“Introducing Digital Humanities Work to Undergraduates: An Overview” - Rhetorical Precis and Presentation

Rhetorical Precis

 Adeline Koh, in her article “Introducing Digital Humanities Work to Undergraduates: An Overview” (2014), claims that digital humanities projects are not limited to well-funded, research institutions, and suggests specific projects that can be used at institutions that focus primarily on undergraduate education. She supports her suggestion by describing various digital projects and digital tools that can be easily incorporated into an undergraduate curriculum; these tools focus on mapping, text analysis, online exhibitions, and Wikipedia editing. Koh’s purpose is to “provide an easy introduction for instructors to think through the possibilities for incorporating the digital humanities within an undergraduate curriculum with either free or inexpensive digital tools” so that instructors can more easily begin to incorporate digital humanities projects into their courses. The author writes in a formal tone for an audience of other academics.

Presentation

Adeline Koh beings her article, “Introducing Digital Humanities Work to Undergraduates: An Overview” by explaining that some may have misconceptions that digital humanities projects and work are limited to big institutions with big budgets and lots of technological support. However, Koh sets out to prove that this is not the case. In her article, she gives a brief overview of an assortment of free or inexpensive digital projects and tools that can easily be implemented by institutions that focus primarily on undergraduate education. Throughout the body of the article, Koh shares and explains various digital tools that focus on mapping, text analysis, online exhibitions, and Wikipedia editing.

First Koh discusses literary mapping projects. She specifically looks at a Ulysses project that uses GoogleMaps. The project provides notes on each chapter of the text, and by clicking on each chapter, a specific place on the maps open along with relevant information about the text.  She also shares a different project that uses GoogleMaps in a different way and implements Google Street View to annotate native Korean shops and speakers in New York City. Next, Koh shares digital tools for text analysis, mainly Wordle. Wordle is a tool that allows anyone to create “Word Clouds” from a text, with the words that are used most often within the text appearing larger, and the words appearing less often appearing smaller. Koh explains that this can be a helpful tool for analyzing student writing, and can help reveal words that are repeated too often, and/or show a need for more clarity and focus. Next, Koh focuses on online exhibition tools. In this section of her article, she uses What Jane Saw, an online three-dimensional art exhibition Jane Austen attended in 1813, as an example of an extremely customized and elaborate online exhibition. She also explains simpler exhibition tools such as Omeka that are, perhaps, more approachable for individuals with limited coding experience. Lastly, Koh explains how Wikipedia editing can be an easy and effective digital project. She explains how learning the rules and regulations for the site can provide opportunities to discuss cultures and rules appropriate for different environments.  

In the conclusion of her article, Koh reminds the reader that implementing digital humanities and digital project in the undergraduate can be inexpensive and easy to do. Additionally, she leaves her readers with a list of further readings that offer additional resources for faculty and students interested in digital humanities work.

Work Cited

Koh, Adeline. “Introducing Digital Humanities Work to Undergraduates: An Overview.” Hybrid Pedagogy, 2014, http://hybridpedagogy.org/introducing-digital-humanities-work-undergraduates-overview/. Accessed 5 March 2019.