As a teacher and RIT Writing Commons director, I’m interested in the ways that the digital humanities and digital literacies provide us with opportunities for new and/or different ways of making meaning with academic texts in disciplinary contexts. In my advanced writing course, I require students to take one of their academic papers, preferably written in for a course in their major, and remediate it in another medium. Students are then required to write a reflective essay that explores the affordances and constraints of their chosen medium(s), their understanding of how their choices provide access to new forms of knowledge, how the medium reflects their rhetorical goals, and how this medium provides access to new disciplinary and non-disciplinary audiences. I’m interested in exploring how we might leverage resources and approaches in the digital humanities to support our understanding of writing and literacy in disciplinary contexts. How might we leverage the digital humanities in writing courses in ways that support new ways of thinking about academic texts? How might we provide students opportunities to learn and convey complex concepts through interactive media and mediums that support their understanding of both traditional academic discourses and alternative kinds of knowledge and meaning-making? How might remediation projects support this process?

Many of us are engaged in undergrad DH/DHSS curriculum in some way — minors, certificates, degrees — and yet, still trying to figure out the fundamentals. What should undergrad DH curricula offer? What should students know and be able to do after taking our courses? Is there a canon? Are there core competencies? Is there a text in this class? And — the decade-old question that lingers annoyingly: What should we teach in an entry-level DH/DHSS 101?

If you’ve logged in to the RIT  THATCamp site, my friend, you’ve used WordPress! Want to learn more about this tool? This session consists of overviews of two free website content creation tools: WordPress (blog content management system) and Tiki-Toki (web-based timeline maker).  First, we will review the ins and outs of WordPress, including site types (.org and .com),  themes, imagery, and layout. Following this, we will examine four digital exhibits and take a peek at the backend interface of each. Second, we will move into the timeline portion of our session by developing content on Tiki-Toki.

While the projects discussed are base in museum studies and archival research, the tools and approaches may be of interest to other disciplines and practices.

Users should bring laptops or tablets to use during this session. And, if possible, please create an account on WordPress.com and Tiki-Toki.com before joining the session.

Looking forward to sharing and learning with you!

Collaborative world building is a process by which students learn to think critically about social forces at play in a given place at a specific moment in history and how these forces influence the lived experiences of the people who live in the world. Students write a metanarrative describing the governance, economics, social values, and cultural influences and then populate a wiki with entries for people, places, and things and pin them to a map.

Collaborative world building is useful for creative projects such as creating post-apocalyptic futures, alternate histories, or fanfiction in preexisting worlds  and could be used in courses in literature, history, or other humanities. Participants will learn about the pedagogical theories underlying collaborative world building including its roots in role-playing games and will participate in the creation of a brand new world of their choosing.

In a 45-minute session we will create a world from scratch. In a 90-minute session we will create a world from scratch, then add some people, places, and things to a Google map.

For the 45-minute session, no computer needed though it might be useful. For the 90-minute session, laptops are required (it’s very finnicky to work on tablets, fyi).

Many large projects cross semesters but that can often mean different student teams working on the same project. How do we handle that transition so everyone is caught up, not only for the technological aspects but also for the content/context pieces of that project? Sometimes this means the technology has advanced and everyone needs retraining. Almost always students new to the content need to catch up–and this can be a real problem for interactive storytelling . . .

I’d like to propose a “make” session in which participants think about the ways in which technology can be used to promote higher order thinking (which would include creativity/innovation in my mind- and that’s my interest in this THATCamp).

Is it possible to construct new types of digital assessment beyond multiple choice, etc. (basically all of the Canvas/Blackboard/Moodle etc. options for question types) that allow educators to model and evaluate skills like analysis, synthesis, etc.? What might that look like?

Are there effective ways to model thinking beyond text?

Could the solution also include tutorials on these thinking skills, as they are sometimes difficult to express and model, even for educators?

Can we sidestep the present obsession with AI and data (robotic teaching perhaps) and use technology to intensify the value of the educator as an interpreter/modeler of higher order thinking?

Want more information on our THATCamp? Check out the About page. This page will be filling up with session proposals. Got an idea for proposal? Here are the instructions on how to propose a session. We’ll vote on the sessions and finalize the schedule the morning of the conference.