Interdisciplinary Teaching

Instructors: Dr. Anastasia Salter and Dr. Mel Stanfill
Office Hours (Salter): Wednesday 12 - 1 PM via Zoom (in person in TCH 325 on workshop weeks)
Office Hours (Stanfill): Wednesday 9 - 10 AM via Zoom (in person in TCH 325 on workshop weeks)
Course Number: ENG 6813
Email: anastasia at ucf; mel.stanfill at ucf
Term: Summer C 2026 (May 12 - August 1)
Modality: Web-based (W), fully asynchronous

Contents
Course Description
NEH Workshop Integration
Course Objectives
Materials and Texts
Required Subscriptions
Evaluation and Grading
Asynchronous Online Course Structure
Weekly Schedule
Course Policies

Course Description

Theory and practice of designing interdisciplinary courses and curricula for the humanities. This course is intended for graduate students who plan to seek faculty positions in academic settings or who want to strengthen their teaching practice. Students will engage with foundational questions of pedagogy — how people learn, how to design effective assignments and assessments, how to build inclusive and student-centered courses — while also addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI tools in the contemporary humanities classroom.

This section of ENG 6813 is integrated with the NEH-funded project Building a Digital Humanities Generative AI Learning Community at UCF. Students will have the opportunity to participate in optional live workshops alongside faculty and graduate students engaged in redesigning courses across humanities disciplines. The NEH workshop component provides hands-on experience with AI tools for digital humanities pedagogy, complementing the course’s broader focus on teaching theory, course design, and professional development.

Over twelve weeks, students will:

Explore interdisciplinary humanities approaches to pedagogy, with attention to course outcomes, assessment strategies, active learning, universal design, accessibility, and teaching effectively across modalities.
Design a course from the ground up (or redesign an existing one), producing a complete syllabus, a signature assignment, and an AI-integrated exercise suitable for their discipline.
Engage with agentic AI tools, using Anthropic’s Claude to experiment with textual analysis, visual analysis, and code, building firsthand experience they can translate into informed pedagogical decisions about AI in their classrooms.
Develop professional materials, including a teaching statement for the academic job market that reflects thoughtful engagement with interdisciplinary humanities teaching.

Each week, plan on following the module for all asynchronous activities. Each module includes:

Weekly Readings. A combination of scholarship on pedagogy, AI, and digital humanities, including blog posts from practitioners actively working through these questions.
Discussion Post. In most weeks, discussions alternate between reflections on course design milestones and hands-on AI/pedagogy exercises connected to the NEH workshop series. In weeks when major assignments are due, there is no discussion post.

NEH Workshop Integration

This course is connected to the NEH-funded project Building a Digital Humanities Generative AI Learning Community. Optional live workshops are held biweekly at CHDR, 10 AM - noon, on the following dates:

Date	Workshop
May 13	Workshop 1: Introducing AI for DH Pedagogy
May 27	Workshop 2: AI for Textual Analysis
June 10	Workshop 3: AI for Visual Analysis
June 24	Workshop 4: Web and Interactive Applications
July 8	Workshop 5: Playful Approaches and Creative Code
July 22	Workshop 6: Agentic Futures, Curricular Sustainability

Students are not required to attend the live workshops but are encouraged to do so: workshops will be streamed and recordings will be made available after each event. In workshop weeks without major assignment deadlines (Weeks 3, 5, 7, and 9), discussion posts will be AI/pedagogy exercises drawn from the corresponding workshop themes. Week 1’s workshop coincides with the introductory discussion, and Week 11’s workshop coincides with the teaching statement deadline. Students who attend workshops will reflect on and extend those exercises; students who do not attend will complete the exercises asynchronously using provided materials.

Course Objectives

Students will be able to:

Engage with humanities and digital humanities approaches to pedagogy, thinking through assessment strategies and effective course design.
Make informed decisions about teaching strategies and pedagogical philosophies, including policies around AI use.
Compose a meaningful teaching statement that reflects current best practices in teaching and learning.
Design student-centered in-person and online courses, including a syllabus that follows an institutional standard, clearly written assignments, rubrics, and learning modules.
Explore best practices for accessibility and universal design in interdisciplinary humanities courses.
Critically evaluate the role of generative AI tools in humanities pedagogy, including their cultural and labor implications.
Use generative AI tools (Claude Artifacts, Claude Code Web) to create and assess pedagogical materials.

Materials and Texts

All readings are articles, blog posts, and open-access resources. There are no required textbooks for this course. The course draws heavily on blog posts and essays from practitioners working at the intersection of AI, technology, and the humanities, and we recommend students consider following new posts from some of these writers:

Ethan Mollick - One Useful Thing - on AI in education and pedagogy
Simon Willison - simonwillison.net - on AI tools, vibe coding, and Claude Artifacts
Dan Cohen - Humane Ingenuity - on AI, digital humanities, and cultural heritage
Ted Underwood - The Stone and the Shell - on distant reading and AI for textual analysis

Scholarly readings on pedagogy and digital humanities are drawn from Digital Humanities Quarterly, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and other open-access and library-accessible sources. PDFs of non-open-access readings will be provided in Webcourses.

Additional readings, tutorials, and resources are linked in each module below and in Webcourses.

Required Subscriptions

Students will need a paid subscription to Anthropic’s Claude for hands-on exercises throughout the semester. The subscription provides access to Claude Artifacts (used in the first half of the course) and Claude Code Web (used in the second half). A paid subscription is required to access the full functionality needed for course assignments.

Evaluation and Grading

Points	Assignment Summary	Due
50	Activity Verification - Complete the brief survey posted on Webcourses to confirm your enrollment.	Tuesday, May 19
240	Discussion Posts - Discussions alternate between course design milestones and AI/pedagogy exercises (8 posts, 30 points each). No discussion posts are due in weeks when major assignments are due.	Weekly
200	Signature Assignment - A fully developed assignment with rubric and AI-integrated exercise for your designed course.	Week 8 (July 5)
200	Course Syllabus - A complete syllabus for a course you could teach, following an institutional template, incorporating at least one AI-integrated element.	Week 10 (July 19)
150	Teaching Statement - A one-page teaching philosophy for job applications reflecting your approach to AI and the humanities.	Week 11 (July 26)
160	Final Portfolio & Reflection - A compiled portfolio of your course materials with a 750-1000 word reflective essay on your growth and next steps.	August 1

Grades are calculated out of 1000 following a standard letter scale.

Late work is accepted without penalty for one week after the listed deadline. If circumstances require extension beyond that deadline, please reach out to the instructors immediately. Discussion posts connected to workshop exercises cannot be extended beyond one week due to their sequential nature.

Asynchronous Online Course Structure

This course uses a fully asynchronous online format and relies upon students to complete all readings, engage with course materials, and participate in weekly discussions. All assignments are due the Sunday of their listed module.

The course has no synchronous meeting requirements. The optional NEH workshops (biweekly, in person at CHDR) are supplemental.
Office hour assistance is available via Webcourses messages and Zoom by appointment.
Students will need access to a reliable internet connection and computer. A Claude Pro subscription is required.
In the event of an emergency or medical challenge, additional flexibility is available: please reach out to the instructors as soon as feasible.

Weekly Schedule

Week One: Welcome and Interdisciplinary Teaching (Monday, May 11)

NEH Workshop 1: Introducing AI for DH Pedagogy (May 13, 10 AM - noon, CHDR)

Locke, Brandon. “Digital Humanities Pedagogy as Essential Liberal Education: A Framework for Curriculum Development.” DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 11.3 (2017).
Croxall, Brian and Diane K. Jakacki. “What We Teach When We Teach DH.” What We Teach When We Teach DH.
Mollick, Ethan. “My class required AI. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.” One Useful Thing.
Due: Activity Verification (Tuesday, May 19)
Discussion: Introduce yourself and describe your teaching experience (current or anticipated). What courses do you teach or hope to teach? What is your initial relationship with AI tools in your own work?

Week Two: Learning Theories and Course Design (Monday, May 18)

Mahony, Simon, Julianne Nyhan, Melissa Terras and Ulrich Tiedau. “Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Integrative Learning and New Ways of Thinking About Studying the Humanities.” Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2014.
Brier, Stephen and Joshua Wilner. “Teaching Digital Humanities for Transfer.” DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 12.2 (2018).
Read/Watch: Bloom’s Taxonomy (UIC Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence)
Mollick, Ethan. “Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class.” One Useful Thing.
Discussion: Course Design Plan. Identify the course you plan to design or redesign this semester. Describe the institutional context, student audience, learning objectives, and your goals. How do you envision structuring the course, and what role (if any) might AI tools play?

Week Three: AI for Textual Analysis (Monday, May 25)

NEH Workshop 2: AI for Textual Analysis (May 27, 10 AM - noon, CHDR)

Houston, Natalie M. “Text Analysis.” Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities.
Underwood, Ted. “A More Interesting Upside of AI.” The Stone and the Shell. July 2, 2025.
Cohen, Dan. “The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition.” Humane Ingenuity.
Discussion: Workshop Exercise - Textual Analysis. Using Claude Projects and Artifacts, upload a set of texts relevant to your discipline and use Claude to analyze it (identify patterns, compare passages, build a concordance, and/or explore a corpus). Reflect on the strengths and limitations of AI-assisted textual analysis compared to traditional close reading. What would students learn from this exercise?

Week Four: Assignment Design and Assessment (Monday, June 1)

Clark, J. Elizabeth. “Assessment.” Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities.
Read/Watch: Backward Design (Open Guide to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education)
Mollick, Ethan. “The Homework Apocalypse.” One Useful Thing.
Discussion: Signature Assignment Draft. Present a draft of the main assignment for your course. Describe the learning objectives, how it connects to your course goals through backward design, how it will be assessed, and how you have considered the role of AI in how students might complete it.

Week Five: AI for Visual Analysis (Monday, June 8)

NEH Workshop 3: AI for Visual Analysis (June 10, 10 AM - noon, CHDR)

Sinclair, Stéfan and Geoffrey Rockwell. “Visualization.” Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities.
Kies and Stanfill. “From Algorithms to Attribution: Teaching AI and Copyright.” (PDF in Webcourses)
Cohen, Dan. “A Museum’s Sublime Hallucinations.” Humane Ingenuity.
Discussion: Workshop Exercise - Visual Analysis. Using Claude Artifacts, upload an set of images relevant to your discipline that are either in the public domain or you have the right to use (archival photographs, artwork, maps, data visualizations) and use Claude to analyze, describe, or interpret them. Reflect on how AI reads visual material compared to trained humanistic interpretation. What does AI notice, what does it miss, and what would students learn from critically evaluating AI-assisted visual analysis? Try building metadata and creating a visual tools for exploring the images.

Week Six: Active Learning and Student Motivation (Monday, June 15)

Langmead, Alison and Annette Vee. “Teaching the Digital Humanities to a Broad Undergraduate Population.” What We Teach When We Teach DH
Prince, Alanna and Cara Marta Messina. “Black Digital Humanities for the Rising Generation.” DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 16.3 (2022).
Mollick, Ethan. “Using AI to Make Teaching Easier and More Impactful.” One Useful Thing.
Cohen, Dan. “Books Are Big AI’s Achilles’ Heel.” Humane Ingenuity.
Discussion: AI Exercise Design. Design an AI-related exercise for your course. How does this exercise use active learning principles? What would students do with AI, and what would they learn? How does this exercise connect to your course’s learning objectives? Use Claude Artifacts to prototype or model the exercise.

Week Seven: AI for Code and Digital Humanities (Monday, June 22)

NEH Workshop 4: Web and Interactive Applications (June 24, 10 AM - noon, CHDR)

Martin, Meredith. “Command Lines for the Humanities.” PMLA 139.3 (2024): 541-547.
Willison, Simon. “Not All AI-Assisted Programming is Vibe Coding (But Vibe Coding Rocks).” simonwillison.net. March 19, 2025.
Willison, Simon. “Using Git with Coding Agents.”
Cohen, Dan. “The Index and the Vector.” Humane Ingenuity.
Discussion: Workshop Exercise - Machine Learning and Code. Using Claude Code Web, build a small interactive project relevant to your discipline (a text analysis tool, a timeline, a quiz, a data explorer). No prior coding experience is required. Reflect on the experience of co-authoring code with AI and what this means for humanities pedagogy. (This week marks the transition from Claude Artifacts to Claude Code Web for exercises.)

Week Eight: Imagining the Syllabus (Monday, June 29)

Cohen, Scott. “Digital Humanities across the Curriculum, or How to Wear the Digital Halo.” What We Teach When We Teach DH
McGinn, Emily and Lauren Coats. “Born-Pedagogical DH: Learning While Teaching” What We Teach When We Teach DH
Mollick, Ethan. “Democratizing the Future of Education.” One Useful Thing.
Due: Signature Assignment (final version with rubric)

Week Nine: Playful, Accessible, and Inclusive Design (Monday, July 6)

NEH Workshop 5: Playful Approaches and Creative Code (July 8, 10 AM - noon, CHDR)

Johnson, Emily K. and Anastasia Salter. “Designing Playfully for a Distant Future.” Playful Pedagogy in the Pandemic: Pivoting to Game-Based Learning (Routledge, 2022). (PDF in Webcourses)
“Universal Design for Learning: Pleasure, Accessibility, and the Radical Possibilities of Good Design.” Visible Pedagogy, CUNY Graduate Center. March 20, 2023.
Explore: UCF Digital Accessibility Guides (skim)
Mollick, Ethan. “15 Times to Use AI, and 5 Not To.” One Useful Thing.
Discussion: Workshop Exercise - Playful Approaches and Creative Code. This exercise connects to the workshop’s focus on copyright, accessibility, and playful pedagogy in AI adoption. Using Claude Code Web, draft an AI policy statement for your course syllabus that addresses copyright and attribution for AI-generated content. Then critically evaluate it: how does it address copyright, accessibility, equity of access to AI tools, and the labor behind the models? Apply UDL principles to consider whether your course design offers multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression.

Week Ten: Interdisciplinarity and the Academic Job Market (Monday, July 13)

Hopwood, Elizabeth and Kyle Roberts. “What’s the Value of a Gradaute Digital Humanities Degree?” What We Teach When We Teach DH
“Writing a Strong Teaching Philosophy Statement in a Job Search.” Inside Higher Ed. February 15, 2024.
Cohen, Dan. “AI and Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Loosely Coupled.” Humane Ingenuity.
Due: Course Syllabus (final version)

NEH Workshop 6: Agentic Futures, Curricular Sustainability (July 22, 10 AM - noon, CHDR)

Cohen, Dan. “The Reboot of Digital Humanities Now.” Humane Ingenuity.
Cohen, Dan. “Books, AI, and the Public Good.” Humane Ingenuity.
Willison, Simon. “2025: The Year in LLMs.” simonwillison.net. December 31, 2025.
Due: Teaching Statement (final version) — This week’s workshop on sharing and sustaining curriculum connects to the open-access mission of the NEH project. Students are encouraged to attend and consider how their course materials might be shared via GitHub or Humanities Commons.

Week Twelve: Final Portfolio (Monday, July 27)

Mollick, Ethan. “On Holding Back the Strange AI Tide.” One Useful Thing.
Mollick, Ethan. “The Future of Education in a World of AI.” One Useful Thing.
Due: Final Portfolio & Reflection (August 1)
Your final portfolio should compile: your course syllabus, your signature assignment with rubric, your AI exercise, and your teaching statement. The accompanying 750-1000 word reflection should address what you learned about teaching in the age of AI, how your thinking changed over the semester, and what you plan to do next.

Course Policies

AI Use Policy: This course requires the use of AI tools, specifically Anthropic’s Claude. All AI-generated or AI-assisted work must be clearly attributed and accompanied by critical reflection. The goal is not to produce polished AI output but to develop pedagogical judgment about when, how, and whether to use these tools.

Late Work: All assignment deadlines are at 11:59 PM Orlando, FL USA time. Late work is accepted without penalty for one week after the listed deadline. Extensions beyond one week require contacting the instructors in advance. Discussion posts connected to workshop exercises cannot be extended beyond one week due to their sequential nature.

Refer to the full UCF syllabus for additional course policies.

Contents