The article “Description” sets out some interesting keywords when thinking about digital humanities pedagogical strategies including “remix,” “play,” “collaboration,” “race,” and “failure.” And, as I was thinking about what kinds of things I would want to encourage in my classroom (when I teach one day), I was drawn to the words “play,” “collaboration,” and “failure” in part because I think that these words are not normally associated with learning and coursework. So, I wanted to incorporate these ideas in my post while I was thinking about digital pedagogy in the humanities.
I am particularly excited about collaboration in digital humanities, not just between local colleagues or networks of scholars working on a project but in participatory culture, fandoms, and collective intelligence more broadly on a wide variety topics. I think, as Henry Jenkin’s argues in Convergence Culture, that participatory culture is vital for understanding communication today as well as helpful when working through the rhetorical triangle (speaker, audience, and message) as well as rhetorical appeals and close reading. Additionally, participatory culture also deals with the same issues that digital humanities struggles with, particularly authorship and open access.
Because of the passionate and voluntary nature of the participatory culture, many of these fandoms and groups perform close readings of the texts and shows that they love, which also makes close reading fun and exciting. For example, the Harry Potter fandom has countless re-readings and re-interpretations of the movies and the books surrounding the series. And, they create these re-readings together and in a way that challenges traditional academia:
So, when I was looking at digital tools or assignments in the classroom, I wanted something that reflected at least some of these thoughts about participatory culture, close reading, and visual analysis. I really liked Cordell’s example of his student using a Tumblr to work through fandom communities and practices since his student could interact in a network space. I was also intrigued by Netprov that is mentioned in “Interface” since students made their own images to tell a story or make an argument that can be analyzed. Likewise I was intrigued by Gayle’s post about analyzing images in ThingLink.
So, to incorporate all of these assignments into one, I made my own assignment. To start small and get students into new media, as Cordell claims in his piece, I thought it would be cool to have a few weeks set aside so that students could interact in a participatory group online and not only close read the rhetoric surrounding their groups but also create something to add to the discourse.
Part 1: Join a group. Students join a social network group on Tumblr or another social networking site that encouraged creation and collaboration on something that interests them and involves close reading, and this could be anything from Harry Potter and Doctor Who to Game of Thrones, football, wrestling, or fashion.
Part 2: Examine the participatory practices. Check posts often, examine the practices and how people post.
Part 3: Take part in the discourse. Comment on a post, add to a post, and create a meme. http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/how-to-make-your-own-meme/ (I think the meme would be extremely fun but also helpful to get students to think about how to use an image and few words to make an argument or a post that adds to a discourse).
Part 4: Analysis. How did other people create their posts? How did you create yours? (Get students to fill out the rhetorical triangle and rhetorical appeals)
This is just the skeleton for the assignment. But, this assignment would allow students to play around with technology and media they may be more familiar with (and if not then experiment), to collaborate with peers in other discourses online, and the opportunity to fail at maybe making a meme or communicating online.
Honestly, I’m not sure if this assignment would necessarily qualify as a digital humanities assignment, but I think this would be an interesting way to get students not only comfortable with technology and ideas surrounding new media, like participatory culture and collective intelligence, but also to become comfortable with close reading. I think this assignment could also be a spring board into other projects that students could experiment with such as creating visualizations of social networks with a tool like Netlytic to examine how the participants in these networks affect the discourse realistically. And, perhaps students could also use this tool to analyze who is actually participating in these online social networks. This could also be an interesting first assignment or an introduction to thinking about social networks before digital media like the course from the Mapping the Republic of Letters (Networks: Ecological, Revolutionary, Digital) that examines how other networks operate and compare these networks to social networks now.
