Slides for session I ran at History New to Teaching event, Institute of Historical Research, London, Tuesday 12th September 2017

1. Digital History in
the student
learning
experience
James Baker, Lecturer in Digital
History/Archives
University of Sussex
slideshare.net/drjwbaker
@j_w_baker
james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. Exceptions: quotations,
embeds from external sources, logos, and
marked images.

2. @j_w_baker -- james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
Scenario
Because you are new and fresh and young, you've
been given the (vague) task “making the curriculum
'digital'”
You aren't making a new module rather adapting
what exists (so the learning outcomes remain
historical)
There is no commitment to changing assessments
or assessment patterns
The person asking for 'digital' skills doesn't know
what they are but has a sense of their
relevance/importance

3. @j_w_baker -- james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
Sequence Construction Activity
Working in pairs (8 minutes)
● Reorganise a list on things to teach into the order you think
they should be taught
● Justify your ordering
● Fill in blanks: things you think the students also need.
Working in pairs of pairs (8 minutes)
● Discuss you orderings, justifications, and new items
● Reorder, add new things
● Draft a delivery strategy: in what contexts you know might
this work?
Working all together (8 minutes)
● Review our work

4. @j_w_baker -- james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
Sussex History 2017/18
Autumn - Doing History in the Digital Age
1. What is History
2. Reading History
3. Writing History
4. Referencing History
5. Library
7. Searching for History
8. Interfaces to History
9. Archiving History
10. Organising History
11. Sources of History
12. Review
- 1 hour per week
- Part of Y1 Module 'Early Modern World'
- Module is core for all History students
- Timetabled in lecture slot
- One question in the exam
- Get into digital through history skills
- Primary sources as point of focus
- Tie to Early Modern lectures/seminars
- 'Lectures' super practical
- Software Carpentry influence
- Peer learning exercises
- Combination of laptop and paper work
- Students work together, share laptops
- Bring their own but don't have to

5. @j_w_baker -- james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
Sussex History 2017/18
Spring - Doing Digital History
1. What is Digital History?
2. Data types and Data fields
3. Making historical data I (theory)
4. Making historical data II (practical: obtaining)
5. Making historical data III (practical: tidying)
6. Visualising historical data I (theory)
7. Visualising historical data II (practice: graphs)
8. Visualising historical data III (practice: maps)
9. Doing Digital History during your degree
10. Preserving historical data
11. Sharing historical data
- 1 hour per week
Part of Y1 Module
'Making of the
Modern World'
- Core module
- Lecture slot
- One exam question
- Primary sources
- Modern World focus
- 'Lectures' practical
- Peer learning
- Laptops
- Multi-week themes
- Week 9 timed with
Y2 module selection
- Build dataset in
Week 4 that they use
throughout

6. @j_w_baker -- james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
Headline findings
Students like practical
Peer learning helps manage mass practicals
Students like learning about history
Primary sources are a perfect hook
Students like learning about historical practice
Students dislike titles that look like maths/stats
Students have hugely varying skill levels
You learn a huge amount about the assumptions
students and colleagues make about 'digital'.

7. Digital History in
the student
learning
experience
James Baker, Lecturer in Digital
History/Archives
University of Sussex
slideshare.net/drjwbaker
@j_w_baker
james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. Exceptions: quotations,
embeds from external sources, logos, and
marked images.

8. @j_w_baker -- james.baker@sussex.ac.uk
Further Reading
Baker, James. “Fostering Digital History: Integrating Digital Research Skills into an Undergraduate
History Curriculum,” October 1, 2016. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/66712/.
Beals, M. H. “Workshop: Slow Down! Teaching Students to Encode Their Close Reading.” M. H. Beals,
September 8, 2015. http://mhbeals.com/workshop-slow-down-teaching-students-to-encode-their-close-
reading/.
Cohen, Daniel J, and Roy Rosenzweig. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and
Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Crymble, Adam, Fred Gibbs, Allison Hegel, Caleb McDaniel, Ian Milligan, Evan Taparata, Jeri Wieringa,
Jeremy Boggs, and William J. Turkel. The Programming Historian - Print Edition. Zenodo, 2016.
doi:10.5281/zenodo.49873.
Crymble, Adam, Karen Colbron, and Ian Chowcat. “Digital in the Undergraduate History Curriculum:
Spotlight on the Digital Case Study.,” November 22, 2016.
http://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/digital-in-the-undergraduate-history-
curriculum(11523132-44d3-45e8-983e-5208e3b11675).html.
Froehlich, Heather. “On Teaching Coding to English Studies Students.” Heather Froehlich, January 29,
2014. http://hfroehlich.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/on-teaching-coding-to-english-studies-students/.
Graham, Shawn, Ian Milligan, and Scott Weingart. Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian’s
Macroscope, 2016.
Mullen, Lincoln. “Learning How to Teach History in a Digital Age.” The Chronicle of Higher Education.
ProfHacker, August 26, 2013. http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/learning-how-to-teach-history-in-a-
digital-age/51875.
Pugh, Jo. “Time Machines and How to Use Them : An Overview of Digital Humanities Teaching and
Research,” June 2014. https://dlib.york.ac.uk/yodl/app/home/detail?id=york%3a823026&ref=search.
Wilson, Greg. “Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned.” ArXiv:1307.5448 [Physics], July 20, 2013.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5448.