An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Building Learning Communities Within the Digital Humanities

Introduction
Recent research at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities
at King’s College London has focussed on the role and place
of the digital humanities in the academic curriculum of Higher
Education (see Jessop:2005, Jessop:forthcoming). This work
is based on the experience of both our undergraduate and
postgraduate programmes focusing particularly on the way in
which students are encouraged to integrate the content of
a variety of digital humanities courses and apply it to their
own research project. In the case of the undergraduates this is
developed in conjunction with their home department. These
courses are designed to train not just the new generation of
young scholars in our discipline but also the majority who will
gain employment in a variety of professions in industry and
commerce.
Our students come from a range of disciplines and backgrounds
within the humanities and what is highlighted in each case is
the necessity to ensure that their projects meet the scholarly
criteria of their home disciplines and the interdisciplinary
aspects of humanities computing. This emphasises the need for
training the students in collaborative method and refl ective
practice; the need to build a community of learning which will
lead to a community of practice. This paper discusses recent
research and initiatives within distance learning, focussing on
how these can be repurposed for campus-based courses, and
is illustrated by the fi ndings of their use in a digital humanities
course.
Context
There have been a number of initiatives that are pertinent
to this topic. The published report on the accomplishments
of the Summit on Digital Tools for the Humanities convened
in 2005 at the University of Virginia (http://www.iath.virginia.
edu/dtsummit/ ) identifi ed areas where innovative change was
taking place that could lead to what they referred to as “a new
stage in humanistic scholarship”. The style of collaboration
enabled by digital learning community tools is identifi ed as one
such area. This has been further reinforced at the National
Endowment of the Humanities hosted Summit Meeting of
Digital Humanities Centers and Funders held in April 2007 at
the University of Maryland. (https://apps.lis.uiuc.edu/wiki/display/DHC/Digital+Humanitie
s+Centers+Summit )
On the summit wiki among the areas of research priorities
and funder priorities John Unsworth lists:
• Collaborative work
• Teaching and learning
• Collaboration among scholars
(https://apps.lis.uiuc.edu/wiki/display/DHC/Areas+of+researc
h+priorities%2C+funder+priorities )
Building communities of learning and developing strategies
for collaborative working has been the subject of much study
within the distance learning community (Anderson:2004,
Brown:2006, Perry and Edwards:2005, Swan:2002, et al) and
here it is argued that this also needs to be a consideration
for campus-based academic programmes. The growing trend
among undergraduate programmes of a movement away from
set courses to the introduction of modular and credit systems
means that students no longer follow a single programme of
study. Their time is fragmented between their chosen course
options and they often only come together with their peers
for ‘core courses’. Thus in the last two decades study has
become more of an individual rather than community-based
activity. This trend needs to be compensated for by teaching
collaborative skills, the very same skills that are at the heart of
the majority of digital humanities research projects.
The ‘Community of Inquiry’ model (developed by Garrison,
Anderson and Archer:2000 and 2004) draws out the basic
elements which overlap to form the educational experience
of the distance learner: social, cognitive, and teaching
presence. This model is used as a framework to analyse the
effectiveness of asynchronous discussion methodologies
(which encourage refl ective practice), with particular regard
for cognitive presence (where students construct meaning
through communication with their peers, which is particularly
important in the development of critical thinking), when used
in campus-based courses.
Building Networked Communities for
Collaborative and Refl ective Teaching
and Learning
The highly collaborative nature of modern research practice
makes it clear that future humanities scholars need to be trained
in the collaborative process and to understand the importance
of critical refl ection (Jessop:2005, Jessop:forthcoming). This
emphasis on collaborative practice represents a shift in the
academic culture of humanities away from the popular funding
model of a single researcher towards one of team working
where no single person has complete control or ownership.
This is closer to models in operation in the sciences where
progress is often based on team efforts and reports frequently
have many authors; we may need to develop protocols that
borrow some aspects of science research practice. The results
of the author’s limited research into the effectiveness of the
collaborative process in medical research practice are also to
be included in this study.
To develop an environment that fosters collaboration and
refl ection students should be actively encouraged to engage
with each other both inside and outside of the classroom.
With social software (MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, inter
alia) students are already building networked communities,
and the blog and wiki have provided educators with simple,
readily available tools to build learning communities. The wiki
can be deployed as an experiential and formative learning
environment outside of the classroom with students able
to create their own content, comment on each others, and
share resources using tools like del.icio.us and MyIntute. The
blog supports this with a less formal refl ective space which
belongs to the students themselves rather than their course.
The asynchronous nature of these media gives students the
opportunity to refl ect on their classmates’ contribution in the
processes of creating their own (Swan:2000) and so instil the
practice of critical refl ection. Further, with simple applications
such as MyYahoo and iGoogle students can draw all their
varied networks together along with course and departmental
webpages thus giving a single interface or ‘Personal Learning
Portal’ (PLP) through which to access and manage their online
resources.
In their PLP students create a web interface for their own
digital environment that includes:
• Content management where they integrate both personal
and academic interests
• A networking system for connection with others
• Collaborative and individual workspace
• Communications setup
• A series of syndicated and distributed feeds
This model is based on a presentation given by Terry Anderson
at the Centre for Distance Education, University of London in
March 2007:
http://www.cde.london.ac.uk/support/news/generic3307.
htm). In this Anderson discusses how the Personal Learning
Environment (PLE), such as that used at Athabasca, is an
improvement on the popular Virtual Learning Environment
(VLE). That argument is developed here with stress upon the
further advantages of the PLP introduced earlier.
What is notable is that this model represents an approach
rather than a specifi c application and is portable and not dependant on a single department or even institution. This
ensures sustainability as it allows and encourages students to
take the tools and skills from one area and apply them in others
(arguably the basis of humanities computing, see McCarty
and Short:2002). At the same time it puts the emphasis for
the responsibility for managing their own learning and web
resources on the students.
In this approach learners are encouraged to interact and
collaborate in a way that does not occur when static webpages
are viewed with a traditional browser. The pages on a wiki and
the student’s PLP are dynamic and mutable as they can be
edited by the user through their web browser. Learners gain
the ability to enrich the material and, unlike a print publication
where those annotations are only for personal use, make
these available for others. Such exchanges of ideas are central
to the processes of building communities of learning and it is
in this way that knowledge grows as we are able to push the
boundaries of scholarship. The model that is developing here is
one in which the student moves from being a reader of other
peoples’ material to active engagement with that material; a
transition from being a ‘reader’ to being an ‘interpreter’.
Conclusion
Education is an academic, individual, and a social experience
that requires a sustainable community of learning. The tools
and experiences developed in the distance learning fi eld can
be re-purposed for the ‘analogue’ students. The suggested
model based on the student’s PLP is grounded in collaborative
practice, uses asynchronous discussion to develop refl ective
practice and ensure cognitive presence; it is sustainable and
portable. Putting this in the wider context, it is by building
a community of learners that we will instil the cooperative,
collaborative, and refl ective skills needed for a community of
humanities scholars; skills that are equally in demand outside
of the academy. The tools have already been subject to limited
trials in the digital humanities programmes at King’s College
London but the current academic year will see a more extensive
application of them across our teaching. The fi nal version this
paper will report on the results of the experiences of both
teachers and learners of this model applied to a humanities
computing course. The work contributes to the pedagogy of
the digital humanities in the academic curricula both within
the teaching of humanities computing and the development
of tools for collaborative research and on-line learning
communities.
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