DART: Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching “... to initiate a meaningful and sustainable...

DART: Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching

“. . . to initiate a meaningful and sustainable transformation of undergraduate education and

professional practice in the field of anthropology.”

Caroline IngramSteve Ryan

The London School of Economics and Political Science

Ann MillerDavid Millman

Columbia University

NSF/JISC December 2003—2

Issue 1: Overcoming barriers to use of digital technology in undergraduate education

“. . . principal difficulties encountered relate to human capital, and by extension to institutional culture.”

--E. L. Simpson, report for Centre for Sociology, Anthropology, and Politics

• New approaches to training and professional development

• Institutional change


Issue 2: Developing potential of digital library approach

• Avoiding “reinventing the wheel”

• Making complex resources searchable

• Insuring reusability of digital assets

• Allowing choice of assets appropriate to specific classrooms


Issue 3: Meeting challenges in teaching of anthropology

• Teaching students to draw connections between everyday life and larger processes and concepts

• Acquainting students with process through which anthropological knowledge is produced -- and strengths and limitations of that process.


Project Staffing

• 2 Postdoctoral Fellows in anthropology departments at each institution

• Portions of senior anthropology faculty

• Project Manager at each institution

• Learning Technologist (LSE)

• Web developer (Columbia)

• Existing technology and editorial staff


Issue1: Professional development of Research

Fellows• Encourage close and explicit links between

teaching and research activities• A supportive framework for re-thinking

approaches to teaching• Continuing and active engagement with other

team members• Building confidence and competence in using

digital resources


Issue 2: Developing potential of digital library approach


Individual Web-Environments vs. Scalable Digital Library Resources

• Custom built individual digital teaching tools

• Broad range of approaches to citation and permissions

• Individual systems for tagging content

• Digital content organized for individual class

• Storage and access dependent on individual author

• Reusable libraries of digital resources

• System to standardize citation and track IPR

• Consistent metadata enforced by workflow rules

• Automatic correlation of digital resources to general conceptual structures and standards

• Reliable access and archiving


Supporting Applications

• Editorial workflow manager– track IPR, copyediting– collect metadata– repository deposit

• Metadata framework– metadata participates in multiple schemas (DC,

MARC, IMS LOM)– extract multiple levels of granularity, e.g., collection

level, or full content & structure: site-building


Supporting Applications

• Topic map indexing and navigation– organization by multiple conceptual categories

• Access management– support for Shibboleth transactions & attribute

policies– multiple communities: publication subscribers,

University population, alumni, scholarly societies– delegate authentication to appropriate community– consistent authorization across distributed

collections


IPR & Workflow


Metadata Framework

. . .

. . .

metadataelements

schema

OAIMARC site specific

titleauthor

caption

reference to image

original title

restrictions

reference to narrative


Metadata Framework

elements can participatein more than one scheme

OAIMARC

site

site


Metadata Framework

export records as OAI (direct XML)


Metadata Framework

export records as MARC (XML parse)


Metadata Framework

export records to construct web site (XML to HTML)


Metadata Framework


Topic Map Index

• ISO 13250

• Round-trip XTM

• Automate site navigation– multiple teaching methods for the same

content– inter-linkage among multi-faceted content


Topic Map Index


Federated Access Management

• Shibboleth protocol– federated administration– privacy controls– multiple communities & multiple content

providers

• Internet2 project (shibboleth.internet2.edu)


Access ManagementCommunity Identity Forwarding

UCLAorigin

IEEEorigin

Randorigin

Californiapublic school

origin

F. Anderson G. Sellers J. Helm S. Devine

Columbia repository UW repository LC repository

faculty,research univ,reviewer History

depositor,chips collection

premium corporate> $50M, reader

student,grade level 4


Architecture• Maintain separate layers to manage

– content acquisition– metadata attachment– content storage– persistent identifier– access control– interfaces

• Allows maximum distribution and interoperation


Architecture

repository

identifier/citation management

access management

structural & descriptive metadata / indexing

interface

browser


Issue 3: Meeting challenges in teaching of anthropology


Activities of the Columbia Fellows

• Enhance existing course: “South Asian History and Culture”

• Develop new course for majors: “The Ethnographic Imagination”


Basic Approach

• Conduct baseline evaluation to identify student needs (observation, interviews, student questionnaire)

• Conceptualize digital means of addressing needs

• Create/compile library of digital resources• Create specific assignments around digital

resources


South Asian History and Culture: Student Needs

• Better grasp of important historical processes and themes

• Sense of everyday life

• Ability to connect historical processes and themes with contemporary life

• Better expository writing skills


South Asian History and Culture: Digital Resource Ideas

• Generate key concept definitions, key figure bios, maps, for 19th, 20th century South Asian culture

• Choose/create multimedia digital content on contemporary South Asian life (e.g., photos, audio/video interviews, news stories)

• Integrate above types of digital assets in digital library

• Develop questions around digital materials for weekly essays and discussion sessions


Ethnographic Imagination: Student Needs

• Grasp distinctive strengths of ethnographic method, ethnographic writing

• Understand temporal/spatial limitations of ethnographic method

• Understand problems, limitations of ethnographic writing

• Develop better critical thinking, writing skills


Ethnographic Imagination:Digital Resource Ideas

• Case study approach, on Sherpas of Nepal• Compile digital library of materials (e.g.,

historical and contemporary ethnographies, field notes, photos, film, Sherpa writings, mountaineering literature)

• Develop “compare/contrast” writing assignments


The work at the LSE

• Focus on pedagogic issues in anthropology• Rethink the role of different course elements

that can be enhanced by digital technologies • Develop a series of re-usable digital tools,

methods, and approaches to address the key issues identified

• Embed tools in a digital learning environment for wider use

• Allow for customized use across a wide range of academic fields


An example: The video tool

• Designed to raise and share issues of understanding and interpretation

• Three stages - each stage providing more evidence for interpretation

• Structured activities and collaborative work

• Tool embedded in a wider resource environment


“What’s going on?” Tool• Stage 1: View a short video sequence, taken from

the lecturer's own fieldwork. We provide some limited background information on the sequence, and some subtitled translation of the dialogue, representing one month’s experience in the field. In other words, the subtitles will be broken, only picking out greetings and simple words, and the background information will be limited and ambiguous. Each student will attempt to interpret the events, and submit their interpretation to a shared area on web. Then the collection of analyses is reviewed and summarised by a small group of students.


“What’s going on?” Tool

• Stage 2: The process is repeated, but this time the background information and subtitles are equivalent to roughly nine months’ field experience. All students submit their new analyses to be synthesised by a new group of reviewers.


“What’s going on?” Tool

• Stage 3: Repeat the process again, this time providing the equivalent of eighteen to twenty four months’ experience. A final discussion session compares the three meta-analyses. Will the students’ interpretations converge with increased information?


Screen grab


Next stages

• Evaluation and reflection on work to date

• Develop generic versions of tools

• Integration of LSE resources into Columbia environment

Thank you - Comments and questions

Caroline Ingram, LSESteve Ryan, LSE

Ann Miller, ColumbiaDavid Millman, Columbia

DART: Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching “... to initiate a meaningful and sustainable...

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