People, Relationships, Technology
Priorities in Student Driven Learning
DAVID J. THOMAS, thePort.us
UCSC, MAY 5 2023 (Printable Version)
https://presentations.theport.us/ucsc
Created with Dream Studio
Technology
Injecting Tech into the Humanities?...
...Or Humanity into Tech?
Physical and Digital Spaces
  • Open Community Spaces
  • Technology on Peripheries
  • Open Source/Free Emphasis
  • Cloud Based Toolsets
  • Accessible Guides / Documentation
Digital Scholarship Commons, Lutnick Library, Haverford College
Complementary Strengths: Many Roles
  • The Natural Group/Project Emphasis in DS
  • The Multiplicity of Roles
    • Writers
    • Critical Analysts
    • Editors
    • Accessibility (a11y) Experts
    • Translators (i18n)
    • Audio/Music Experts
    • Graphic Designers
    • UI/UX/Layout Designers
    • Coders
A Multiplicity of Outcomes
Created with DALL-E Studio
  • Different skillsets have different needs/different outcomes
  • "Failing (in order) to learn"... rewarding students outside their comfort zones
  • Deemphasizing Tech: Tech as means not an end
  • Deemphasizing Tech: Tech as an object of study, not a means
  • Expansive Visions of What Constitutes Work: Push Boundaries
Promoting Technology to Cut Against the Grain (Non-Euclidean Space)
Identifying Needs
  • Assessing Student/Community Needs
  • Giving Involved Students an Input
  • Building Momentum with Workshops and Embedding
  • Constructing Digital Guides
  • Offering Instruction
Created with Dream Studio
The Metrics of Technology
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  • Emphasizing Open Source / Free
  • Emphasizing Data Transparency (git)
  • Ease of Use: Lowest Bars to Entry
  • Accessibility (a11y) Friendly
  • Offering Instruction
  • Don't Promote Technology from Companies with Histories (or Current Practices) of Harm
Promoting Ethical Technology
  • Promote Critical Scholarship
  • Statements of Potential Harms
  • Accessibility Training
  • Workshops and speakers on not just technical, but social and ethical implications of "The Digital"
Infrapedia Internet Infrastructure Map
People
Building Positive Pathways
How To Center Students
A Culture of Collaboration and Partnership (Brown CDS)
Promoting Student Contributions
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  • Acknowledge and Emhasize Student Labor
  • Student Work Should Build Skillsets Rather than Products
  • Holistic Approach to Education, Journeys over Skillsets
  • The Slow Approach: Resisting Automation and Defending Student Labor
Center Critical Voices
  • Emphasize and Promote Work that Infuses the Critical Angles of...
      Race
      Class
      Gender
      Queery Theory
      Environmental History
      And Much More...
  • Promote work that uses digital methods in service of those questions....
  • BUT ALSO promote work using these methods to deconstruct and question technological assumptions
  • AND ALSO promote work employing a critical history of technology
Debates in the Digital Humanities
Identifying Needs: Polling and Survivorship Bias
Damage pattern of surviving WW2 aircraft
  • Beginning by polling students in the lab may seem natural, and sure... BUT...
  • The most important students are the ones not in the lab. We can poll students yes... but to identify silences
Finding Hubs and Spokes: Reaching Out
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  • Begin with student and community groups on campus, connect in person, reach to poll interests/events, e.g.
    • ACM-W - Association for Computer Machinery for Women
    • Arab Student Union
    • D.R.E.A.M. Disability Rights, Education, Activism, Mentorship
    • BSU - Black Student Union
    • ChALE - ChicanX y LatinX Educandose
    • APISA - Asian Pacific Islander Student Alliance
    • SANAI - Student Alliance of Native American & Indigenous People
    • African American Resource & Cultural Center
  • Running student group events
  • Student groups as springboards to communities and projects
  • Further build momentum: identifying and reaching community groups
  • Public School & Cabrillo Community College Outreach
Finding Community, Making Partners
    When partnering with (underserved) community groups
  • Never begin with a closed vision of a project, be open to what it can be
  • Begin by acknowleging a history of digital harm by technology
  • Community concerns are not obstacles to be overcome but lessons to be absorbed
  • Data should be curated with a foremost concern for preventive misuse and potential harms
  • Data storage solutions should be sought with a mind to protect community information from mining
  • Input should be sought at all phases, projects are not about communities, but with them. Surrender control
  • When possible infrastructure solutions should be sought that give maximal ownership to communities
  • Invest and train in communites beyond the campus
Created with DALL-E Studio
Relationships
Tying It Together
Building Community
Meeting in Physical and Digital Spaces
  • Physical Spaces
    • The Library
    • The Classroom
    • Workshops
    • Brownbags/Events
    • Community Spaces
  • Digital Spaces
    • Project Sites
    • External Discussion Spaces (Social Media)
    • Internal Discussion Spaces (Slack, Teams)
    • Data/Code Repositories (GitHub)
    • Undergrad Code Ownership (GitHub Classroom)
    • Project Managment Tools (Trello, Asana, Prohura)
More Yack = More Hack