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Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio

Category: PDH Certificate

Dec 09 2019

Points on a Map

Posted on December 9, 2019 by mbgill

The end of another semester means another update to my map!

This semester I focused closely on the first 30 locations in the text, ten from each category of location I determined, visited locations (gray), mentioned in poetry (blue), and mentioned in prose (yellow) . This covers chapters 1-9 for visited locations, 1-10 for places mentioned in poetry, and 1-12 for places mentioned in text. I spent my time building off of the work I had completed over the summer.

I expanded the information about the locations to include passages from the other main versions of the text–the Dennis Washburn translation into English, the Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū and Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku taikei. I also included more detailed research notes and even tried my hand at translating the waka poems. One of the reasons I wanted to include the four main different versions of the text was because of differences between not only the translations, but also the two versions of the Japanese text.

 

(The passages from the four texts regarding Miyagi Moor)

While I have done a lot of text analysis regarding the text because of this project, I want to keep my map and the information on it fairly objective, so it can be used as a resource for text analysis by other researchers and students. For that reason, I will also be creating a location index which has my own analysis and more detailed information about the places. 

I spent a lot of time this semester refining my categories, and in addition to the three main categories listed above, I also decided to include a tagging system to further clarify the types of locations present in the text. On the map they take the form of check marks to denote real, extant locations (i.e. Kiyomizu-Dera), x marks for real, non-extant locations (i.e. Suzaku Palace), circles for a region or non-single point locations (i.e. Miyagino), a book for fictional, Genji specific locations (i.e. Genji’s Nijō Estate), and, last but not least, ? marks for fictional or poetic place names that I took an educated guess at locating (i.e. Okinaga River). 

I also played around with the format the map was going to take. I had been using Google MyMaps for a while but wanted to look at my other options. The very first version of the map was made using QGIS, which was a fun challenge to learn but is lacking in key interactive features and a challenge to embed on a website. I also considered using OpenStreetMap but that lacked the personalization I was looking for, and the last option I was looking at, Mapbox, required knowledge of coding that I am not interested in acquiring at this moment. In the end I stuck with MyMaps and it’s worked out very well. It was easy to upload my .csv data files, the icons are easy to change and set for each different location, and I was able to upload data to get the old provinces of Japan to show up (shapefiles from CHGIS which I changed into a kml file). Using Google also allowed for the map to easily be embedded on my website, Genjipedia, which has the full interactive map. 

This project has been a long process, and it’s changed a lot from what I first created, but this semester I’ve done a lot of work to make it a legitimate and useful resource for other people. Next semester, I will continue working through the locations past chapter 12, though at a slower pace than this semester. I will also be going back and amending some data to make the information that pops up when a location is clicked less cluttered and more user friendly. While I have about 82 more locations to complete, it sure has come a long way from the first version!

(Initial version of the map-created in QGIS)

-Mac

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate
Dec 09 2019

Reflections on the Digital Humanities Capstone Symposium

Posted on December 9, 2019 by dedinboro

Yesterday, I attended the Public Digital Humanities (DH) Capstone Symposium. The symposium represented the final step towards completing the Public Digital Humanities certificate. At the event, my colleagues discussed the digital projects they had worked on during the semester, as part of the capstone. Later, the audience, which consisted of members of the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, the university, and the wider community, either offered comments, questions, or reflections on our digital work. For me, the experience was exciting. The symposium provided me with the opportunity to hear about the impressive digital projects of my colleagues who came from a range of disciplines, including History, Classics, Literary Translation, and Religious Studies. Moreover, because of the audience’s thoughtful and provoking questions to the panelists, I gained a better understanding of the challenges and advancements my colleagues had with their project during the semester, and I was able to reflect on my work and the overall direction I envision it going.

At the symposium, two important questions stood out, “What would you tell others about the capstone/certificate?” and “What did your digital work allow you to see that your research and writing did not?” As a student in the Education Policy and Leadership Department, with a particular disciplinary focus on the History of American Education, I found out about the certificate by chance. My involvement with the Colored Conventions Project – Iowa Satellite, a project that broadly examines the lives of African Americans in Iowa during the 19th century, exposed me to the important connection between digital tools and scholarship. After taking the course Digital Humanities Theory and Practice, which examined the intellectual landscape of digital humanities, along with the various tools and concepts associated with the field and meeting with individuals in the Studio about what the certificate entailed, I decided to complete the certificate. 

The certificate and the completion of my capstone project have offered me a new lens through which I can explore my research and writing. When researching and writing, I become preoccupied with outlines, structure, sources, and arguments, all geared towards an academic audience. By using digital tools that support text-analysis, digital mapping, and visualization, my understanding of my research and writing becomes more nuanced. More specifically, my use of digital tools supports my interpretation, analysis, and presentation of scholarship in a manner that captivates me differently and can further engage groups of individuals outside of academia. Moreover, by completing the certificate and project which allowed me to choose from a range of courses, interact with individuals from the Studio, explore digital and scholarly conversations about digital humanities in academia, I feel better positioned to become a digital humanities scholar.

I am excited about my future work in digital humanities. I think the field pushes you, similar to other areas in academia, to want to know more and learn more about scholars in the field, new digital tools, and the intersections between your research and digital humanities. My capstone project has afforded me the time and support to begin to envision how I want digital humanities to function as part of my research and writing. As I move forward, I can say that the foundation that I have in this area has taught, challenged, and inspired me to continue to move forward. 

-Dellyssa Edinboro

 

 

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate
Dec 09 2019

About my Digital Humanities Capstone Project …

Posted on December 9, 2019 by dedinboro

My research broadly examines Black women who traveled abroad for their education motives, either teaching, researching, or studying, during the 20th century. With the Digital Humanities (DH) Capstone Project, I wanted to utilize digital tools to explore, present, and interpret my research. My overall aim was to engage a wider audience with my research, solidify my understanding of digital tools (those I have used in prior classes and those that were new), and to gain a better understanding of my research topic. 

At our first meeting for the Capstone Project, we discussed our overall aims for the semester. I pointed out what I wanted my project to entail — a website that included blogs, podcasts, and story maps that addressed various aspects of my broad research interest. Based on the nature of my project, I became paired with a member of the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio who would help me think through my project: Ethan DeGross, a research developer. Ethan was able to provide me with advice to help me get started on my project. He offered me advice on how to get a Google domain name for my research, how to organize my website, what platform would best host my project (while responding to my needs and budget), and what digital tools would best support work. Our meetings were helpful because it helped me to recognize the technical aspect of my project as I moved forward. 

After these meetings, I got to work. I got my Google domain, set up my website with WordPress, an open-source publishing platform, and started to work on my podcast. Completing a podcast represented an exciting step for me, but I had limited experience in creating one. For my Introduction to Digital Humanities course, I participated in a group podcast on the intellectual landscape of digital humanities. However, for this project, I did not tape or edit the podcast. For my Capstone Project, however, I would be taking on the responsibility of deciding the content I wanted to talk about, being the only person on the podcast, and editing the podcast after I completed it. Despite some initial challenges, in figuring out what software to use, I chose, Audacity, a free, open-source digital audio-editor, things moved smoothly. Before doing the podcast entitled, “Musing on the Connections between Black Women’s Global Travels and their Education” (tentative title), I wrote down notes on some key points I wanted to address in the podcast and briefly practiced how I would approach these points. After, I used an audio recorder to record the podcast, which lasted for approximately forty minutes. Then, I used Audacity to make slights edits to the podcast. Overall, I was happy with the quality of the podcast. It was based on the first chapter of my dissertation research and provided me with the opportunity to focus on specific aspects of my research in an informed, yet informal manner.

With this project, there is much more work to be done. For instance, I have started using other digital tools such as ESRI StoryMaps, a platform that combines authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content, to explore and digitally map the academic and professional pathways, both domestic and international, of various Black women. I am excited about the future of this project. Ultimately, working on this project has rejuvenated my enthusiasm for my dissertation research. I want my research to exist outside of the walls of academic, in a manner that is accessible to wider audiences. The time with this capstone and my continuing efforts with my project after the capstone will make this possible.

-Dellyssa Edinboro

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate
Oct 28 2019

Eurasian Manuscripts – Keogh Fall 2019 DH Capstone

Posted on October 28, 2019October 28, 2019 by keogh

For my DH Capstone semester, I am working on the usability and clarity for a website about manuscripts. It started here and now looks like this.

The site is an outlet for materials discussed in the 2016 Mellon-Sawyer Seminar, “Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Pre-Modern Eurasia.” You may find information on the seminar here and here.

Mellon Sawyer Seminar Feb. 2017 U. Iowa palm leaf manuscript workshop with Jim Canary

2016 Mellon Sawyer Seminar in UI Library Special Collections

 

The seminar led the development of Historical Perspectives GE course covering manuscript traditions and technology from Japan to Ireland, offered last Spring (2019) as JPNS:2127/CLSA:2127 taught by Profs. Kendra Strand  and Paul Dilley.

The website is an effort to bring the cross-discipline approach of the seminar and course to a wider audience so that specialists, enthusiasts, and beginners of various manuscript fields could explore similarities and differences over distances in time and geography.

I am working on this project as part of a team, led by Prof. Dilley. The bones of the layout were developed by Ryan M. Horne  for the BAM (Big Ancient Mediterranean) project . The Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio’s Matthew Butler  and Noah Anderson , who graduated from UI last Spring with a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Classical Languages, built the php database and API for the manuscripts. The majority of the database has been entered by Prof. Dilley along with contributions from Daphne Becker, Maya Amjadi, Anne Fish, and Mohamad Bin Mohdhasli. 

Early in the semester, I was paired with my Studio mentor, Nikki White, who had guided me through my 2018 Digital Scholarship Fellowship working on WOAH (you will probably notice that I re-purposed much of that work for the manuscripts). She offers a wealth of knowledge in addition to excellent guidance and feedback as I stumble through the terrain of website development and design. After working through some of the features of the site, she asked me to define my goals and create a list of objectives for the semester.

Nikki White 

Goals:

  • functions
    • rework filter display/navigation
      • partial lists for the 4 categories are visible to begin and are expandable
      • include map color controls alongside filter controls rather separate tab
      • move time slider filter to top of the page
        • condense two sliders into one with two handles
    • coordinate datatable and map and popup/right hand panel
      • hover should highlight point and entry in the table
        • and other way round
        • popup on hover – right hand panel on click?
      • clicking should flag a change in the right hand panel
  • formats
    • [done] reposition datatables
      • updated ‘witness table’ to use jquery table
      • further customized to handle the large text boxes
        • ellipses with hover for full and download includes full text
    • update button appearances
    • work on color pallete for map points 
      • [done] stripes as possible colors
    • deal with CSS trouble spots

This also included some ‘wireframing’ and my learning what that means (it is an exercise in website layout with the most basic representation of components and functions, kind of like an outline). I tried paper first,

and then was introduced to some free online tools. 

With a couple steps completed, feel free to let me know how I am progressing – edward-keogh@uiowa.edu.

-Ed Keogh

Posted in PDH Certificate
Oct 28 2019

Back at it aGenji

Posted on October 28, 2019October 31, 2019 by mbgill

Hello again! I’m continuing my work from the summer fellowship this semester as I work on my PDH Capstone with the Studio. 

This semester I am primarily focused on fleshing out the first thirty locations for my map. I’m still following my previously established large headings (visited in text, mentioned in text, and mentioned in poetry) but I’ve begun a hash tagging type system for further clarifying the types of locations. My hashtags are things like “real” vs “fictional”, “extant” vs “non-extant”, and “poetic.” “Fictional” covers places such as Genji’s houses that were never necessarily actual physical buildings that existed, but are described as existing at a concrete location within the text which can then be mapped. “Poetic” is used to refer to places that are mentioned primarily for the purpose of a poetic allusion. 

I’m also in the process of fleshing out my core categories, so that their definitions are clearer and better defined. They are currently defined as follows, though this is bound to change as I continue working: 

Visited in Text

Locations that fall under this category are places that a character or characters physically travels to during the course of the story. As I am not, in this iteration of the map, marking the number of trips taken or tracking those trips visually, the location merely contains a list of characters who visit at some point in the text. While many places in this category actually exist (ie Suma, Akashi, Mt. Hiei) others are fictional places (Nijō-in, Rokujō-in) that were imagined to exist at a particular geographic location and described as such within the text. My subcategories will add further categorization on a place by place basis. 

Mentioned in Poetry

Places in this category are real places that are mentioned in poems directly within the text. (ie Miyagino: “Hearing the wind sigh, burdening with drops of dew all Miyagi Moor, my heart helplessly goes out to the little hagi frond.” (Tyler 8)). This category will include locations from Genji poems and allusions to other poems but only if that poem is quoted in whole. 

Mentioned in Text

This category is compiled of places that the characters mention within the prose text. This is a bit of a catch-all for places that don’t fit in the other two categories but are still mentioned. These places can be either real places, fictional with a real-world location, or real locations used as a poetic allusion. This section will also include locations from poems that are alluded to within the prose text.

I’ve also found that I unintentionally created hierarchy, with visited in text being the most important, mentioned in poetry being second, and mentioned in text being a catch-all for places that didn’t fit either of the other two categories. As I’m working through my data, I’m double checking to make sure that each place is in the correct category and I am making sure that I am using the absolute first instance of place appearing within the text as the passage that I cite within my data compilation spreadsheet. As I want this map to be used as a textual analysis tool by other scholars, I am trying to keep as objective as possible, so even if the passage containing the first mention of a location isn’t particularly exciting, that is still the passage that I will include. 

I’ve also expanded my spreadsheet to include the passages from the two main Japanese sources, the Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshu and Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei. This allows myself and the future users of the map to compare the Japanese passages to the English, of which I’m including passages from the Royall Tyler and Dennis Washburn translations. 

I’ve also been having weekly meetings with Dr. Kendra Strand to discuss my work, the poems I’m translating from the text for the “mentioned in poetry” sections, and to do our own textual analysis as we discuss how place functions within the text. From our latest meeting, I’ve decided that I will also end up creating a glossary to include on Genjipedia which will reflect my own thoughts and analysis that I’ve generated as I’m close reading the text for this project. 

-Mac Gill

Posted in PDH Certificate
Oct 24 2019

The Holy Land continued

Posted on October 24, 2019October 28, 2019 by ascardina

This semester I’m entering a new phase of my Digital Humanities scholarship. My project is simultaneously the capstone to my Public Digital Humanities Certificate and the very first project for my Informatics Certificate, in the form of the final project for my Geographic Databases class.

It seems appropriate that the project should be two things at once, as I began it in my first semester as a DH scholar in a class on Ancient Art. I began by mapping three different spatializations of the Christian Holy Land—two 7th-8th century mosaics and one 4th century book by a nun named Egeria outlining her Holy Land pilgrimage. By layering the locations referenced by all three sources in a digital map, I had expected to find some kind of pattern that reflected common locations and themes in Palestine, Transjordan, and Egypt that spoke to what early Christians thought the “Holy Land” was. Instead, my first map (created with the help of former Studio GIS specialist Rob Shepherd) looked like I had thrown confetti at it.

 

 

It was disappointing that I didn’t find the patterns I hoped to, but the “failure” of that first project piqued my curiosity further—What did early Christians think the Holy Land was, then? Where did it start and end? What towns, monasteries, and natural features characterized it, and how did ancient Christians know that?

So I applied to the Studio’s Summer Fellowship this year in order to expand my map and define those patterns. I spent the summer accumulating much more data and adding it to the map, and ended up proving Einstein’s definition of insanity.

So much more confetti. So much.

However, over the course of the summer as I plied my map with more and more datasets—pilgrimage itineraries, literary references, ancient road networks, archaeological remains, Roman temples, bishops’ seats, way stations, caravan roads, population and climate data, etc. etc. etc.—I realized the problem wasn’t the amount of data that I did or didn’t have, it was the variety of data types. How do I make the archaeological record speak to ancient artistic representations of the Holy Land? How do pilgrimage itineraries speak to population growth? I had to find better ways to analyze my data than merely color-coding confetti.

Luckily, the GIS program I’m using, ArcGIS, is very powerful and has many different analytical tools, but they are dependent upon some knowledge of geography, statistics, and the computer language Python. And I don’t know any of those things.

Also, it doesn’t end with this project. There are many other digital tools I want to use in my scholarship—text analysis, web design, and database management—and I don’t want to be dependent upon computer scientists to do analytical work for me. I want to engage my projects on a deeper level and mine the limits of what they can do. So this year I’m starting an Informatics Certificate that will teach me all of that and more. My first objective is to take the data I’ve amassed so far and turn it into an organized geographic database, with clear, searchable relations between the locations’ many attributes. It’s ironic to me that for my capstone I’m still struggling to start my first project.

-Andrea Scardina

Posted in PDH Certificate
Jul 25 2019

Blog post number two

Posted on July 25, 2019July 26, 2019 by ascardina

The first two to three weeks of the Summer Fellowship were a flurry of data mining and expanding my digital map, but the last three have been a slow crawl through scholarship on Christian pilgrimage in the Holy Land, data cleaning, and endless online tutorials teaching me how to use ArcMap’s toolbox to analyze what I have mapped. What is clear to me now is that in order to better analyze my map, I need to take my dozens of datasets on specific archaeological remains, cities, literary references, and environmental features and condense them into 5-10 topical datasets that can be analyzed together. This process will take months, no doubt, but it took eight weeks to figure out how to organize my map in order to get the results I want.

Working with ArcMap I have had to learn a number of computer and statistical skills that I never had to before. As I go through the endless online tutorials, I keep coming against terms that are utterly strange to me, like p-value, z-score, and choropleth. Each time I come across a new term, I google it and make another entry in my notebook under the growing heading “GIS vocab list.” Another section of the notebook has a long list of questions to bring to our GIS experts, who have been so patient and helpful throughout the summer. This part of the process has been intimidating, because humanists tend to avoid computer science and statistics. I know there is no such thing as “right-brained” and “left-brained” people, and yet I realize that I have always treated these kinds of skills as outside my “wheelhouse.” 

Two pages of many–do not bother trying to decipher my handwriting

Analyzing my data this summer has shown me that in fact these kinds of skills are not as frightening as they seem. The many new terms express analytical concepts I had encountered before but never put into words. I think that’s the trick to Digital Humanities—realizing that these tools are not foreign to us as Humanists, they simply use different language (a z-score expresses how one piece of data compares to others in its set, a p-value expresses the likelihood that statistical results are random and not meaningful, and a choropleth map is just a map that uses color or symbols to express values within different areas.) 

Besides a greater knowledge of my field and GIS, the experience of immersing myself in DH work has shown me the value of leaning into unfamiliar studies. Learning a new DH skill can take ten minutes or ten days, but none of them are inaccessible. Plus every new skill I learn is a line on my CV that will someday help me find a job. As another Digital Humanist often tells me, we are learning DH because, in ten years, what we think of as “Digital Humanities” is just going to be called “Humanities.” 

In the video below, I reflect on the future of this project and myself as a Digital Humanist.


 
Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate, Studio Fellows
Jul 03 2019

Mapping culture and geography of the Holy Land

Posted on July 3, 2019 by ascardina

My project maps the Christianization of the Holy Land in the Late Antique/early Byzantine period (approximately 300-600 CE) using Christian literary references, pilgrimage itineraries, and various material remains throughout the region that played a part in its cultural transformation. Broadly speaking, I want to better understand how cultural change happens.

In Late Antiquity, Christians came to dominate the Roman Empire, but part of my project is complicating that idea of any cultural entity “dominating” a place. Every Roman imperial province and region (including Palestine) was a complex tapestry of indigenous residents, foreign traders and immigrants, local historical, mythological, and cultic traditions, imperial traditions meant to bind the area to the empire, Roman bureaucratic infrastructures, older bureaucratic infrastructures, and complex dynamics within its socioeconomic strata.

Although a large number of individuals had converted to some form of Christianity by this point, a question that plagues historians of early Christianity is when can we say that any region became “Christian?” Is it merely a question of numbers and population?  Can infrastructures (i.e. bureaucracies, cities, roads and aqueducts, law/policy) convert to a religion? What percentage of one’s cultural heritage needs to be painted over or replaced in order for historians to say it no longer ”dominated” an area? The Holy Land is an ideal place to consider these questions. It was a diverse region ethnically, religiously, economically, and climate-wise, and the only thing that caused it to be portioned off from the surrounding regions as a distinct “Land” was that Christians saw it as distinguished by its “holy” nature.  Christian pilgrims in particular played an important part in this process. They traveled from outside the region specifically to see those things that made it holy. In turn, local people began creating incentives to attract pilgrims. Part of my theory is that this dynamic between local peoples and pilgrims inadvertently defined the Christian Holy Land.

When I started planning my project several months ago, I imagined I would put more of my energy into mapping religious literary references and artistic representations of the Holy Land to see if the way Christians described it reflected reality. In order to create an accurate picture of that reality, I spent the first two weeks searching for preexisting GIS data sets of the cities, roads, political boundaries, and religious landmarks of the region. I have found a wealth of data across the web, generously make public, which has given me more background information than I could have imagined. If anything, I’m a bit overwhelmed at all I have, which complicates the challenge of figuring out which data matters to the historical narrative I’m tracing.

So many tiny points!

 

What’s more, the more that I layer Christian literary references and material sources onto my map, the more that traditional explanations for the rise of Christianity—moral superiority, socioeconomic discontent, cultural competition and political ambition—appear overly simplistic in this region. Maybe that is a good thing, but I need to find paradigms that connect the trade routes, cities, pagan temples, synagogues, monasteries, and shifting imperial borders into something meaningful.

For the next five weeks, I believe I will need to focus on the following questions:

  • Where were populations in the region rising and falling? Christian populations? Non-Christian populations ?
  • How were specific pilgrimage routes being popularized?
  • Who was coming to the region for the specific purpose of Christian pilgrimage? What were they expecting, and what did they find?
  • What kinds of local efforts were there to draw Christian pilgrims to their cities, towns, and holy places? What was at stake for them? Reputation? Money? Salvation?
  • What kinds of attributes made a place more or less Christian?

-Andrea Scardina

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate, Studio Fellows
May 06 2019

Saving Susiana Capstone-Update

Posted on May 6, 2019 by rmaxon

With the semester coming to a close, my Saving Susiana digital project is off to a great start. While I began the semester with grand idealism, practical constraints relating both to my associated qualifying paper and issues of audience of the project forced me time and time again to shift gears and re-evaluate what I wanted and needed to do with this project both short-term and long-term as this project will be a component of my PhD dissertation. 

I did accomplish (some) of my initial goals, albeit these were ultimately pared down significantly from what I had hoped to accomplish early in the project. The catalog aspect was shortened to only that of the British museum, and more specifically objects relating to the time from prehistory to the end of Darius I, who died in 522 B.C. This is largely because my current iteration of the project, as part of my departmental qualifying paper, focuses exclusively on the objects that Darius would have likely had access to during his reign. The majority of the finds from the British museum turned out to be coins from a much later period, and not relevant for this current project. Of course all finds will eventually be recorded in the Omeka site, and broken down by object type and period. With this cataloging system, I also seriously debated and researched the type of information I wanted to be included in order to choose the best metadata organization tools. I debated for some time between using Darwin Core, used largely for the sciences, and Dublin Core which is used for the humanities. Because my project is so interdisciplinary, both metadata organization types have their benefits. My goal in the future is to find some happy medium, since the project ultimately involves both the technical data as well as the humanistic and social scientific analysis of the objects, individuals, art and architecture of Susa.

As far as the model building goes, there have been some interesting developments. I utilized my maps to build the floor plan of the palace and attached Apadana. In researching, and discussing with my advisor how to proceed, the realization came that little is known about the remains of the site since the published archaeological reports are inconsistent and fragmentary. The current models reveal roman influence, rather than something either Darius or his Elamite predecessors would have erected. To accurately reconstruct the building it is therefore necessary to do more research into both Elamite, Neo-Elamite architecture, neither subject of which I have any experience or knowledge with. I certainly hope this is resolved so that I can implement a realistic 3D model and mapping elements to my project, as it would not only enhance my project, but ultimately lead to the audience, or audiences since it appears now I will have to negotiate a broader range since less was known about Susa and the happenings there than I had initially anticipated. Something I could not have known until I presented the research and Qualifying paper to my advisor and committee.

I had a really great experience working on this project and discussing the project direction with my supervisors in the Studio, and cannot thank them enough for all their help and support. They were not just helpful in choosing programs for my project, and working with me to figure out what I needed to make this a successful project, but they were great non-expert soundboards in relation to how to potentially convey my thoughts, ideas, and research to different audiences. I would really recommend that anyone working on a digital project of any sort work with the Studio. They are incredibly kind and really know how to make the best use out of not only our currently available programs and platforms here at Iowa, but about their specific specialties in general which go beyond what we have here to make for well-rounded projects and more accessible digital projects. 

-Rachael Maxon

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate
May 02 2019

Digital tools for responding to writing: A Review

Posted on May 2, 2019 by goldbe

Google Docs and Microsoft Office365 offer a variety of tools and features for collaborative writing and revision. However, my experience with them has felt lacking. I’ve found they fall short of the goal of inviting robust conversation around a piece of writing, where multiple reviewers can interact with the text, the writer, and each other. An in-person writing conference engages all three elements. So does an activity following the Workshop model. If the major online word processors don’t offer the engagement I want, are there digital tools that do?

Most digital tools I found in my research were geared towards assessing writing. Tools like Peerceptive, Calibrated Peer Review (CPR), and Turnitin all have response elements, but focus more on a summative response at the “final draft” stage of writing. I was interested in earlier interventions, in helping student-writers refine and revise writing over time. These programs were not what I was looking for. So I did some research, had some conversations, and found four tools that seemed viable to allow for all three conversations to happen: Slack, Github, Quip, and Eli Review.

Each tool was reviewed under four guiding questions:

  1. How does this tool make communicating between reviewers, authors, and text easier or more robust than Office465 or Google Docs?
  2. What is the learning curve? Would instructors need to spend significant time teaching their students to use the tool?
  3. What features stand out as exceptionally useful, different, better or worse than other tools?
  4. Is it worth the cost? Is there “bang for your buck?”

The Outsiders

Slack and Github are not necessarily designed for revision of documents. Github is designed to work on coding, but has developed a system for multiple users to edit and comment on a single code. Slack calls itself a “collaboration software” and operates primarily as a workflow organizer and team communication center. Both products, however, hold potential in the sort of revision and response I desire.

 

Github

The strength of Github, as related to my needs, is in version control. Users can track nearly every edit made to an original document, revert back to the original, or start new branches of revision from nearly anywhere in the timeline. Version control is important in revision, allowing for the author to have final authority over changes and seeing the progress across time. While there’s no direct conversation tool within Github to allow persons to talk, conversations of a sort can happen within the text mark-up.

Because Github is built for coding, there are certain elements that have a steep learning curve. Figuring out how to adapt elements such as the text box and standard comment features to address blocks of text rather than code is my foremost concern. The instructor would have to spend significant time setting up procedures to translate Github’s interface into a useful one for peer review, and spend another chunk of time teaching those procedures to her students. Given the other shortcomings, I am unconvinced that this would be a worthy expenditure of time. However, the price is right. The free version of Github is perfectly usable in the classroom context.

Overall, Github could have use as a tool for response to writing. However, because it’s not built for that kind of work, the amount of effort an instructor would put forth shaping the tool to the purpose makes Github an unlikely choice.

 

Slack

Like Github, Slack is a tool that would have to be repurposed to do the kind of response I’m hoping for. Its strength is in communication between users, and flexibility to build from their base platform. Slack users have the ability to incorporate multiple apps, including Office365 or Google Docs, which allows for a very flexible set of uses. However, Slack itself is primarily a communication and task-assignment tool. Any text editing or revisions would happen through the app in Office365 or Google Docs.

Using the Slack communication interface is relatively simple, but the process of integrating apps and crafting response can become complicated as multiple windows and tools pop up. An instructor can set up the apps for students, then create and teach the procedure. However, in my use, the app interfaces were glitchy, at times unresponsive. I don’t know that Slack adds anything essential to Office365 or Google Docs in terms of responding to writing. While the free version is robust, the limited amount of communications and apps likely limits use to one project per month.

While Slack provides a good platform for communication across working groups, any communication with the text demands a second platform. Because of this, I am unconvinced that Slack adds anything to the response process.

 

The Contenders

Quip and Eli Review are two tools created for document revision. Though primarily a “productivity tool,” Quip has document integration tools. Eli Review was built expressly as a tool for teaching writing. With some steep prices, the primary question for both products is: are they worth it?

 

Quip

Quip can be a useful platform for engaging with a text and a team of reviewers. There are comments, tools to draw attention to certain parts, and a tracker of changes made. The markup tools in Quip are very similar to most word processing software, and the additional commentary sidebar is a useful way for both reviewers and the original author to see the whole conversation around the text.

The main drawback is a lack of version control. While there’s an easily accessible Document History to see various versions, and changes can be tracked in the commentary sidebar, there’s no easy way to compare across versions or maintain an unblemished original. Further, Quip is expensive. A full classroom, divided into teams of no more than five, would cost at least $120 per month. This is a steep price tag for a document editor. Were it to be used for more tasks, the price may be worth it. However, there are few tasks in a classroom for which Quip would be useful.

As a productivity tool in a workplace environment, Quip is undoubtedly powerful. As a tool for responding to writing, Quip has a lot to offer. It’s easy to use and provides avenues to talk to the text and the reviewers. However, the price makes it difficult to advocate for in a classroom environment.

 

Eli Review

Eli Review is designed by and for educators as a platform for responding to and revising text as well as giving opportunities for peer review. Purpose built for the task, Eli Review is full of useful tools. The steepest learning curve is for instructors, who have to carefully design many implements of an assignment. Instructors can align writing tasks to each step of review, give instructions to writers and reviewers, and track progress of drafts as well as how much a reviewer is interacting with a text. Students will also need some practice with the platform, but one “practice assignment” is likely sufficient. Eli Review has very clear support documents.

Reviewers have a variety of tools at their disposal. In-text markup tools are available if the document is submitted in the preferred in-browser text editor, and there are fields for overall commentary aligned with the instructor’s assigned task. A variety of methods are available, including rubrics and Likert scales, along with open-entry text boxes. One drawback is the lack of rigorous version control. The user may have to rely on their own locally-saved document to maintain a true ‘original.’ However, with the robust level of feedback, I would call the impact of that drawback minimal.

Eli Review costs $25 per semester, with discounts for full-year subscriptions and institution-level contracts. Given the power of the platform, the ability for instructors to shape tasks towards specific outcomes, I believe that for a course focused on writing and revision, this cost is a worthy investment. The highest learning curve is for an instructor, but the learning happens once. When the instructor has the assignments shaped to her liking, the assignments can be recycled and revised as necessary.

Conclusion

Of the four tools I investigated, Eli Review seems to be the most potentially impactful platform for responding to writing. While Quip provides a useful set of tools for responding to writing, the cost feels too substantial for the return. Slack is a more affordable option, but works only as an extension to platforms like Office365 and Google Docs. The extension may be helpful, but the impact is not significant enough to warrant the extra time setting up the program or teaching it. Github has some potential for collaboration in building documents, but would need significant work to adapt the coding-oriented structures to writing. Eli Review, though costly, provides the most well-rounded suite of tools for both instructors and students to shape response, engage in dialogue with the text and with other reviewers, and provide substantive guidance to the writer.

-Michael Goldberg

 

 

 

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, PDH Certificate

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