Digital Humanities in Practice
Undergraduate course
- ECTS credits
- 15
- Teaching semesters
- Autumn
- Course code
- DIKULT207
- Number of semesters
- 1
- Teaching language
- English
- Resources
- Schedule
Course description
Objectives and Content
The course focuses on the development of both theoretical and practical skills in digital humanities. Students will learn how digital platforms can be used in research in the humanities. In the theoretical component of the course, students read academic texts on digital humanities research and do practical research on selected projects in the digital humanities. The course focuses on student active research. Students gain practical research experience as digital humanists by developing projects in ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. This knowledge base is a scientific, open access, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents creative work, research, events and actors in the field of electronic literature.
Students in the course will gain practical experience through working with one or more of the following areas:
- editing: researching, writing, and editing entries about electronic literature in the Knowledge Base.
- web design and user interface development
- project planning and implementation; team-work and academic collaboration
- documentation
- visualization based research methods
This course provides a unique opportunity for students to get real-world experience working with scholars on an international research project in electronic literature and the digital humanities, to develop oral and written research skills, and to contribute to the state of the art in these fields.
The ELMCIP Knowledge Base is based at the University of Bergen and can be accessed at http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase
Contributions to the ELMCIP Knowledge Base are publicly accessible and licenced with a Creative Commons, non-commercial share-alike license (nc-sa).
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge
The candidate has:
- an overview of current debates and concepts in the digital humanities, and familiarity with a selection of digital humanities projects
- a fundamental understanding of online research platforms
Skills
The candidate can:
- research and write short critical descriptions of works and actors in an aesthetic field for a scholarly database
- assess the usefulness of a range of digital humanities strategies in specific scholarly work
- discuss and prioritise organisational and design choices in developing a scholarly database
- develop distant reading research strategies to study trends and patterns in a large dataset
- present their evolving research project orally in a concise and well illustrated manner
General competence
The candidate
- has practice-based experience in team-work and with working with an international research project
- can use digital research methods
ECTS Credits
Level of Study
Semester of Instruction
Place of Instruction
Required Previous Knowledge
Recommended Previous Knowledge
Credit Reduction due to Course Overlap
Access to the Course
Teaching and learning methods
There are twenty weeks in a semester, where ten weeks usually have classes. A week with classes will usually contain one class and one workshop lasting two hours each. The class schedule will be available by the beginning of the semester.
Student workload is estimated at 20 hours per week from the beginning of the semester until the exam, including during weeks without classes. This time should be spent attending classes, reading the assigned readings, completing assignments, contributing to the database projects, and gathering relevant material in the library and online (books, articles, videos, etc).
If there are fewer than five students enrolled in the course, the institute can choose to reduce the hours of instruction, as per guidelines published on Mitt UiB. If this is the case, students will be able to find information about the revision of course hours at the start of the semester, before the deadline for semester registration (1. September).
Compulsory Assignments and Attendance
A mandatory oral presentation about the evolving project shall be given in class. The oral presentation shall present the student's practical work and situate it within the context of the digital humanities.
All learning activities in the course are compulsory, including classroom activities and assigned work on the database outside of the classroom. Course participation will be approved by the course coordinator. If a student is absent for more than 25% of classes, the student cannot take the exam.
Forms of Assessment
Grading Scale
Assessment Semester
Reading List
Readings from scholarly articles in the digital humanities, current debates in social media, critical writing on electronic literature for use in practical assignments, and use and development of the ELMCIP Knowledge Base.
All material is usually in English. Students can use and refer to sources in other languages ¿¿in assignments and exams.
The list of compulsory and recommended subjects, as far as this is known in advance, is available on Mitt UiB before the start of the semester and is updated continuously as needed. The books will be available at Akademika before the start of the semester, or downloadable as e-books.