21.351 what product

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 351.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 09:15:04 +0000
         From: Stan Ruecker <sruecker_at_ualberta.ca>
         Subject: Re: 21.348 what product?

Hi Willard,

I think we can't reasonably hope for more than is possible in any
other one-year (or in our case at University of Alberta two-year) MA
programme. I want the students to be able to show that:

- they have had exposure to at least some of the literature in the
digital humanities generally, and to more in their own research area
- they have developed some awareness of the ongoing discussions and
where we as a community are at with them
- that they know something about the range of research methods or
research approaches in use by digital humanists
- that they have tried out some of these methods for themselves in
the context of a real research project and not just as a classroom
exercise. One way, and I think a good way, to accomplish this is to
have real projects as the exercises.
- that they have had practice communicating their ideas, preferably
at various lengths, in different genres, and in different media

yrs,
Stan Ruecker
Assistant Professor
MA in Humanities Computing Programme
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB CANADA

Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty
<willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 348.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
> Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:27:43 +0000
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
> >In "Psychological Models for Guidance", Harvard
Educational Review 32
>(1962), Gordon W Allport begins by saying,
> >The lenses we wear are ground to the prescription of our textbooks
> >and teachers. Even while we are undergraduates a certain image of
> >the nature of man is fitted to our eyes. We grow accustomed to the
> >image and when we become practitioners or teachers we may still take
> >it for granted. But every so often comes a time for optical
> >re-examination. Perhaps the image we have is still the best fit we
> >can get; perhaps it is not. We can tell only by examining
> >alternative lenses. (p. 372)
>At the time the technology for correcting eyesight was rather
>limited, so Allport can be excused for using a metaphor which makes
>it seem as if a re-examination of our fundamental epistemic
>assumptions is as simple as getting fitted for a new pair of glasses.
>The grinding of lenses gives a hint of some difficulty, it is true,
>but this happens well away from the person concerned. Now, of course,
>we could speak of surgery to cut out the corneas of a person's eyes
>and replace them with new, plastic ones. But until that becomes
>commonplace, if it does, the metaphor has at least the advantage of
>being frightening or at least off-putting. And that hints at how
>difficult it is for people of the sort we deal with to readjust their
>thinking to understand what we're hopping up and down about.
>In a local discussions during the last couple of days, the question
>of what we think students get from studying our subject was raised --
>the hopping-up-and-down question in another form. One context was the
>questioning of external examiners, who in this instance came from
>various disciplines to consider our postgraduate students'
>performance and our assessment of it. The difficulty for them (none
>of whom was from the digital humanities) was in part understanding
>what sort of expectations we could possibly have of the students. A
>more serious because more immediate and prior questioning then took
>place amongst us. Apart from teaching certain practical skills, with
>what sort of cognitive equipment can we say we are equipping them?
>Increasingly, at least in the UK, one not only has to state the
>"learning outcomes", one has to have some way of demonstrating that
>these are at least occasionally realised.
>If one reflects on the fact that MA-level training takes place, in a
>full-time programme, over a single year, what can one hope to
>accomplish? Given no prior exposure to the digital humanities (often
>the case for postgraduates), what would you suppose to be reasonable
>educational goals?
>Yours,
>WM
>Willard McCarty | Professor of Humanities Computing | Centre for
>Computing in the Humanities | King's College London |
>http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/. Et sic in infinitum (Fludd
>1617, p. 26).
Received on Sat Nov 17 2007 - 04:35:51 EST