Course digital projects and presentations have to balance two goals, the pedagogical and the public. On the one hand, the main goal of a class project is student learning — learning about the subject matter of the course, not (in general) about how to create digital projects. On the other hand, there’s an audience for the project that needs to be taken into account. That’s especially true for community-engaged scholarship, but it’s true of any public presentation.
Pedagogy begins with considerations of desired outcomes, or learning goals. Some courses might be focused on gathering data from archives or online sources, on compiling evidence, whether bibliographic, documentary, or pictorial, sources. Others might use data from creative introspection, or ethnographic or oral history work. In online projects in courses like this, describing and archiving sources or experiences might be a key part of the project.
Some courses might be more focused on telling a story, either creating a narrative based on sources students gather, or compiling existing sources into a narrative. Creating a convincing narrative using digital tools might start with putting evidence into the right order, but includes the creation of rhetorical and graphic arguments.
The design of both of these types of digital projects should consider their audience for the project. Is the audience other students in the class, other students at Brown, a specific group (for example, the folks who provided their stories), or the general public? Considering audiences can not only determine what platform to use (some are only accessible to the Brown community; some allow for a more exciting presentation), but also serve a pedagogical end by forcing students to consider the value of their work beyond the classroom. Class work that reaches an outside audience can be more meaningful to students than projects that only the instructor reads.
Process is important in digital project work. There can be a long lead time; choosing a platform and setting it up, organizing the material so that students can access and describe it, and teaching students to use the platform often takes longer than you expect. Start early.
Think about your data - what’s available? Where is it? Do students need to create it? Do they know how to find it? Do you have permission to use it? That can be a legal concern with copyright or artists’ rights, but also an ethical concern, if you’re working with oral history or community sources. Do participants know what you plan to do with it and how widely it may be shared or displayed? In some cases Brown’s Institutional Review Board rules may apply.
Choose your digital platform carefully, and become familiar with the software you plan to use. Start with this document, and consult with CDS as needed. CDS staff can work with you to shape your project and evaluate available software platforms for your project. CDS supports several platforms that might be useful for these projects, although these are not the only options. CDS staff can work with your class, offering workshops and helping to set up the software. Note: This requires sufficient advance notice!
Consider the structure of the project, or set up a system to allow the students to consider the structure of the project. Make sketches, bubble diagrams, and the like, to see how the pieces connect. Build a draft of your project with a few items in it before you decide on the final structure. Test the structure with the audience you’re interested in reaching.
Finally, think about how long you want your site to be available. Class projects do not need to last forever, and it’s a good idea to decide whether you see your site as an archive or a shorter-term exhibition. The Brown Digital Repository is useful for projects that require the longest-term preservation; it can provide a permanent home for shareable resources that the project uses, or (for a simple website) preserve the entire project. Commercial sites make no promises that they will last, and some require annual payments. It can be difficult to export your images and text from commercial sites.
Creating public digital projects can be a useful aspect of pedagogy, encouraging the exploration of sources, the organization of narratives, and the consideration of audiences. Digital projects—exhibits, presentations, compilations, and more—lend themselves to collaborative work, and they are especially appropriate in classes taught all or in part online.
This guide will help students and faculty create public digital projects, as part of a class, as a research project, or as a way of presenting their research or community-engaged scholarship. For undergraduates, developing a digital project may be a class assignment (e.g., for a final project), the central activity for all students in a course, or may serve as a capstone project for a concentration. Graduate students may develop digital projects as a program requirement or part of their scholarly portfolios. Faculty, individually or with student assistance, may also seek to develop digital projects as a form of scholarly or public-facing publication of their research.
This document begins with pedagogical questions: what is the purpose of your digital project? Who is the audience? What kinds of materials do you have available? Is it the final product of existing research, or is it created as an ongoing part of a research project? It continues with process: what to do, when.
The final part of the document is concerned with choosing the right platform. There are many platforms to choose from in creating public digital projects, some through Brown, some commercial, some offered by nonprofits. Some are supported by Brown, others are not. Choose a platform based on the type of material you’re displaying, the story you’re telling, the kind of presentation you desire, and the audience you’re targeting. Different platforms are supported in different ways. This document describes some of the platforms, with examples of the kinds of digital projects that they can be used to create.
Finally, this document offers links to Brown resources for creating these and provides information on the ways that the Center for Digital Scholarship supports this kind of work through workshops and consultations.
If you are presenting images, artifacts, or media documents that can be described with a consistent metadata, consider Omeka. An online exhibit that is mostly a presentation of digital objects or media is easily created in Omeka. The basic packages do not allow for flashy presentations; most Omeka exhibits are list-based. If your exhibit includes Indigenous materials, consider Mukurtu. If graphic presentation is most important, or if the images are more important than the metadata about them, consider Wordpress, or one of the commercial website builders.
If your images are art, or maps, or other images from ARTstor or Luna, and your audience is at Brown, consider building your exhibit within those platforms. (For tips on finding images, including the many collections available through the library, see this LibGuide.)
There are tools with many levels of complexity for presenting geographic information. Google Maps and Google Earth are easily available and are excellent tools for sharing information that can be pinned to a map. StoryMaps provides an easy way to add narratives to geography; it is both easy to start with and can present complex geographic information. Full-fledged GIS systems like ArcGIS require significant training. Lynn Carlson, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Manager at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, manages Brown’s ArcGIS software licensing.
If your goal is to tell a story - if you want people to follow an argument, not explore a database of images or media - consider Scalar, or StoryMaps, Wordpress, or one of the commercial website builders.
Most of the platforms that allow the presentation of digital files can present audio and video files, or link to audio and video on platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube. Some have specific requirements as to size, file type, and ability to import. Omeka has several plug-ins for oral history recordings and transcripts, and tools for oral history metadata. You might also consider making a podcast.
If your project has a bibliography at its core, consider Zotero. Zotero can be included in other platforms so that it’s possible to include non-bibliographic material connected to a Zotero bibliography, or to include a Zotero bibliography as a supplement to other sites. Zotpress connects Zotero to Wordpress. Omeka Classic also has a Zotero importer. It is also possible to include Zotero entries in Scalar using locally written javascript code.
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