LSA Technology Services supports innovative approaches to teaching that explore and incorporate technology and research to advance scholarship. Our digital scholarship projects involve working with a diverse team that includes faculty, research associates, computing and instructional consultants, and equipment and loan staff. When we all come together to engage in dialogue about how research or teaching a humanities course intersects with technology, we can create a much richer experience for students and faculty.

The terms digital humanities, digital scholarship, and digital studies can be interpreted in many different ways. For our purposes, we’ll use the broader term, digital scholarship as defined in Wikipedia as  “. . . new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.”

This January we worked with a campus wide grassroots collective of digital scholarship support partners to sponsor an event, Connecting Digital Scholarship. The event was attended by faculty, graduate students, and staff. We invited instructors we have worked with to share their experiences, goals, and future interests in this area. A variety of faculty speakers presented projects that exemplify the effort and teamwork necessary for success. For example, Professor Lisa Nakamura spoke about her American Culture 358 Course, “Special Topics in Digital Studies: Virtual Reality and Empathy.” Cindy Lin Kayling from the School of Information spoke about feminist lines across disciplinary domains in “Precarity Lab.” Ben Paloff from Slavic Languages & Literatures shared his explorations with focalization while writing a non-linear novel. Nic Terrenato from Classical Studies discussed the “Book Unbound” project and the challenges with multimodal composition. Jason Young from History spoke about experiences with incorporating digital assignments with “History 260.” We greatly appreciate the faculty who presented their projects and shared their experiences to advance digital scholarship.  

LSA Technology Services is examining our current service offering for digital scholarship in teaching and research. It all starts with a conversation among faculty, LSA Technology Services, and our support partners. For LSA instructors who are interested in support for a digital scholarship project, contact our teaching and learning consultants at lsa-iss-ltc@umich.edu or 734.615.0099.