In a recent essay, “Critical Theory and the Mangle of Digital Humanities,” Todd Presner identifies as the core Utopian idea of the Digital Humanities, “participation without condition.” For Presner this concept begins with how DH is making the walls of the academy porous through its “conceiving of scholarship in ways that foundationally involve community partners, cultural institutions, the private sector, non-profits, government agencies, and slices of the general public,” thus expanding “both the notion of scholarship and the public sphere in order to create new sites and nodes of engagement, documentation, and collaboration.” In so doing, DHers “are able to place questions of social justice and civic engagement, for example, front-and-center; they are able to revitalize the cultural record in ways that involve citizens in the academic enterprise and bring the academy into the expanded public sphere.”

Presner’s discussion of what might be called DH’s “Participatory Turn” can be reformulated for humanities scholars and teachers into a more specific and crucial question concerning how we might best reach productively beyond the walls of the literary classroom. Such a question gains added force from three relevant contexts: (1) David Marshall’s observation that the current academy is a 19^th century institution in which a 20^th century curriculum is taught to 21^st century students; (2) The fact that most humanities undergraduates don’t even know that there is such a thing as humanities research; and (3) The assertion made by Donald Brinkman of Microsoft Research that humanists don’t just need “big data,” they need “deep data.” These contexts raise at least three important questions: (1) How can humanists bring our research into the graduate and undergraduate classroom?; (2) How can we best curate and explore our datasets? and (3) How can we fruitfully engage the public, “citizen humanists,” in the work of the humanities, helping to deepen our data and the questions we ask of it?

I think these are key questions both for the future of DH and the future of the Humanities, well worth discussing at a THATCamp devoted to Leadership. They cut across many aspects of DH work, from teaching, to coding, to archives, to editing, to publishing, to licensing, and crowdsourcing.

One of the key attractions of digital humanities in the undergraduate curriculum  is the promise that it offers a to teach skills needed for the 21st century student.  But, what are those skills? What are the essential learning outcomes needed in a globally networked world and how might digital humanities or, more broadly, digital scholarship help meet those outcomes?  For this session, I propose we look at some suggested lists of learning outcomes and use them to stimulate our thinking about what learning outcomes our institutions might offer to undergraduate students.  Then we will generate our own list(s) of learning outcomes.

This exercise and the lists of learning outcomes comes from Tanya Clement. You can find the lists of outcomes and references here: rebeccafrostdavis.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/learning-outcomes-for-a-globally-networked-world/

Here is my original description from when I conducted this exercise in the past:

Digital technologies and the Internet have changed the context for civic, work, and personal life, forcing the production and exchange of knowledge into an increasingly public, global, collaborative, and networked space, and increasing capacity to tackle complex questions across disciplines. How do we prepare students to be lifelong learners who are adaptive, networked and engaged citizens in this context? While the essential learning outcomes of liberal education promise to prepare students for ever-changing contexts, should we consider additional learning outcomes for the liberally educated student? In this session, we will debate literacies and skills required for today’s knowledge ecosystem, critique proposals for learning outcomes that reflect these new abilities, and formulate essential learning outcomes for liberal education in a globally networked world.