All posts by jwbaker

James Baker is Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. James is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and holds degrees from the University of Southampton and latterly the University of Kent, where in 2010 he completed his doctoral research on the late-Georgian artist-engraver Isaac Cruikshank. James works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. He is currently working on a history of knowledge organisation in twentieth century Britain. In 2021, I begin a major new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project 'Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage, 1870 – 1950'. Previous externally funded research projects have focused on legacy descriptions of art objects ('Legacies of Catalogue Descriptions and Curatorial Voice: Opportunities for Digital Scholarship', Arts and Humanities Research Council), the preservation of intangible cultural heritage ('Coptic Culture Conservation Collective', British Council, and 'Heritage Repertoires for inclusive and sustainable development', British Academy), the born digital archival record ('Digital Forensics in the Historical Humanities', European Commission), and decolonial futures for museum collections ('Making African Connections: Decolonial Futures for Colonial Collections', Arts and Humanities Research Council). Prior to joining Southampton, James held positions of Senior Lecturer in Digital History and Archives at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab, Digital Curator at the British Library, and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research Digital History seminar, a member of The Programming Historian Editorial Board and a Director of ProgHist Ltd (Company Number 12192946), and an International Advisory Board Member of British Art Studies.
Uncategorized

Week 3: Digital Tools for Teaching and Teaching Digital Tools

Leave a comment

This Thursday I rounded off a hat-trick of participation in teaching related events, with a talk at University of Kent‘s Faculty of Humanities Teaching Forum. This annual event – revolving this year (somewhat loosely) around the theme of the ‘Digital Humanities’ – brings together staff from across the faculty to discuss innovations in pedagogy. I was asked to talk about the use of social media in my teaching, but this quickly spiraled into a critique of the assumption that students are ‘digital natives’ and a call for better – DH-style – teaching of tools in this era of big data.

If you are interested in the talk, my slides are available to view/download/remix here.

I want to briefly explain slide 14, because I think it gets to the crux of what I am talking about. This slide shows a Google Ngram comparing the frequency of use of words ‘Thompson’ and ‘Hobsbawm’ between the years 1960 and 2000 (below). This was used by a student – who shall remain anonymous – to claim that Edward Palmer Thompson was a more famous and successful historian than Eric Hobsbawm.

Google Ngram comparing the frequency of use of words ‘Thompson’ and ‘Hobsbawm’ between the years 1960 and 2000

Obviously this is nonsense. What the student has failed to realise is that the Ngram technology cannot distinguish the Thompson he or she had in mind from a variety of other Thompsons – be that Daley, Hunter S., or Edward’s wife Dorothy. I admit this is a rather extreme example of student inattention and care, but had the student been more familiar with Ngram as a tool and had the student had experience of more advanced text mining tools such as Voyant – which has the power and facilities to make mine words with reference to the proximity of others – then this kind of mistake would never (I hope!) have happened. Moreover the student may have spotted that the frequency with which as uncommon surname as ‘Hobsbawm’ appears in the Google corpus is surely of great significance… The point is that there is lots of data out there and lots of tools students are likely to stumble across. It therefore behooves us as teachers to equip students with the knowledge and skills to get the most out of big data.