• Why computer labs in an age of ubiquity?
• Malcolm’s introduction (by Joan)
• 1/2 hour interactive - structured activity (Julie introduces)
• Joan offers more food for thought

What is ubiquity?

• anywhere, anytime
• narrowing the digital divide (ECAR Annual Study - of Undergraduate Students and IT?)
• mobility (increasing use of mobile devices, network follows/accompanies students)
• Net Gen web 2.0 natives (baseline expectation)

That was then: labs with cubicles for computers and students (usually to the detriment of ergonomic considerations and also detrimental to actually getting work done)

• old school: lab tucked away
• old paradigm: closing the digital divide / access for those who didn’t have their own “at home”; technology was divorced from other learning activities

This is now: student computer purchases at Dartmouth: desktop 56% -> 0%

• second wave of miniaturization in progress

Why computer labs in an age of ubiquity?
(if problem lab was trying to solve has been solved – albeit in unexpected ways)

Process (rows assigned to questions):

#1 What are some goals for new-style computer labs?

• flexibility; multi-platform; social learning; collaboration; multimedia production; energy-efficient; reconfigurable spaces; cost-efficient; used often; 24/7 access; coffee; robust systems - high performance and storage capacity; network-delivered software; rare, expensive software not available elsewhere - software for specific disciplines; support services; local storage? network storage definitely; test stations; peripherals not found “at home”; TeamSpot; smartboards; comfort; library resources; whiteboard wallpaper; digital walls/visualization walls; academic support; scheduling / seats available shown on web so students know ahead of going; training appointments and support; self-guided learning; place for instruction to happen; movable barriers; sound-proof audio / video rooms; built-in ports for mobile devices; UPS power back-up; staff well-paid so that they stay; troubleshooting skills in the lab; projection; large untouchable budget; monitor student use in teaching/learning/collaboration/production spaces to see what’s most/least used for future planning.
• observations:
  • how will labs support changes in pedagogy and approach? flexible and responsive built into design; some need for quiet/larger spaces - how does this fit in overall design?
  • departmental/school-based local facilities to meet specific needs vs. centralized labs? sometimes licensing prohibitive for local units to afford; both/and
• “We exploded more than synthesized.”
• We’re really describing a “learning commons” beyond a “lab”

#2 What links to pedagogy should be built into the facility or program?

• software that faculty request/require; access to library databases and other university resources; making certain that facility can be used as a classroom; faculty involvement in lab design, maintenance; used as interactive involvement; links to hardware required for teaching and learning (e.g., DV camera, large-scale color printers, microscopes); open-source projects; discipline-specific software; project-based learning - collaboration spaces; time on task; diverse learning styles / universal design for students with all kinds of needs; access to media resources; ways for students to share work they’re producing;
• observations:
  • easier to talk about links to pedagogy in terms of classrooms than when talking about labs -> don’t lose sight of the social aspect of labs. focus on “learning” rather than “pedagogy,” both academic and social learning.
  • environment/software customized for particular faculty/course needs; collect input from all users to see how they can be build into the image/design.

#3 What campus or other partners could/should you work with?

• simpler to ask, “who should you NOT talk to?”
• registrar, student affairs, admissions - PR/marketing aspect, facilities and planning, library for space and services, central IT, mechanisms for continual input from students, student life, residence hall staff, academic affairs and academic departments, vendors, writing center, tutoring labs, academic advising, fundraising/development/grant offices, lab as community asset -> discussion with community as a whole, accessibility experts, ergonomics experts, faculty who use currently available facilities, faculty advisory committee, security - both IT and physical, so public safety, media technology services group (A/V)
• observations:
  • how to keep the partners/stakeholders group together as needs and space evolve
  • ask students how they want to use the space
  • Susan Gibbons, Rochester, ethnographic study of students’ preferences, EDUCAUSE web site (2007 presentation); NITLE project across schools

#4 What are types and campus locations for computer labs?

• what is and what could be…
• learning clusters, teaching space, collab space, kiosk, former classrooms converted, specialized based on SW/HW/peripherals, different sizes, double duty spaces, accessibility lab; dorms, classrooms, student centers, residence halls, departmental lounge spaces;
• central, library centralized, faculty dev labs; decentralized: mobilized carts, academic departments, multimedia labs

On your campuses, is there a planning process for rethinking labs? Less than half.

Student Learning Centers:

• A new model for computer labs? (learning centers, commons)
• Features not generally seen: group study rooms, lockers, cafes, other campus services
• Three examples (first two are joint IT/Library projects):
• Tilburg U: Montesquieu Learning Centre, Netherlands: monitors set up with mics and headphones for Skype; lockers with plugs for recharging; classroom and color well-designed
• U of Birmingham, UK, Learning Suites: re-purposed old WWII building
• San Jose State: Academic Success Center - learning objectives initiative
• Issues: which learning goals, who’s in planning, location, jurisdiction, staffing (main thing not working well in example facilities), campus partners, which services, how should it be assessed?

Rethinking Computer Labs - Transformation or Obsolescence? (PDF)

Posted by Gina Seising

Chris Warren, an IT staff-member at Williams, in his blog Ficial, wrote up several of the conference sessions, including Tuesday’s General Session, “From Their Viewpoint“. This was a candid and enlightening panel discussion with Cheryl Norton, President of Southern Connecticut State University; S. Georgia Nugent, President of Kenyon College; and Susan Scrimshaw, President of Simmons College.

Meg Stewart, in her blog GIS@VASSAR posted on the session “Assessing student learning outcomes when using a tablet PC for data collection in field-based classes in Archeology and Ecology“. Meg and Ginny Jones, both with Computing & Information Services at Vassar, were co-presenters at that session. Meg’s post includes links to their slide presentation and survey results.

Other conference related posts can be found by doing a Technorati search on the tag educause_nc08. If you have a blog post on the conference that you’d like to see added to our blogroll, send an email here.

-Posted by Peter Hess

An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold?

Tim Lindgren

Sue Wawrzaszek

* Anglo-Saxon Aloud, a daily reading of the entire Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records read aloud by Wheaton professor Michael Drout and made available online for students [http://fred.wheatonma.edu/wordpressmu/mdrout]

* Libro de los Infortunios y Naufragios (Book of the Misfortunes and Shipwrecks), in which Domingo Ledezma and his students created a translated and annotated hypertext edition of a 1535 Spanish text [http://webedit.wheatonma.edu/custom/xslt/users/xs12057321/output/xx68380113]

* Perry Visits Japan, a collection of scrolls that provides insights into Japanese perceptions of both the explorer and of American culture [http://dl.lib.brown.edu/japan]

* The Landscape Change Project in which community members create contemporary photos that can be paired with historic images to compare change over time [http://www.uvm.edu/landscape]

Viewed separately, each is a rich and annotated collection of humanities-oriented texts, sounds, and images. Viewed in sequence, one begins to see why these are more than discrete websites — they are a genre of research and production that are challenging academics, technologists, and librarians to develop new research methodologies, scalable production processes, and interoperable standards.

These examples, and others, were used to illustrate and discuss what presenters Hamlin, greenberg, Mylonas, and Yott have learned over the years about supporting humanities research. Below is a summary of the presenters’ observations and advice for those who are interested in taking on this type of project.

DHR–Understanding What It Is

Digital humanities research often intersects with classroom teaching, but is best considered as a form of “project.” This is because the research is not necessarily course- or class-bound, may span a number of semesters, may or may not involve students as producers, may extend beyond campus to include the surrounding community, etc. As with other forms of research, additional funding can make it possible to achieve a more satisfying quality of product. But it’s also important to keep in mind that, in the case of student-produced projects, the process can be as (or more) important than the product.

Breadth of inquiry is one of the hallmarks of a liberal arts education — students are challenged to become well rounded learners and thinkers. But digital humanities research projects offer the possibility of also taking student learning to a deeper, more nuanced level. As students scan, analyze, and develop metadata for project artifacts, their attention to detail surpasses that for a typical classroom assignment. For example, in working with Misfortunes and Shipwrecks the students became deeply engaged in understanding a text that would have been “otherwise impenetrable.”

DHR –What It Challenges Us To Become

As research becomes digital, the change in process challenges researchers to make more “conscious” use of their data. New questions emerge: Are the online renderings faithful to the original? What affordances and constraints are associated with putting research online? For example, affordances include the ability to represent–simultaneously–multiple perspectives on a topic and to add additional layers or dimensions to subject analysis. Constraints involve the considerable time, labor, and technical expertise required to create these types of projects, demands that may necessitate scaling down a project or procuring additional resources.

In addition, as compared with analog research, the process for conducting digital research introduces new steps and dimensions to the research process:

* Clarifying the vision and methodology (technical and theoretical) for the project

* Planning a process that will allow this vision to be successfully realized despite procedural complexities, limited resources, unanticipated developments, and rapid change in technology

* Identifying and selecting “texts” for study that may also include sounds, objects, movies, images, or documents such as maps

* Transcription and other steps to ensure accessibility

* Content encoding (translating the objects of research into digital format, text encoding or TEI, xml markup)

* Analytical encoding (assigning metadata)

The digital context makes it possible to take on new roles and partners – in fact, this collaboration is usually necessary for a successful outcome. Possible roles include:

* content experts,

* data creators,

* metadata creators,

* creators/supporters of technology infrastructure, etc.

This collaboration both offers (and sometimes demands)a surprising level of flexibility and attention to detail on the part of project participants.

Libraries are key partners who are concerned with standards, longevity, metadata to allow for robust searching and retrieval. Libraries help preserve and disseminate the products of the project work and will inevitably be concerned with the quality and accuracy of the work.

As digital humanities research progresses into the realm of digital publication, the focus may remain on the content or it may also include (or even focus on) the process, such as the research and production methodology.

Finally, in the case of projects that involve students, digital humanities research challenges us to look for the link between pedagogy and disciplinary research. The connection can be quite synergistic, creating a context in which the faculty member’s research and teaching are mutually informed. It also provides opportunities for students to make significant contributions to larger research efforts, resulting in a more gratifying learning experience.

Thoughts on Institutional Support for DHR

Wheaton College: Scott Hamlin of Wheaton College in Norton Massachusetts described their support as a “liaison model.” Technologists and librarians at the college specialize in subject areas, usually with formal education in the area in addition to an advanced LIS or technology degree. This allows them to understand the needs and concerns of the faculty with whom they work. Support staff may also develop expertise in discipline-specific software or technologies that are particularly appropriate to the field of study (for example, audio production software would be relevant to language study)

Regardless of the model for support, digital humanities research demands significant infrastructure to achieve a satisfactory experience (e.g., dedicated technology orientation, library support, follow-through technical assistance, quality monitoring, etc.)

In the case of course-related research, another challenge is that projects happen in a short time period. If this work is undertaken by a small institution with limited resources, projects may not be as polished as the participants would like. However, this is not an argument against conducting digital humanities research in this type of setting — it is just a heads-up on managing expectations. At Wheaton, where the student/faculty ratio is 11.7:1 and they value a high touch approach, research projects are pedagogy based and emphasize process over product. Despite limitations, smaller institutions have some advantages; they can be more nimble (time from idea to implementation) than larger institutions.

University of Vermont: Joking, Hope Greenberg of the University of Vermont described their digital humanities research as a “history of failure.” However, problems associated with each project have given them ideas for new strategies to try in the next, resulting in an increasingly sophisticated approach to digital research. In working with faculty and students, her unit’s motto is “We will explore, recommend, encourage, teach, but we can’t do it for you” and many of their challenges stem from trying to stay true to their “can’t do it for you” maxim.

UVM has experienced the most success when they have procured additional funding, involved community members and an emeritus professor in a project, and worked with the college to offer humanities computing courses that are designed to “grow” cohorts of students who are prepared to work on future projects. However, in one instance most of the students who enrolled were seniors, so unfortunately they lost many to graduation.

They are also experimenting with developing UVM DC, a coalition of people dedicated to the initiation and support of ongoing digital projects. As with many schools, UVM departments tend to operate with silos, with the assumption that the experiences of other disciplines will have limited relevance. UVM DC participants discovered that, while they do have different disciplinary needs, they also have much in common, such as the need for rich image sets, artifacts, etc. Greenberg’s advice to those invested in project development and support: “small is sometimes good – one size doesn’t have to fit all.” She encourages participants to visit their Center for Digital Initiatives [http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/index.xql] and to read the CDI process blog that is kept by Winono Salesky [http://thedil.wordpress.com]

Brown University: Brown has one of the longest histories of digital humanities research in the country. In 1964 the school developed the Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English (Brown Corpus). Professors Henry Kucera and W. Nelson Francis published Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English in 1967, a landmark work in computational linguistics.

As with UVM, Brown formed a Scholarly Technology Group in 1994 with the goal of bringing scholars from diverse disciplines together so that they can find and act upon commonly-held needs. Brown also puts out call for proposals so that project development takes place under the aegis of a grants program, with the attendant professional recognition and academic respect.

The Brown University Women Writers Project [http://www.wwp.brown.edu] has been a key collaborator. In addition, the University Library’s Center for Digital Initiatives [http://dl.lib.brown.edu] provides direct faculty support. At Brown, three factors have been most critical to project success: standards, architecture, and structure (for example, APIs).

They have also observed that as projects mature and faculty delve into their research, or as work is made available to new audiences, the scope of work may need to be expanded or changed. For example, it may be desirable to add menu items, expand metadata categories, include new types of artifacts, provide different views, etc. If projects are well designed and adhere to standards, an expanding or changed scope of research can be accommodated.

At Brown they have found that it is to their advantage to have a “semi-permeable membrane between units in the college.” One unit may do the initial work on a project and then expansion or refinement may be done by another. The model for building digital materials may change depending on the use scenario (public access, scholarly research, student projects, etc.), so they needed to adapt development processes to allow for the greatest flexibility and collaboration from project inception to maturity (or even project spin-offs).

As the session ended, my only regret was that it took place on the afternoon of the last day of the conference, as the thoughts of many turned to homeward commutes. The audience was audibly reminded that the conference was winding down, as session presenters verbally competed with considerable background noise (packing up tables, transporting chairs, etc.)! It is my hope that this blog entry provides an opportunity to extend our dialogue on the important topic of digital humanities research.

-Posted by Gail Matthews-Denatale

Why WordPress?

[Ken]

We use WordPress (WP) because it’s easy, cheap, and flexible. I want to focus on the “easy”. If you don’t want to do anything fancy, and if you’re comfortable installing applications on servers, WP can be installed in five minutes. You run an install wizard, change your password, and you’re up-and-blogging. WP runs on linux, Windows, Mac and Unix servers. The NERCOMP blog is a good example of how WordPress looks “out of the box”. If you’re willing to put some time in on it, the appearance of your blog can be highly customized.

If you don’t want to bother with hosting WordPress yourself, you can have your blog(s) hosted at wordpress.com. It’s free, and your blog can be private, but you just can’t customize it as much as you can blogs that you host yourself.

One of the reasons we love WP is that it has a big developer community. Because WordPress is open source, there are tons of people writing cool stuff for it. There are hundreds of themes that people have contributed that allow you to change the look and feel of your blog. There are also all sorts of cool plug-ins available for WordPress, and it’s the library of plug-ins that gives WP much of its power. Plug-ins make it possible to embed video or audio, do polling, and add many other functions. Most WP plug-ins are contributed by the developer community and are free. (More about them below.) Many themes and plug-ins can be downloaded from http://wordpress.org.

Pitfalls

• There are security concerns. One of our sites was hacked. (Randy: Secunia is a great resource for checking for security vulnerabilities). The best way to keep WordPress secure is to constantly update it (and likewise update plug-ins you use).
• There is lots comment spam that finds its way to WordPress blogs (Akismet is a plug-in that helps fight it).
• By default, blogs are open to the public. This includes most of the blogs we’ve done (the exceptions use a Yale service for putting websites behind a login), and we ask students to sign an agreement so they know what they’re doing before putting their work in the public domain.
• Data preservation is another issue. People ask “what’s going to happen to this site?” All I will say right now is… that’s something to consider.

Rapid Development

[Randy]

One of the reasons we like WP is that we can do things quick. It’s got a low learning curve. Using WP lets us react very quickly to ideas, questions, and opportunities. We’re not advocating use of WP for big institutional projects, but it’s great way to actualize small ideas we want to get up fast. If a faculty member in December comes to us with an idea for something s/he wants to do in January, we can talk about it and get that kind of stuff going. Often what we do is for one class, for one semester. Even without a lot of experience, and with no programming, you, or a faculty member, can turn out some pretty good looking stuff.

In a rapid development environment, testing is done in the real world. Rapid development means the cost of failure is low. “If you never fail you’re not trying hard enough.”

Many of these ideas are drawn from Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application. Read it here.

Plug-ins

Here’s a laundry list of useful plug-ins that take WordPress well beyond its core functionality: Akismet (anti-spam for blog comments - absolutely essential in any WordPress blog); Bliki (Wikifies WP posts); FAlbum (uses Flickr API to do photo galleries in your blog that are hosted in Flickr); Related Posts (generates a list of related posts); wordpress.com stats (lets you keep all kinds of interesting statistics on visitors to your site); Wordpress Automatic Upgrade (one of the best ones; saves you from having to manually reinstall every time there is an upgrade); and WP cache (speeds up blog rendering). Wordpress.org is a good place to start looking for plugins, but I often just do a Google search for the features I’m looking for.

Examples: four, very different examples of using WordPress for supporting learning initiatives:

[Randy]

1. Online Text Analysis The Shakespeare Analysis class picks a text and together they go thru a line-by-line analysis of it. They had been using a paper system. There’s a WordPress theme called CommentPress which allows line-by-line (or paragraph by paragraph) commenting of text that seemed very suitable for this project. This class was a good opportunity for a small, rapid development project: 4 students, a short time frame, and a very interested professor. In the screenshot, note the text along the side, line numbers, and comment bullets. This class is just now getting started. One limitation of WP out of the box is that comments can’t be edited. We added a plugin, AJAX Comments, that let’s people edit their posts. In four hours work done over two days, the site was up and running.

2. Interactive Website Authoring The Yale Summer Cabaret needed a student run content management system. Again there was a short development time frame. The students wanted to facilitate a lot of audience interaction. The last show of the summer was to be an audience driven show for which they wanted to poll the audience and get comments from them. The plan was to get audience input on a choice of 3 different plays; on the location where it would take place; and on menu items for the cabaret. People who submitted choices or comments would get immediate feedback. It took perhaps 12 hours to develop a custom theme. Other than that, the need was met with WP out of the box and some plug-ins.

[Ken]

3. Multimedia Sharing In a Modern British Architecture class, students who had traveled to London, did an online analysis of an architectural site. They were expected to take a lot of photos, but didn’t have time to discuss their work or show their photos in class. The Prof. wanted to extend the conversation into the on-line environment so students could share all of the photos they were taking. Students’ blog posts were paper length writing assignments illustrated with photos.

The editor provided for authoring posts is standard WSYWIG editor. The lightweight HTML authoring interface is much like facebook and students are very comfortable with it. To upload an image (or other media type), just browse to it and click upload. If you tell it to “send to text”, WordPress will embed the image (or audio or video file) at the location of the cursor. We put some plugins on sites that enable all mime types and use Anarchy media player plug in which plays most media types.

We asked students to use WP categories to categorize their posts using their name and by the number of the assignment. This allowed the instructors to view all submissions for assignment #, or all submissions by student x.

This blog also includes links to standard support pages http://brst440.commons.yale.edu/?page_id=649 I created.

4. Podcasting In an Abnormal Psychology class. Students were required to do a podcast project that involved recording interviews. We used WordPress because it plays so much nicer with media than the campus course management system. The ability to for students to easily upload their media files has led us to turn to WordPress over and over. In addition, WP makes it simple to link RSS feeds to particular categories defined in a WordPress blog. If a “podcast” category is defined and an RSS feed created for it, people can subscribe to these podcasts in iTunes or another aggregator.

- Posted by Peter Hess

Data from Dartmouth (change from 56% of student computer purchases being desktop machines several years ago to 0% desktop purchases now) corroborates other such data: students are generally purchasing portable laptops, and they’re using mobile devices. Though the digital divide still exists in some locations, many students do have access to “their own” computers and devices wherever they want to use them.

Given this change in need, we began to brainstorm current goals for “labs” or “learning spaces” or “learning commons.” What do you see as most critical current needs for spaces with computer resources where students, faculty, and staff can gather in the same place? What are the kinds of activities that cannot be accomplished solo at home or virtually in online collaborative spaces? Why have a lab today?

- Gina Siesing

-Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

Sue Wawrzaszek

Chaos
Disruption

Sue Wawrzaszek

Flip Chart Transcription
Discussion Transcriptions