Hacking the Humanities: Organizing a Mentored Hackathon to Stimulate Learning and Experimentation in Digital Scholarship
Start Date
8-10-2017 10:15 AM
End Date
8-10-2017 11:45 AM
Description
In the Spring 2017 semester, members of the Five Colleges of Ohio Libraries organized a mentored undergraduate hackathon focused entirely on a corpus of historic newspaper text digitized from the Five Colleges of Ohio Student Newspaper Collection dating back to 1856. This highly collaborative event featured mentors from the faculty of the Five Colleges as well as digital humanities practitioners from outside the colleges. In addition to modeling digital scholarship practices for both students and faculty attendees, these mentors guided teams of students as they worked to produce a variety of final projects that ranged from highly technical data visualizations to digital storytelling examining critical issues of race and cultural appropriation. Our panel of presenters will share our approach to planning an academic hackathon focused on the digital humanities and our suggestions on how events such as hackathons can be framed appropriately as a credible means of stimulating innovation in digital scholarship on liberal arts campuses.
Type
Presentation
Session
#s5a: Making / Hacking, moderator Brianna Derr
Language
eng
Location
Elaine Langone Center, Walls Lounge
Hacking the Humanities: Organizing a Mentored Hackathon to Stimulate Learning and Experimentation in Digital Scholarship
Elaine Langone Center, Walls Lounge
In the Spring 2017 semester, members of the Five Colleges of Ohio Libraries organized a mentored undergraduate hackathon focused entirely on a corpus of historic newspaper text digitized from the Five Colleges of Ohio Student Newspaper Collection dating back to 1856. This highly collaborative event featured mentors from the faculty of the Five Colleges as well as digital humanities practitioners from outside the colleges. In addition to modeling digital scholarship practices for both students and faculty attendees, these mentors guided teams of students as they worked to produce a variety of final projects that ranged from highly technical data visualizations to digital storytelling examining critical issues of race and cultural appropriation. Our panel of presenters will share our approach to planning an academic hackathon focused on the digital humanities and our suggestions on how events such as hackathons can be framed appropriately as a credible means of stimulating innovation in digital scholarship on liberal arts campuses.