CritMakingAgeOfAI

Resources to accompany the book *Critical Making in the Age of AI* by Emily Johnson and Anastasia Salter

View the Project on GitHub

DIG 3171: Digital Tools for the Humanities

I. Course Description

Examination of digital tools and techniques, including web and games, used for projects and research in digital humanities. This section of DIG 3171 is a Research-Intensive (RI) course. This designation will be noted on your transcripts. You will actively engage in research processes and a significant portion of your grade will be derived from course-related project(s) based on original research and/or creative scholarship.

II. Course Purpose & Objectives

The course examines digital humanities tools through the lens of critical making. This course provides an introduction to digital humanities discourse, intentional design, multimodal development, and digital tools.

Students will be able to:

III. Required Texts

  1. Burdick, A., Drucker, J., Lunenfeld, P., Presner, T., & Jeffrey, S. (2012). Digital_Humanities. MIT Press.
  2. Drucker, J. (2021). The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. Routledge.
  3. Johnson, E.K. and Salter, A. (in press). Critical Making in the Age of AI. Amherst.
  4. Additional required readings and resources are accessible in Webcourses

*All texts are free eBooks. Some links ask for UCF login credentials.

IV. Course Requirements

Exercises & Conversations

Each week, you will be asked to complete an activity, reflect on it, and discuss your process. I am always experimenting with new platforms to enhance our conversations. This semester, we will use Yellowdig. This multimodal platform rewards participation with a weekly point maximum, so you will need to post weekly exercises that consist of 3 parts: exercise, reflection, & replies. For full marks, you’ll need to post several times each week.

The first exercise is the Academic Verification Activity, which is due by the end of the first week of classes. Yellowdig awards each student per activity, with a weekly maximum limit. There are 12 Exercises and one optional exercise on the Fall schedule.

Final Reflection Paper (8 points): This paper serves as your final exam for this course: a short reflection on your experience in the course and outline your next steps for your research, career goals, etc.

Labs

Labs are hands-on critical making assignments to help you learn about each digital humanities tool and how projects using the tool fit in the overall discourse of the field. Resources and optional, virtual class times are available for each of the four lab assignments.

In the first lab, you will create a digital portfolio, and you will post the remaining assignments and labs there. This course emphasizes process over product; the research and thought behind each digital product is much more important than the appearance of digital product itself.

Research Assignments

The major research component of this course is broken into 4 smaller research assignments: A) Project Proposal, B) Annotated Bibliography, C) Abstract, D) Digital Project.

XII. Course Schedule

Week 1: Welcome 

Week 2: Digital Portfolio (Part A) 

Week 3: Digital Portfolio (Part B) 

Week 4: Place and Space (Part A) 

Week 5: Place and Space (Part B) 

Week 6: Digital Narratives (Part A) 

Week 7: Digital Narratives (Part B) 

Week 8: Digital Narratives (Part C) 

Week 9: Digital Analysis (Part A) 

Week 10: Digital Analysis (Part B) 

Week 11: Research Project (Part A) 

Week 12: Research Project (Part B) 

Week 13: Research Project (Part C) 

Week 14: Research Project (Part D) last week of classes

Week 15: Final