This final project took me on a roller coaster ride. I will admit that I had too many ideas and had trouble narrowing down what I would ultimately focus on; however, every time I thought I finally settled on a topic something deter me from the idea. 

One key point of my project didn’t change which is the connection to community college. After presenting my proposal to the class, I decided my project would be on creating a webpage that would highlight information expressing the benefit of attending community college.  

Boy was I thankful for the environmental scan portion of our proposal. I had originally thought I reviewed everything, however unfortunately it didn’t cross my mind to see if CUNY had any content on their webpage. As I was still in the early stages of the project the idea to check popped into my head, and there it was https://www.cuny.edu/admissions/twoyear-degrees/ a webpage that I was essentially envisioning for my project proposal. This made me rethink how I should proceed with the project. I remember one suggestion when selecting a project is expanding on current work. Therefore, that’s what I chose to do; the goal of my project is to expand and reorganize the two-year degree webpage to entice students to enroll in community college.

While hiccups like rethinking the final project were stressful, I really enjoyed the course and assignments. I was pushed out of my comfort zone when working on each praxis and even the final project. I have limited knowledge of coding and I don’t consider myself a big reader, but that’s why I enjoyed working on the praxis, the area was new to me.

I did have a couple of concerns given this is my first semester, and it was online. One concern was that I wouldn’t feel like I would be able to contribute to class discussions. I was happy that that wasn’t the case, and it was due to the openness of the discussion. It was nice to be able to hear others’ thoughts and connect with them. Lastly, while the course was online, and I had no clue what to expect, the class overall was approachable, and I was still able to connect with classmates in and outside of the classroom. 

What intrigued me to join the DH is the Digital Pedagogy study. Needless to say, I was excited about our readings on Pedagogy. What stood out to me the most was our reading “How Not to Teach Digital Humanities“. 

“We pair “digital” with “humanities” and feel we have something revolutionary, but for our undergraduate students the word “digital” is profoundly unimpressive. Their music is digital. Their television is digital. Many of their books and school materials are and have always been digital. To brag that our humanities (or our liberal arts) are digital is to proclaim that we have met a base requirement for modern communication. It would be like your bank crowing that you can check your account online. Of course you can. At this point, you would only notice if you could not do so.” 

This quote stood out to me because it’s true we are living in a world where we have come to expect many if not everything to be digital. When I read about the bank account, I related way too well to this quote. One of my accounts had the app and had Zelle way before the other. By the time my other bank account provided me the app, all I could say to myself is finally! 

However, although we are surrounded by technology it doesn’t mean everyone is tech-savvy. This quickly became obvious during the pandemic when we had to rush to be remote. My program helped both students and teachers get acclimated to their new learning/teaching life. I also had the opportunity to be a part of a research team focused on “lessons learned”. One of those lessons is that both teachers and students had different levels of comfortability with technology. 

I immediately thought about these “lessons learned when reading “The necessity of such scaffolding brings us back to the mistaken notion of the “digital native”—a notion, I would argue, that leads to frustration for both students and teachers. The idea that our students must have innate technological skills because they have grown up in a computer-saturated world is equal, to my mind, with assuming all drivers must be excellent mechanics or auto designers because they have spent so much time behind the wheel or, perhaps more germanely, assuming all students must be innately gifted writers because they have grown up around books and paper.” Both teachers and students play the blame game.  

After this reading and after attending workshops, what I came to realize is that there may already be work implemented that is considered digital pedagogy. As Cordell recommends, the idea is to start small and integrate when possible. Be sure to scaffold, because it’s not evident that all students will comprehend; lastly, think locally. 

Last semester, my colleagues and I read the novel Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. This novel is set in a world different from ours. Children have artificial friends (af), and most children go through a process called ‘lifted’; which is when their intelligence is artificially engineered. This novel is narrated by Klara an af, who is always learning, in order for her to be the best af for her child Josie.  

For this praxis, I chose the tool Voyant. Unlike me thinking of what text to select for this assignment; I was thankful for how simple it is to use the tools.  I jumped right in and viewed the tutorial as needed. At first glance, I was surprised when I read the summary to see words such as I’m and said, are considered most frequent.  Additionally, if someone were to analyze the text based on frequent words, they would think the novel is about Josie and the mother. While in parts, it’s true about Josie, the novel is not about her relationship with her mom.

There are many themes identified for this novel. Within one of the book reviews I had read, the themes identified are life, love, and mortality. Based on notes and conversations I had with my colleagues, some themes we identified are curiosity, empathy, loneliness, courage, and religion. After reflecting on the themes, I settled on focusing on life, love, and mortality, as I felt it still connected to some of the other themes. As seen below on the trend, I selected words, that I felt connected best with the themes. I was stunned that based on the theme and some major discussions, that some of these words weren’t mentioned as much as others. 

Klara is powered by solar, and therefore was taught that the sun provides nourishment; which is her form of life. Rick, Klara, and Josie’s mother have one thing in common and that is the love they have for Josie. In determining what is best for their children and out of love, as mentioned earlier parents lifted their kids and bought them an af.  

Between the af and being lifted it seems that the idea of mortality is almost nonexistent.  Towards the end of the novel, Klara reflects and states “Mr Capaldi believed there was nothing special inside Josie that couldn’t be continued. He told the Mother he’d searched and searched and found nothing like that. But I believe now he was searching in the wrong place. There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her. That’s why I think now Mr Capaldi was wrong and I wouldn’t have succeeded.” The love, of the mother, is what leads her to not give up. It gave her the thought of trying to make Josie (her sick child) live longer even if it wasn’t as a mortal. 

To conclude, I understand why it has been expressed in our course that there’s meaning that is not always established with the use of these tools. The common words for this text do not fully reflect the story or themes of the novel. Using the cirrus (word cloud) as a visual, you will suspect the novel is primarily about Josie and the mother, and barely about Klara. I do see the benefits of using the text analysis to compare readings, although I would have some concerns about possibly misinterpreting the information if I haven’t already read some text. In terms of the tool, as mentioned, it was user-friendly. However, I do admit I have more to learn, as I’m still trying to understand how to best gather certain details within the corpus. There were other tools like the TermsBerry and Links I had planned on using, though upon writing I realized it wouldn’t properly reflect what I wanted.   

Within the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to attend two workshops. One was on “Intro to Educational Game Design” and the other on “Fostering Engagement and Participation Using Multi-modal Learning”. While I am not teaching, I do train mentors at LaGuardia Community College, and felt that these workshops can help support my work. Both workshops provided new terms to some of what I was already doing and provided me with new ideas. 

For starters in “Intro to Educational Game Design”, I learned two new terms: gamification and game-based learning (GBL). While both terms can be used to approach Educational Game Design, the goal is to consider the outcome and assessment you want.  Additionally, I was introduced to some game principles: identity, risk taking, well-ordered problem, pleasantly frustrating, and situated meanings.  

With this knowledge I realized that I was already incorporating educational games to my training. One educational game I always include is role play. I provide my mentors scenarios in which the objective is for them to respond as if they are already mentors. This would qualify as the identity principle and fall under GBL. Another educational game I sometimes use is Kahoot to test out their knowledge of topics discussed during training. Based on my understanding of the types of approaches, this would be gamification, because it has extrinsic motivation, which is trying to place in the top three. In terms of the principle, I would identify this as risk taking, since the game is designed as multiple choice, with a time limit. Instinctively one selects a choice before time runs out, because they want the points. 

Like “Intro to Educational Game Design”, I realized that I was already fostering engagement and participation through the use of multi-modal learning, particularly more within the last year. The idea behind multimodal pedagogy is to encourage creativity by including a combination of text, images, motion or audio. Multimodal learning should also challenge students, allow them to engage more, use existing skills, create their own meaning and more.  

A primary tool used at our college is ePortfolio. One assignment on ePortfolio, that we assigned towards the end of training is called Peer identity. For this assignment, the mentors write about why they are a Peer Advisor, the strengths they bring to the role, etc. Within this assignment they are encouraged to include an image. Some choose a picture of themselves, while others choose an image that represents the department they are placed to support.  

Given our work online, within this past year, I have used many engagement tools, such as Jamboard, and Padlet. Both tools have been used to allow peers to collaborate with one another, for icebreakers or to dissect readings or discussions we had during training. I came away from the workshop with a new idea on how I can incorporate Padlet into another part of my training. 

While these two workshops were unique, it had a common goal which is to have students, or in my case mentors, learn in an engaging way. My takeaways from both workshops were a clearer understanding of what I am currently doing. Having that clear understanding has allowed me to think of other ways I can engage my mentors either through educational games or multimodal pedagogy. It also provided me with ideas of how I can enhance areas of my training by incorporating new tools or adapting topics and using tools I already know. 

This past summer after reading the novel Klara and the Sun at work, my colleagues and I were asked to think about a line of inquiry. My inquiry is around stigma in community colleges. I believe that stigma is connected to a person’s mindset, which can be affected by a person’s background such as gender, and race. This led me to think about mapping community colleges student populations. 

Mapping platform 

A determining factor of what platform I would use for the praxis is that I didn’t want my map to be static. Although I knew leaflet would provide endless opportunity, I do not currently possess the confidence to use an interface that requires a lot of coding.  With that in mind, I opted for Tableau. It was easy to install the desktop app and to upload the data, however I struggled to populate the map. 

Mapping 

Tableau needs coordinates, however if possible, it will generate the longitudes and latitudes. Given that I was using the community college address, and the fact that tableau generated longitudes and latitude, I thought I was fine. Unfortunately not all of the community colleges were showing.  This resulted in me having to research how to get the coordinates.  

I discover a google add on called geocode. Which allows me to convert a list of addresses on google sheets into coordinates. If you have multiple Gmail like myself, the add on may have difficulties working. What worked for me was switching to incognito mode.  

Formatting the data 

As part of the interactive mapping, I wanted to present some of the data as a pie. It took some time to work on the marks to understand how to create the pie. Once I figured it out, I unfortunately ran into another hurdle. The design of my map makes it too cluster to present the race population. I then tried to populate the gender population and discovered that when hovering over the data it only gives the percentage of that gender. If I chose to include the percentage of both genders, it would then duplicate one of the gender percentages, which could confuse the audience viewing my map. 

Aside from the visual presentation, I unfortunately encountered some other data struggles. One item I couldn’t figure out, is how to organize my data so the gender (male and female) would be next to each other, as well as the race. Another origination issue I discovered is that not all names of the community colleges are visible, one must zoom in to view some of the other community colleges due to an overlap on the other community college’s name. 

Conclusion 

My mapping concept came pretty easy to me, I wish I could say making it come to life was just as easy.  I had to work on organizing the data, a bit more than I expected, and Tableau sadly was more of a challenge than I imagined it to be. One major takeaway I got out of creating this map, is your vision of the map may change, as you need to determine what is the priority. While I really wanted to make the map visually appealing and have the data be more interactive, the priority was being able to provide all data. Lastly, after further exploring Tableau, I can see myself enjoying it for data visualization, however I am not certain about creating more maps.  

Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash

On September 24^th I attended HASTAC’s Digital Fridays, an online workshop series hosted by HASTAC scholars. This Digital Friday workshop was on How to be a humanist in tech. I got to hear from four panelists discuss their experience as humanities PhDs transitioned into tech; this included possible tech jobs to apply to, how to frame your digital humanities experience in your resume, cover letter, and in interviews, as well as how digital humanities are used in their day to day at work.  

Prior to this workshop, I didn’t put much thought into the type of tech positions available in this role. I mainly focused on how my previous experience could connect to DH. There were a couple of talking points that caught my eye. For starters like me, most, if not all, the panelists had an educational work background. Second, as someone that didn’t think about possible tech positions, I was presently surprised to know there are plenty of positions that welcome those with little to no programming experience. 

 However, there was one discussion that intrigued me the most, it was in reference to how to use our humanities background. In the panel it was said, for humanists, it’s often easier for them to find a solution to a problem. Due to the projects or thesis worked, humanists know how to breakdown an issue and determine the cause. I was stunned to hear this at first, because I was strictly thinking literally, how can it be if the engineers have the technical background. However, I then remember something that my husband (software engineer) often tells me: I think of worst-case scenarios, because as an engineer you learn to think ahead on possible problems that may occur so you can fix them. While they may have thought of the problem, like was said in the panel, it doesn’t mean they found the root cause. 

I enjoyed this workshop because I witnessed another side of digital humanities. Like me, many of the audience members are new to programming, so it was refreshing to hear that there are positions out there with no programming experience required for those interested in the tech field. Lastly, while we all apply our prior experiences to what we currently work on, I enjoyed connecting to those that have a similar background as me, it allowed me to view possible future opportunities. 

Before digital humanities (DH) the term was humanities computing. One benefit that Gold thinks of the new term is that “digital humanities implied a form of humanism”. When thinking about humanism it’s “any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate” (dictionary.com). Digital humanities among other things are composed of research, teaching, invention, and what can be redefined as the main focal point, humanism. 

Colored Conventions Project (CCP) covers the general terminology of digital humanities, but it can also focuses on humanism. As mentioned in their site “the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) is a scholarly and community research project dedicated to bringing the seven decades-long history of nineteenth-century Black organizing to digital life.” CCP is composed of their research: digital records, exhibits, teaching, news and events. With humanism in mind, CCP is operating on the digital humanities of today. DH of today is defined as a scholarship/pedagogy that is visible to the public 24-7 in an unaccustomed way for those to collaborate. An innovative way of CCP collaborating with others which is their use of twitter.  Twitter “harbors networks of people who have been working together, sharing research, arguing, competing, and collaborating for many years.” 

CCP was created with the human interest of sharing seven decades-long history of nineteenth-century Black. It continued the humanism aspect of DH with the information shared on their platform that lives 24-7 for those to collaborate from around the world. Additionally it also presents ways for others to network and connect with shared interest, via twitter. 

References

Gold, Matthew K. 2012. The Digital Humanities Moment In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. University of Minnesota Press.

“CCP.” The Colored Conventions Project, 12 Mar. 2020, coloredconventions.org/about/.