The History of Digital History Teaching – c. 1980-2017

Adam CrymbleUniversity of Hertfordshire

Sources

• Discussion Groups• c. 1987-2017

• Blog Posts• c. 2000-2017

• Twitter & Social Media• c. 2008-2017

• Course Syllabi• c. 2003-2017

Simple Timeline of Digital Pedagogy

• Cliometrics, economic history, social history, demographic history

• Statistics!

• Computer as calculator

• Doing historical research.

Up to 1980s

Up to 1980s

Off-the-Shelf Software

• 2001 – Nancy Ide, programming skills are ‘no longer necessary’ for computer-assisted work.

• Change driven by Silicon Valley, not DH world.

The 1990s-2000s

The New Millennium

Public History Mass Digitisation ‘Big Data’

Plurality of ‘Digitals’

What not to teach

• Marc Perry

• ‘Yawning’ about tenure.

• Ryan Cordell

• DH by Candlelight

• Andrew Goldstone

• Slow down…

The Grey Literature

The Digital History Syllabus Corpus

• 126 ‘digital history’ syllabi

• 83 unique courses; 43 revised.

• Canada, USA, England

• Incomplete, but probably pretty good coverage

2003-2017

Individual Influence

Gender Bias

N = 49 N = 8 N = 7

Geographical Distribution

Syllabi Per Country Per Year

Virginia

‘Elite’ Teaching

• Harvard

• Cornell

• Columbia

• Pennsylvania

• Princeton

• Dartmouth

• Brown

• Yale

US Ivy League

• McGill

• Toronto

• UBC

• Queen’s

• Alberta

• McMaster

• Dalhousie

Canadian Medical/Doctoral

• Birmingham

• Bristol

• Cambridge

• Durham

• Exeter

• KCL

• Leeds

• Liverpool

• LSE

UK Russell Group

• Manchester

• Newcastle

• Nottingham

• Oxford

• Sheffield

• Southampton

• UCL

• Warwick

• York

• Ottawa

• Calgary

• Montreal

• Laval

• Sherbrooke

• Manitoba

• Saskatchewan

• Western

Classification of Syllabi

A. Balance between ‘History’ and ‘Digital’

B. Type of ‘Digital History’

C. Specific Content

Degree of Historical Emphasis

• Cameron Blevins, first ‘history first’ class, 2012. History of the American West.

• ‘History first’ growing in England

• ‘Moderate’ more likely to be American & local history

• Nearly HALF have NO substantial historical content

N = 83

Approach to Teaching

• Quant is out• Skills gap?

• Public History • Until 2014

• USA/Canada

• Programming & Data Analysis • from 2013

• Survey • c. 2010-2016

(multiple categories possible)

N = 83

Specific Content

• Project vs Essay

• Blogging, but why? • Schön, The Reflective Practitioner

• Graham – community building

• Torget & McDaniel – cross Unicollaboration in Texas

• Cohen & Rosenzweig• Still relevant?

• Historiography • Rare but rising

• Blog posts more common.

(multiple categories possible)

N = 83

The Historical Trajectory

• 1950-1990s: Statistics and ‘computing’

• Late 90s-2010: Public History

• 2010-Present:

• ‘Tools’ & Programming

• Data Analysis & Big Data

• Broad Survey, no history

• History first emerging in England.

Select Syllabi Worth Reading

• Douglas Seefeldt, ‘History and Digital Media’, University of Virginia, 2003.

• William J. Turkel, ‘Digital History: Methods for the Infinite Universe’, Western University, 2006.

• Mills Kelly, ‘Lying About the Past’, George Mason University, 2008.

• Dan Cohen, ‘Clio Wired’, George Mason University, 2009.

• Cathy Moran, ‘Creating Digital History’, NYU, 2011.

• Cameron Blevins, ‘The Digital Historian’s Toolkit’, Stanford University, 2012.

• Kyle Roberts, ‘Digital History: The Nineteenth Century City’, Loyola University, 2013.

• Caleb McDaniel, ‘Digital History Methods’, Rice University, 2014.

• Fred Gibbs, ‘Digital Mapping’, University of New Mexico, 2014.

• Adam Crymble, ‘Digital Histories Workshop’, University of Hertfordshire, 2014.

• Anne Mitchell Whisnant, ‘Introduction to Public History’, UNC Chapel Hill, 2014.

• John Garrigus, ‘Transatlatic Revolutions and Transformations’, U. Texas at Arlington, 2016.

• Shawn Graham, ‘Digital History Methods’, Carleton University, 2016.

The History of Digital History Teaching – c. 1980-2017

Adam Crymble