to DH as well as the celerity of change in the field appears similarly
bedeviling (Reid, 2012).
Despite its ambiguous parameters in DH, pedagogy proves a fruitful way to stabilize the
field and to promote the usefulness of the humanities in higher education more broadly
(Hirsch, 2012; Waltzer, 2012). Hirsch’s (2012) edited volume took salutary steps, covering
topics such as digital editing, archives and public history, first year writing, digital cultural
mapping, the Walt Whitman Archive, programming, text analysis, digital history and
digital rhetoric. Parts of Scholz’s (2011) and Cohen and Scheinfeldt’s (2013) books are
similarly useful; the innovative “Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and
Experiments”, also merits praise (Davis et al., n.d.), as does Spiro’s Zotero clearinghouse of
DH syllabi (www.zotero.org/groups/454100/digital_humanities_pedagogy/items).
DH constitutes a community of practice (Burdick, 2012; Ross, 2012); therefore, scholars
see collaborative acculturation as the sine qua non of DH education. “Our understanding of
content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through
grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions”Brown and
Adler (2008) argue (p. 18). In their socialization into mastery, students learn to be full
participants in a given field: they constitute apprentices-cum-legitimate peripheral
participants (Brown and Adler, 2008; Mahony and Pierazzo, 2012; Scholz, 2011; Spiro,
2012; Wenger, 1999, 2000, 2006).
DH pivots on learning by doing and by producing, blending quantitative and qualitative
methods and focusing on practices and processes as well as intellectual and theoretical
551
Pedagogy and
public-funded
research
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