Digital Humanities in Practice

ECTS Credits

15

Level of Study

Bachelor

Teaching semester

Irregular

Place of Instruction

Bergen

Objectives and Content

The course focuses on the development of both theoretical and practical skills in digital humanities. Students will learn how digital platforms can be used in research in the humanities. In the theoretical component of the course, students read academic texts on digital humanities research and do practical research on selected projects in the digital humanities. The course focuses on student active research. Students gain practical research experience as digital humanists by developing projects in ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. This knowledge base is a scientific, open access, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents creative work, research, events and actors in the field of electronic literature.

Students in the course will gain practical experience through working with one or more of the following areas:

• editing: researching, writing, and editing entries about electronic literature in the Knowledge Base.
• web design and user interface development
• project planning and implementation; team-work and academic collaboration
• documentation
• visualization based research methods

This course provides a unique opportunity for students to get real-world experience working with scholars on an international research project in electronic literature and the digital humanities, to develop oral and written research skills, and to contribute to the state of the art in these fields.

The ELMCIP Knowledge Base is based at the University of Bergen and can be accessed at http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase

Contributions to the ELMCIP Knowledge Base are publicly accessible and licenced with a Creative Commons, non-commercial share-alike license (nc-sa).

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge

The candidate has:

• an overview of current debates and concepts in the digital humanities, and familiarity with a selection of digital humanities projects
• a fundamental understanding of online research platforms

Skills

The candidate can:

• research and write short critical descriptions of works and actors in an aesthetic field for a scholarly database
• assess the usefulness of a range of digital humanities strategies in specific scholarly work
• discuss and prioritise organisational and design choices in developing a scholarly database
• develop distant reading research strategies to study trends and patterns in a large dataset
• present their evolving research project orally in a concise and well illustrated manner

General competence

The candidate

• has practice-based experience in team-work and with working with an international research project
• can use digital research methods

Required Previous Knowledge

60 ECTS in Digital Culture, or the equivalent; or 60 ECTS in Comparative Literature.

Recommended Previous Knowledge

DIKULT103, DIKULT105

Access to the Course

The course is open to students at the bachelor programme in Digital Culture and exchange students. Other students at bachelor and master programmes at The Faculty of Humanities may apply to take the course if there is capacity (via email to studieveileder@lle.uib.no). After the registration deadline (1 September), applicants that have attended as regular students before the deadline, with preparations, will be eligible to participate in a random selection for available spots.

Teaching and learning methods

There will be four hours of teaching each week for 10 weeks during the semester, split between one theoretical and one practical seminar each week.

Student workload is estimated at 20 hours per week from the beginning of the semester until the exam, including during weeks without classes. This time should be spent attending classes, reading the assigned readings, completing assignments, contributing to the database projects, and gathering relevant material in the library and online (books, articles, videos, etc).

If there are fewer than five students enrolled in the course, the institute can choose to reduce the hours of instruction, as per guidelines published on Mitt UiB. If this is the case, students will be able to find information about the revision of course hours at the start of the semester, before the deadline for semester registration (Feb. 1).

Compulsory Assignments and Attendance

A mandatory oral presentation about the evolving project shall be given in class.

The oral presentation shall present the student's practical work and situate it within the context of the digital humanities.

All learning activities in the course are compulsory, including classroom activities and assigned work on the database outside of the classroom. Course participation will be approved by the course coordinator. If a student is absent for more than 25% of classes the student must show a doctor's note for absences or he or she will not be able to take the exam.

Forms of Assessment

Written project report, which shall be about 3000 words long and shall document work that has been done in the database throughout the semester.

Grading Scale

Grade scale A-F.

Assessment Semester

Autumn or spring, but not regularly.

Reading List

Readings from scholarly articles in the digital humanities, current debates in social media, critical writing on electronic literature for use in practical assignments, and use and development of the ELMCIP Knowledge Base.

Course Evaluation

Evaluation will be conducted in accordance with the University of Bergen's quality assurance system.

Programme Committee

Programme Committee for Digital Culture

Course Coordinator

Programme Committee for Digital Culture

Course Administrator

Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies.