Anyone working to envision what the academy will look like in the near future will confront a cluster of related questions: How is technology changing the role of the teacher? the scholar? the student? How can we work to make sure these changes are for the good? How can faculty grasp new tools as they emerge while juggling the many demands of their profession?
On February 21st , 2006, Lehigh faculty and staff had the opportunity to discuss these questions with Edward L. Ayers, widely known as one of the leading figures bringing both optimism and realism to these topics. Ayers is Professor of History and Dean of the College and Graduate School at the University of Virginia . He is also the founder of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and the Virginia Center for Digital History . In this article I would like to try to capture some of the spirit of his visit by sharing a few of the specific questions he raised and by outlining the ideas he offered by way of answers. All quoted material is attributable to Ayers.
"By what alchemy does a digital repository turn into scholarship?"
Some faculty are creating repositories of digital objects (images, documents, etc) in order to make these objects more easily usable. By creating these repositories, the information becomes more widely accessible, and-often for the first time-searchable. Offering advice to those engaged in the creation of such repositories, Ayers recommended bearing in mind the difference between creating a set of online resources and actually doing something scholarly with what gets digitized. The process of gathering, digitizing, and organizing has great value, but it is merely a step in the creation of scholarship.
"What kind of tool would I want to use to write a book?"
Rather than accumulating information in a digital repository and then asking how it will turn into scholarship, Ayers recommended always keeping the research question and research project first. That is, design the digital project in terms of the work you as a scholar want to do. Select your information, design your databases, and create your interfaces to ensure that they will become a tool you can use to do the work you want to do.
"How can we visualize things we can't otherwise see?"
One of the great powers information technology offers is the ability to create simulations and visualizations of things that may otherwise be invisible or inaccessible to us. We have the potential to magnify, enhance, juxtapose, rearrange, and highlight. At their best, such modifications reveal features of things that would go unnoticed if we only had access to them in their original, non-digital form. By making such modified artifacts available in repositories, we create the potential for understanding that would otherwise be impossible.
"How do we get students to do real research and present it outside of the classroom?"
Getting students in touch with raw materials and involving them in genuine research can have a transformative effect on how they understand our disciplines. More, it can encourage them to see their academic work as having a broader impact than it would if they were merely writing a paper for a professor. Ayers discussed a course he teaches ' The Rise and Fall of the Slave South ,' in which each student is charged with the task of reviewing library materials from a particular year in order to identify key events. They then enter their descriptions and sources into a common database. In later assignments, students use this database to seek out historical patterns across the many events their peers have described . The point of the process is that students themselves engage with original materials, create a useful database, and then put it to use in their research projects. And, in the process, they create an online database useable by anyone with internet access. Ayers recounted that his students have described this process as 'the most exciting intellectual experience' they'd had in college.
"How can scholarship be transformed by technology?"
A recurring question faculty face when deciding whether it is worth their effort getting involved in digital scholarship is whether their work will be recognized and rewarded professionally. Junior faculty in particular must remain cognizant of this concern and should be appropriately cautious. He offered two recommendations. The first was to think in terms of hybrids, i.e., digital projects that generate traditional articles or books that stand on their own, but also refer back to the digital projects from which they grew. His own book "In the Presence of Mine Enemies"-an award-winning historical study offered in traditional textual form-grew out of the data he collected on his digital archive "The Valley of the Shadow." But the book is also supplemented by a website that allows readers to follow the footnotes back into the digitized sources in the Valley archive. The second solution was more bold. It began with a question: What is a work of scholarship really supposed to do and how can digitally-enhanced works do it even better than traditional forms? Ayers put the scholarly challenge this way: "People get tenure for making an argument that intervenes in a professional discourse and changes it." It follows that a digital project that fails to meet these goals cannot expect to be taken seriously as scholarship. So how might digital scholarship do better than scholarship in traditional form? Again, by returning to the fundamentals, "If the scholarly form demands analysis, evidence and connection to existing literature, then digital scholarship must show how it can do all of these things better than analog scholarship." An example can be found in the article Ayers did with William Thomas for the American Historical Review, " The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities ," This digital article is but one example of the promise of digital scholarship. It give readers direct access to digitized versions of source material, it offers an enhanced presentation by relying on a variety of media, and it supports its claims with more evidence and analysis than one could possibly offer in traditional textual forms.
Last question: "Can we transform teaching by transforming scholarship?"
Because digital projects are often collaborative in nature, they provide many opportunities for student involvement. By envisioning the digital tools we want for our professional research and organizing our courses in ways that involve students in the creation of these tools, we make it possible for students to work closely with original source material, we allow them to confront genuine puzzles and problems, we give them direct experience using the methods we use in our disciplines, and we engage them with the promise of creating a product that is accessible far beyond their particular classroom. Certainly, digital scholarship is not the only way to accomplish such forms of student learning but it is indisputable that it creates the potential for forms of research and dissemination that would otherwise be impossible.
I believe this model of teaching and scholarship resonated with many Lehigh faculty. In fact, many already involved in similar projects received advice and encouragement from Ayers during his visit. It is our hope others will be inspired as well. If you would like to learn more about what Lehigh faculty are doing with Digital scholarship, see http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu . Lehigh faculty who would like to talk with someone about getting involved in a project or to see other examples should contact Julia Maserjian, Digital Library Project Coordinator, or Greg Reihman, Director of Faculty Development .
Upcoming Lehigh Lab Forum events:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~infdli/
|
