Monthly Archives: November 2014

Turning “Digital Natives” into Digital Historians

digital history, HIST696, public history, readings

One of themes that spans across the readings for this week about teaching digital history, is the notion that “digital natives” (the generation of students who have grown up with computers) are expected by their professors to be comfortable and confident in their use of technology and media. However, despite knowing how to use Facebook, YouTube and other social media, these students are lacking in their digital literacy skills. Understanding, interpreting, evaluating and creating media is not the same as consuming media, and are skills that need to be honed by future digital historians.

Through several case studies, we can see how professors are attempting to teach students these vital skills, with varying degrees of success. At first glance, T. Mills Kelly’s experiment of having his class create an historical hoax struck me as a bad idea. However, throughout the course, the students were able to learn media literacy skills by being the hoax creators themselves. The fact that the hoax was meant to be revealed at the end the semester helped sway me into believing that this tactic was clearly more educational rather than mischievous. However, the end result was much more convincing. The students had actually learned how easy it is for hoaxes to fool people, how important it is to check sources, and actual maritime history about the Lower Chesapeake during the post-Civil War era by concocting a fake researcher who has discovered the “Last American Pirate.” While reading the chapter, I was actually glad to see that the students’ hoax had worked so well as to trick the academic world of historians, as I am sure that reinforced to the students the benefits of information and media literacy.

Another hands-on experiment that didn’t go as well as the professor had hoped, was Allison Marsh’s attempt to teach Omeka to her museum studies students. In trying to prepare her students for the real world that is increasingly more reliant on digital technology, Marsh found that her students weren’t as tech-savvy as she had thought. Omeka isn’t extremely hard to use, and I’m finding it very useful in my halfway completed final project, but for students who haven’t had to create metadata or lack basic graphic design knowledge, I can see how it could be a burden for some students. I think Marsh is correct in telling her students that they no longer have a choice in working with technology and digital media, as there is no going back to purely analog museum exhibits. From my own personal experience, if I visit a museum’s webpage and they don’t offer any type of virtual exhibit, my interest immediately wanes. I’m curious to see how Marsh’s 10 year project unfolds, and I hope future classes are still required to build some form of digital exhibit, if only to stay relevant within the public history field.

While it can appear baffling that digital natives are not prone to using technology for educational purposes as much as we want them to, I think there is room to grow. If more professors take on new approaches to using technology and digital media in the classroom by applying more active learning techniques such as Kelly, Marsh, Rabinowitz and Trepanier have done, the more capable students will become in utilizing technology and media in their own research. Some of these students may go on to work as digital historians and possibly go on to teach their own students, hopefully passing on the lessons they have learned from their professors who have been able to bridge the gap between using and consuming media.

Notes from Discussion on Copyright/Open Access/Fair Use

copyright, digital history, HIST696, readings

I think Monday’s discussion on Copyright/Open Access/Fair Use went rather well considering that the topic is very nuanced, especially when dealing with digital history. The discussion on the embargoing of dissertations wasn’t as vociferous as I had anticipated, but maybe my expectations were based upon the strong criticism that followed the AHA’s statement on the subject on various blogs and comment sections. Our class discussion was much more milder, although several good points were made.

It appears that the AHA Statement was a sounding board for historians to express their opinions on issues that are much larger than the actual statement. The issue of embargoing dissertations isn’t the problem – the problem is that the field in general has been slow to adapt to the digital world. This is evidenced by their lack of ability to establish set criteria for promotion and tenure for digital historians, which is also true for public historians. The AHA seems happy to stand by the book as the end-all be-all for Phd students after they complete their dissertation, but the AHA and universities can’t seem to break free of the printed final copy. This poses problems for digital historians who would be more likely to create something digitally than in traditional print format.

We did talk about Open Access models and how historians and other academic writers have been writing for free forever, and Open Access doesn’t really change that. In the author pays model of OA, academics are even asked to pay to publish. Compared to the sciences, the number of Open Access journals in the humanities is drastically low. A change in the overall system needs to happen in order for OA journals in the humanities to grow.

Overall, the discussion touched on many valid points that were culled from the week’s readings. I think some of our questions could have been rephrased or re-worded, as we didn’t get through all of them. We missed out on talking about the consequences of not being familiar with fair use in the art world, especially with art historians. The topic of copyright and fair use is complicated, but the more we know about it, the more confident we can be about what is acceptable to use in our digital projects.

To Embargo, or Not to Embargo (Your History Dissertation)

HIST696, readings, Uncategorized

Not actually being a Phd student and having to worry about what I’m going to do after writing a dissertation, I really had no idea that the issue of dissertation embargoes, especially in the history department, was such a divisive one. When the AHA issued their Statement on History Dissertation Embargoes last year, a chorus of critics in favor of Open Access quickly lashed out on much bigger problems than the statement intended to address. Some of these other issues that were mentioned in various blogs and comment sections, like promotion and tenure policies in the field and the business practices of book publishers, seemed to miss the point that the AHA was just trying to propose an action that would benefit junior scholars by allowing them more control of their finished work.

By allowing embargo periods of up to six years, junior scholars have the option of withholding their dissertations from being published online. On one hand, this option gives dissertation writers a choice in how they want their work to be accessed, in case they are in the process of negotiating a book deal with a publisher who would prefer that the dissertation should not be freely accessible. On the other hand, it limits the sharing of ideas and new research to fellow historians and other potential readers. I can see both sides of the argument, but personally I think I fall on the side of immediate access to dissertations, sans embargo, but I do think it should be the author’s choice. As someone who works in a library and often runs into journal embargoes (usually six months) while helping researchers access information, I know how frustrating it can be to be denied access to a particular article at the point of need.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to know what Mason’s stance on the embargo question was. I found the University Thesis & Dissertation Services (UTDS) FAQ page, which actually covered the embargo issue. As of last year, all dissertations must be submitted electronically to be stored in MARS (Mason Archival Repository Service), while individual academic departments can still require print copies. UTDS does provide an option to withhold finished works from public view for a specified time period. However, even if a student doesn’t want an embargo placed on their finished dissertation, they still must submit a form. The options for embargo periods are six months, a year, or 5 years, and if selected, the student must provide a reason for doing so, as well as collect signatures from committee chairs and the dean of their department.

It’s great that Mason is allowing students to chose whether or not they want their work to be made immediately available by allowing the embargo as an option as the AHA suggests in its statement, but I wonder if requiring signatures and an explanation makes it easier for students to just acquiesce to allowing public access as soon as it is uploaded to MARS. I would hope that more students would be more discerning, though, as they have put years of work into writing and completing a dissertation. Many factors contribute to such a big decision, and I am not sure what route I would choose, especially since I’m still just trying to finish a master’s degree and not sure what my potential dissertation would even be about at this stage. However, I feel more knowledgeable about the embargo debate from history student’s perspective now and not just from a librarian’s point of view.

Digital Scholarship: Moving Forward while Looking Back

digital history, digital scholarship, HIST696, readings

The readings about digital scholarship in the humanities this week have me thinking about  the future. As Hitchcock suggest that the book is being replaced by digital texts, I wonder what scholarship, print or digital, will look like in 25 – 50 years from now. Will books still be printed? Will something else come along that replaces digital texts? I cannot see into the future, but barring some type of catastrophic event, I cannot envision the technology we have today regressing. I can only picture it advancing, as it has been doing over the past 50 years. I feel as though right now we are in the middle of a transformation and in the near future, academics will no longer question the legitimacy of digital scholarship, as it will become fully integrated into our everyday lives.

As younger generations who are used to utilizing the web for research start moving to publishing online, as has already been happening, “traditional” historians will likely either jump on board, or get left behind. The argument that digital scholarship is less credible has been stated many times, and also disproven. With Will Thomas‘ and Dougherty, et al.’s writings about the peer reviewing practices on digital scholarship, it is obvious that credible and reviewed work can be digital.

By embracing the open culture of the web, more readers will have access to historical writing, which I think is a good thing. Academics are trapped between moving forward with the technology available to them to present their writings, teachings, and other forms of scholarships, and being held accountable to out-dated standards that privilege the monograph books. I agree with Galarza, Heppler, and Seefeldt’s Call to Redefine  Scholarship in the Digital Turn, as they encourage the American Historical Association to take a serious look at the current state of digital history, in order to keep up with modern tools available to historians. Their proposal has an emphasis on reevaluating the current standards for tenure and promotion by history departments, which speaks to the underlying issue that digital scholarship is still not taken as seriously as traditional methods.

My hope is that in 50 years or less, the discussions we have today on digital scholarship will be unnecessary, and we will look back on this time much like we look back on other innovations in history. By creating credible and well-researched digital history projects, as well as advocating for a change in the academy, digital scholarship will hopefully be as accepted just as much, if not more, than the print book in the years to come.

Using Games to Teach History

digital history, gaming, HIST696, readings

This week’s readings about history’s place in gaming brought up issues such as form over content, games as instructional aids, and whether or not games can be a worthy outlet for historical scholarship.  I have long believed that games can be a useful tool in the teaching and learning of a subject, but have been cautious in believing that historical games are historically accurate. Most games are created with the sole intent of entertaining and making profits, which can leave the educational component lacking. As a kid, I remember playing computer games in school, such as Oregon Trail. At the time, I didn’t consider that game to be educational since I loved playing it so much, but looking at it from my perspective now, I can see how it used an episode of American history to teach school kids about the strife of traveling West by covered wagon in 1848 (and also what dysentery was!). So even though I didn’t realized I was learning something, I actually was.

Looking at The Lost Museum or Pox and the City, I can relate to my childhood experience with Oregon Trail. By creating an interactive and 3-D mystery game, I can envision school children using this website to discover P.T. Barnum’s American Museum and its subsequent fire in 1865. However, whenever I find myself visiting the Lost Museum, I seem to navigate to the Search the Archive page, where I can find primary sources that relate to the museum itself, rather than playing the actual game.

With Pox and the City, the player is placed inside the world of Edinburgh circa 1800 amid an outbreak of smallpox. Taking a real-life event, such as Edward Jenner’s experimentation with inoculating smallpox victims with cowpox material, and turning that into a game that builds on narrative interaction with other players, helps the player learn about the social history of that real-life event. This game reminded me of another childhood favorite computer game that I played obsessively in 1995 called Dust: A Tale of the Wired West. Dust, while loosely based on an historical time period (American West, 1880s), made no claims of being an historical game, especially since it took place in the fictional town of Diamondback, New Mexico. However, thematic elements such as silver mining, Chinese immigrants, and Native Americans captured my interest and led me to do my own research on these topics outside of the game. The role of interactive narrative is also similar to Pox in the City, in that certain dialogue responses would yield different outcomes.

Based on my own experience and the articles this week about Pox in the City that highlight its historical accuracy and user interaction, the ability to educate through gaming seems undeniable. I also believe that historical games can be their own form of historical scholarship, as Trevor Owens ponders in his Play the Past entry. By changing the format of scholarship, historians are able to break out of the traditional mold of papers, articles and books, and engage audiences more interactively.