and development and implementation of topics as diverse as text modeling, working with im-
ages, maps, and statistics—all the while considering the aesthetics of online presentation and
design. It is experiential education and technological training combined with traditional liberal
arts skills. Digital humanities training and hands-on experience are attractive to many students
because the skills learned are readily transferable to industry and beyond.
How best to bring the digital tools and practical skills we use as researchers into an
undergraduate classroom? This paper will discuss strategies for introducing digital humanities to
a diverse group of students from various university departments and with a wide range of skill
sets. The experience is described from the viewpoint of a faculty member who is first and
foremost a scholar in the humanities using digital tools to investigate historical research data, as
opposed to a faculty member whose discipline is primarily technology focused.
CASE STUDY: INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL HUMANITIES
Introduction to Digital Humanities was a course taught at the University of Washington between
2015 and 2018 to four separate cohorts of students. The three-to-five credit class had no
prerequisites, and met semiweekly for two hours each session.
The initial three course sessions were very similar in nature, comprising mixed undergraduate
and graduate groups from multiple departments working in vertically aligned teams, with the
graduate students acting as project leads in their respective groups. The syllabus (see figure 1)
was broad-based and wide-ranging, guiding students through the process of planning and build-
ing a digital exhibit based on a particular research question. In the first two sessions, this ques-
tion was chosen by the lecturer based on her familiarity with the data—Middle Eastern travel
journals—and her relative unfamiliarity with teaching digital humanities. By the third course ses-
sion, students were able to choose their dataset from several options. The thematic flow of the
class mirrored that of a successful digital humanities project, starting with developing team
norms and work plans, identifying and implementing best practices for collecting and curating
data, analyzing and visualizing the collected material, and finally building a digital exhibit to
showcase the products of each student team’s work.
The broad learning goals of the class included:
1. fostering core computing competencies for humanities and social science students;
2. promoting interdisciplinarity and collaboration;
3. using digital tools to investigate humanities data;
4. bringing a digital project through a complete lifecycle including planning, implement-
ing, and then concluding, with an emphasis on building for sustainability; and
5. exposing students to a range of projects, digital tools, and research methodologies
falling under the umbrella of digital humanities.
Unsurprisingly, these first three times the course was offered it presented a number of
pedagogical and practical challenges (not least because they were somewhat experimental in
nature), and naturally evolved and improved each time. By course number four, in Autumn 2018,
all the solutions to the challenges described below were implemented in the classroom, and the
experience became more manageable for the instructor and more streamlined for the students.
CHALLENGES PART I: CLASSROOM
• Initial promotion of the course was difficult, listed as it was in the Near Eastern
Languages and Civilization (NELC) course catalogue, since students don’t generally go
looking for a digital humanities course in a NELC department. In an effort to boost
enrollment numbers, the lecturer did a fair amount of promotion around campus, includ-
ing making posters, pitching the course to a variety of student groups and classes, and
posting to various social media channels.
Introducing Digital Humanities in the Undergraduate Classroom
50 Digital Scholarship, Digital Classrooms