Patricia Hswe is the Program Officer for Scholarly Communications at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In this role, she helps manage and monitor the program’s grant portfolio, which addresses key areas such as preservation, electronic publishing, and access and library services. Patricia holds a MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a PhD from Yale University, and an AB from Mount Holyoke College. She is active in the Association of College and Research Libraries and was recently elected to the Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities.
Tara LaLonde is a GIS Specialist at Penn State University Libraries. She has a Master of Science in Geography from Michigan State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from Colgate University. Prior to working at the University Libraries, she worked in the geospatial technology industry.
Kate Miffitt is Assistant Director of the Office of Digital Learning in the College of Arts & Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. Her work includes identifying and developing new online programs and enhancing teaching and learning with technology, with a focus on arts and humanities pedagogies.
James O’Sullivan is Lecturer in Digital Arts & Humanities at University College Cork (National University of Ireland). He has previously held faculty positions at the University of Sheffield and Pennsylvania State University. His work has been published in a variety of interdisciplinary journals, including Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Leonardo, and Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures. He is the co-editor of Reading Modernism with Machines (Palgrave Macmillan 2016). James is Associate Director of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, as well as Chair of the DHSI Colloquium. Further information on James and his work can be found at josullivan.org.
Sarah Pickle (UNC 2005) is the assessment librarian at the Claremont Colleges Library. In that role, she designs and coordinates projects related to organizational effectiveness and planning at the Library. She came to Claremont after serving as the Council on Library and Information Resources Social Science Data Curation Fellow at Penn State Libraries. She began her fellowship in 2014, after working for two years as an analyst at the not-for-profit organization Ithaka S+R; there, her research focused on the efforts academic and cultural heritage institutions are making to create and sustain digital resources and services for scholars today. Prior to joining Ithaka S+R, she completed her PhD in comparative literature at Cornell University.
Nathan Piekielek is the Geospatial Services Librarian at The Pennsylvania State University. He works in the University Libraries Research Hub where he supports the use of geospatial technologies across the university.
Heather Dohn Ross holds a BS and MS in Experimental Psychology from Syracuse University. She is the Manager of the Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information.
Albert Rozo is the Preservation Data Specialist in the Preservation, Conservation, and Digitization Department at Penn State University Libraries. Prior to working at the Library, Albert worked in a variety of positions in the Chemistry, Entomology, and Information Technology Departments' at Penn State. Albert is a Licensed Architect in the State of Illinois. He has a BS in Architecture and is currently working towards an MS in Geographic Information Systems.
This is the source
This paper offers a case study of two contrasting digital scholarship internships at The Pennsylvania State University. We explore the benefits and drawbacks of the internship model as an approach to developing digital scholarship among undergraduates through detailing the challenges and particularities of these experiences and analyzing mentor reflection and student feedback. We conclude with a number of recommendations on best practices for teaching digital scholarship through an internship model and aim to provide a useful roadmap for institutions looking to follow a similar model for undergraduate education in this field.
DH practice-based pedagogy through two internshiup case studies at The Pennsylvania State University.
Digital scholarship has never been more important than for the current generation of undergraduate students. The need to develop one’s technical expertise is not just a concern for those few students aspiring to a career in academia; competency in the use of computer-assisted methods has relevance for the entire student population. Data analytics, knowledge representation, and dissemination techniques are just a few of the many areas with broad professional application to have undergone technology-driven transformation in recent decades. Society’s reliance on technology is such that the digital has permeated our professional lives, transforming the skillsets expected of students upon graduation.
The integration of digital scholarship in the undergraduate curriculum can
further the students’ learning experiences and engagement with their core
subject matter, but there are numerous obstacles to embedding the skills
required into course learning objectives and outcomes. Increasing digital
fluencies among undergraduate students in the Arts and Humanities, in
particular, presents a number of key challenges: the technical proficiency of undergraduates and
instructors, the timeframe of a single semester or quarter, and the
availability of hardware and software
As a consequence, institutions of higher education are responsible for exploring
a variety of pedagogical approaches to digital scholarship, both within and
beyond the confines of the classroom. By Until we consider digital humanities undergraduate
pedagogy in terms other than training, and rather as a pursuit that
enables all students to ask valuable and productive questions that make
for “a life worth living,” digital humanities will remain unrelated to
and ill defined against the goals of higher education.
One pair of interns worked on a project which availed of computational
approaches to text analysis for the purposes of exploring the language utilized
by online roleplayers. These students worked primarily under the guidance of the
Digital Humanities Research Designer, with support from the University
Libraries’ Publishing and Curation Services, as well as the Office of Digital
Pedagogy and Scholarship in the College of the Liberal Arts. In this instance,
the students worked collaboratively under minimal supervision on the same
project, on a research question of their own choosing. Effectively, this
internship was an experiment to see the possibility of undergraduate digital
scholarly research supported by resources – time, money, and faculty/staff
expertise. For the purposes of clarity, these students will be referred to as
the
As we begin to evaluate the internship model as a way to develop digital
scholarship skills in students, it is helpful to situate the approach within a
pedagogical framework. In this case, both internships were envisioned as
project-based learning opportunities to enhance the digital skills and
professionalization of undergraduate students. This
Thinking in the real world may indeed supplement and reinforce school-based learning; but it can also do far more to develop valid and important learning in its own right
In choosing the final candidates, each of the mentors made selections from the pool of applicants based in part on students possessing complementary skillsets, the ability to work collaboratively with others, and a natural curiosity and willingness to learn. However, as noted, there were a number of differences in the implementation of the two internships.
The geospatial interns were supervised by a project team of four–Penn State’s Geospatial Services Librarian, GIS Specialist, Maps Library Manager, and Research Data Management Specialist–that worked for three months prior to their start to plan and scope the project. Preparations for the arrival of the geospatial interns included producing a document outlining general professional expectations, organizing introductory reading material on the history of fire insurance mapping–of which the Sanborn collection is a part–producing a step-by-step technical protocol, and developing and writing about goals for project and intern learning outcomes. Interns were oriented to the project by the team at the beginning of the summer and integrated into all project activities from that point forward.
The text analysis interns were supervised by the Digital Humanities Research Designer, though they were largely under the tutelage of the Social Sciences Data Curation Fellow throughout the initial phase of their project during which data management was one of the primary concerns. In preparation for their start, a general scope of work, with learning goals identified and a rough project timeline outlined, was developed. The project timeline included general phases of research project development, with a lot of flexibility built in to accommodate the students’ project. Upon their start, the students were introduced to the goals and expectations of the internship, but then given latitude to define the nature of their research project.
The geospatial interns occupied much of their time georeferencing and extracting data from the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, and then creating ArcGIS web-based applications to view and search the data. After the initial orientation, interns took over updating the step-by-step protocol as issues arose. Interns also took the lead on researching and developing land-use codes for buildings. Significant guidance was given to the interns on how to create good quality metadata. The varied experiences and skills of the geospatial interns were key to the project. The geospatial intern with a landscape architecture background applied the use of graphics software from architectural coursework. The geospatial intern with a geography background made connections across geographic elements from geography coursework. Interns kept a log of their daily activities and questions on a network drive that was monitored by all team members and served as a diary of sorts at summer’s end. Intern updates on activities, difficulties, and progress were also delivered to the rest of the project team during weekly project meetings.
The text analysis interns day-to-day tasks were self-directed and aligned to
their research goals and project design. The text analysis interns conducted
a significant literature review, acquired chat logs to to serve as their
source data, and worked with mentors to store, clean, and analyze the data.
Their study seeks to determine the extent to which online roleplayers make
use of lanauge in the construction of narrative, using computer-assisted
methods to idenitiy the particularities of the language of online rolepay
The level of direction and scaffolding provided to the interns was the most
significant difference in the two internship experiences. As outlined above,
the geospatial interns received considerable direction at the outset, and
regular ongoing feedback throughout the duration. With respect to the mental
work based on Moore’s framework, though, both sets of interns performed
complex tasks and advanced ways of thinking. The digital humanities interns
did have more autonomy over their day-to-day tasks, but they still relied on
significant guidance from the mentors to develop the digital research skills
to complete their research project. Because the geospatial interns were not
assigned mundane and routine tasks, but rather, charged with
responsibilities that demanded they apply the methods of digital scholarship
correctly and adapt to changes in project needs or tasks, both internships
provided meaningful opportunities for students to acquire and use
The text analysis interns developed their sense of responsibility through
ownership, in that they were made aware from the outset that the success or
failure of the project would be a direct consequence of their own
efforts–saying this, students were made aware that
In classrooms, students rarely have the opportunity
to be truly responsible - not just punctual or obedient, but to have
others actually count on them for something meaningful
In this section, mentor and student intern perspectives give some insight on the approaches and outcomes of the internship experiences. The mentors provide a self-reflective account of the internships, while the student perspectives are based on a thematic analysis of a qualitative survey which was conducted upon completion of their employment.
A number of common challenges emerged across both internships, along with a
variety of project-specific issues that arose. The first challenge was the
selection of the candidates since mentors not only had to choose the
students with the most direct experience, but rather, to pair individuals
with complementary skillsets who we felt would function well within a
collaborative setting. The text analysis project also required students who
could work independently, conducting the unsupervised research necessary to
further both the theoretical and technical aspects of their project. In this
instance, particularly in relation to the text analysis project, there was
also a need to judge the motivations of applicants–while curiosity among
undergraduates is to be encouraged, there was a sense that many of the
students were more interested in securing an internship–
As outlined, one of the key differences was that the geospatial interns were assigned to an existing project, whereas the text analysis students worked on a research topic of their own choosing. When creating internships involved with a pre-existing project, it is important to consider the level of interest and student engagement. In the case of the geospatial interns, student engagement was fostered by continual positive social interaction and role-modeling professionalism and engagement of all team members throughout the project. This generated the essential sense of ownership inherent in the alternative student-driven project, while also giving students a sense of collaborative responsibility. With the text analysis interns, the mentors felt it was vital that the project’s focus was student-driven, as this would ensure their commitment to the undertaking when faced with the inevitable technical barriers throughout the processes of gathering and analysing the data. In the text analysis project, any potential failure would be the students’ own, whereas in the geospatial internship, students were aware that their component was an essential part of a larger whole, and thus, benefited from the experience that comes from working within a broader team. The geospatial interns benefited from having clearer milestones and indicators of success given the larger project context they were working within. The text analysis interns had to navigate through the uncertainty of conducting research employing digital humanities methods, absent the structure of a more typical professional internship. There are tradeoffs to consider in both internship models, with one privileging technical and skill development, and the other prioritizing more holistic research skill development.
As noted, the two projects adopted different approaches to supervision. The model used to supervise the geospatial interns was one of co-supervision shared by three individuals, with the supervisor in closest proximity to the workstations of the interns serving as a daily point of contact. The mentors felt that it was important to have daily contact with the interns in order to foster collaboration, integrate them into the project, and give them real-world experience working in a professional environment. The entire team also met on a weekly basis to discuss aspects of the project, alternatives to adopted approaches, and assess progress towards the end goals. This process enabled the students to build communication and negotiation skills, as well as learn to compromise on those elements of the project where a unified vision was needed. In contrast, the text analysis interns worked very much in isolation, liaising with their mentors as their research requirements dictated. Over the course of the project, direct meetings were predominantly reserved for those instances where the students required instruction in a specific methodology. There were some clear benefits to this approach, in that the students seemed to cope well with the demands of a project’s initial research requirements: they produced a very thorough literature review, and were proactive in the gathering of a suitable dataset. However, the chief supervisor also noticed considerable scope creep at various junctures, and that between meetings, students had wandered from the guidelines offered during previous interactions. On multiple occasions, the mentor found it necessary to remind students of their central research question, and how best to re-focus their efforts on answering that question. Upon reflection, this approach gave the students a real sense of the demands of independent or small-scale collaborative research - which is still the major component of research-based positions, even in the Digital Humanities - but that some further direction would have certainly helped the students achieve their intended deliverables.
The geospatial interns were exposed to other units and departments within the library so that they could situate their projects within a wider professional context. It was important for them to learn how the project related to other units in terms of deadlines, roles, contributions, and limitations. As noted, the text analysis interns worked independently, and so they did not further their understanding of how various departments contribute to the institution’s overarching strategies. It was hoped that they would spend some time working with the Digitization and Preservation department, but the dataset that their research necessitated did not require digitization, and so this element was removed. The relative autonomy allowed the students to see how scholarly research, and particularly digital scholarly research, is conducted – a significant amount of independent work with points of collaboration with specialists when the project dictates that level of support. Mentors observed that the students’ enthusiasm waned in the final weeks of the project. This may have been due to the length of the undertaking, as most undergraduates are not used to projects of this scope, but it may also have been due to a lack of stimulation in what was an isolated setting. We hoped that their interest in the research project would be sufficient to overcome this issue, but there is certainly some merit to suggesting that students should engage with a variety of units and departments if only as an exercise in breaking the monotony of independent research and providing them with some additional context and routine, as well as introducing and fostering a sense of community.
Professionalization was an important part of both internships, the intention being that students would emerge from the experience having developed more confidence in their ability to negotiate workplace dynamics. This was accomplished, in that interns appeared to increase their involvement as the projects progressed, making vital contributions towards the future directions of the projects. Our implementations suggest that a major risk of the internship model is that, in the event that students do not engage, the investment of mentors’ time is a risk without guarantee of concrete rewards, both in terms of project output and student learning. One of the failings in the text analysis internship was the student engagement with the more technical aspects of the project. The nature of the dataset was such that students spent a considerable time gathering and cleaning chatlogs from online games, leaving little time for the analysis phase. While working through a series of computer-assisted methodologies with the interns, their supervisor felt that the students struggled with the volume of information, and had at that point suffered from a loss of motivation. To that end, while they drove the research objective, and gained a holistic understanding of a digital project’s lifecycle, the extent to which they expanded upon their technical expertise is less certain. From the perspective of its product, the project was a success, in that the student produced a research report of some significance. From a pedagogical perspective, the students now understand what constitutes rigorous digital scholarship, and the steps required to accomplish such. However, it would have been better if more structure had been provided so as to ensure that they also emerged with more methodological expertise, as this was one of the expected learning outcomes. Supervisors of the geospatial interns reviewed their ouputs during multiple stages of development, including the overall aesthetics of the output, accuracy, consistency, and thoroughness, an approach which the text analysis project could also have been adopted.
In terms of determining the interns’ transformation of information, based on observations of their knowledge and experiences at the beginning of the internship compared to their experiences at the end of the internship, it is evident that the work conducted led to a transformative experience. This transformation can be characterized as the development of knowledge about processes and topics that enable the learners to take their skills and experiences from the internships and transfer them to new situations and activities. Furthermore, these experiences informed the mentors on the importance of focusing on the specific needs of the intern, and how such is often challenged by the surrounding organizational, administrative, and project needs. Internships in this field should privilege the development of a student’s digital skills, rather than seek to accomplish any specific research output, though accomplishing such should be encouraged, and indeed act as part of the means by which success is measured. Thus, an intern-centric undergraduate learning experience should be adopted, wherein topics on the periphery of core curricula can be integrated into the project.
As this study is focused on the experiential aspects of the internships as
pedagogical models, a qualitative approach was adopted for the analysis of
the student perspectives. A common survey was issued to the interns, in
which they were asked to respond to three questions:
The questions were deliberately open, so as to not lead student responses. Using thematic analysis, we approached the data with two concerns: what insights could be gained in the development of the students’ research, technical, and professional skills, and what other, unanticipated themes, emerged across each of the groups? It is worth noting that students were seen as collaborators throughout this process, their contributions to this study a key part of its scholarly value. Furthermore, their participation was very much a success in the sense that they produced outstanding work of considerable substance.
A number of themes emerged from the respondents, the most prominent of
which was I developed skills in technical writing and reading,
experimental design, data analysis, data management, and team-based
research. I feel that [these] skills will be very useful in my
future, no matter what I choose to do.
The experiences of the interns were clearly impacted by the interpersonal
dynamics of their projects:Working with another intern to help solve
problems and make compromises and decisions was one of the most
important aspects...
; I feel like our project really
benefited from two of us working together … bouncing ideas off of
one another, dividing up the tasks either of us were best suited to,
but each contributing even when the other took the lead on one
step.
The geospatial interns also benefited from working with
professionals across different departments and units, while the text
analysis students articulated that they achieved the initiative’s
primary objective of giving them an understanding of how to bring a
digital project through its complete lifecycle, from concept to
fruition. A related theme–engaged scholarship as having the potential to
offer more than what is permitted in a classroom setting–also emerged:
In school, all of our work is done in a single semester and often
alone, so working on a project that required we not only think about
immediate outcomes, but also future uses and applications and
collaborating with others was very helpful.
The majority of students cited a lack of structure as being one of the
drawbacks. This criticism was far more evident among the text analysis
students, where they were largely left to work independently. Extensive
planning was conducted for the geospatial internship, so a reference to
a lack of structure in this instance is possibly due to adjustments
being required as the project progressed. This is a natural consequence
of any large-scale collaborative project, and so ideally, the need for
some level of uncertainty would have been appreciated by the students. A
related frustration–the pursuit of blind alleys–was cited by the text
analysis interns, which again, is inherent in any such undertaking, and
something which we hope they now realize. The extent to which the text
analysis interns were allowed to work independently could perhaps be
revised in any future iterations of this initiative, in that the
students clearly wanted more supervision. The post was advertized and
described during the interview process as being an independent study,
wherein the internship would largely be driven by the students’ own
interests and ability to develop new expertise under limited
supervision. The extent to which undergraduates can comprehend the
significance of such an absence of structure was arguably
underestimated. A better approach might have been to facilitate some
preliminary, even extensive discussion at the start of the internship
about what
A similar approach to that utilized in the geospatial internship was pioneered at
Bucknell University, where undergraduates worked as research assistants on the
Stories of the Susquehanna Valley project.Extending the classroom outside (both spatially and
temporally) allows for the development of rich, deep knowledge in both
digital tools and research subject matter. Indeed, extending the
faculty-student collaboration to include students from outside
traditional humanities departments also reifies the value of
interdisciplinary research at an early level and reflects the
professional DH research model employed by larger-scale
projects.
Other institutions looking to implement similar models need to be very clear on
their purpose: is the aim to have students develop their ability to negotiate
the workplace, or learn how to do advanced research? It is possible to
accomplish both, but depending on restrictions on time and resources, it may not
be possible to achieve an equilibrium. Nor is it desirable to give students a
false sense of a particular dynamic: the reality is that, major
interdisciplinary projects excluded, most scholarship is still conducted in a
largely isolated manner. This is not to say that we support the status quo, but
merely acknowledge that it would be irresponsible to have students believe that
a career in scholarship, particularly in the Humanities, will be predominantly
occupied by collaborative endeavours–this might change, but most hiring and
promotion committees still privilege
Defining suitable barometers for the measurement of success also presents a challenge. The primary purpose of the text analysis internship was to give students a sense of what is required in the completion of a digital project, a condition which, from assessment of their final research outputs, was a success. However, it cannot be said with confidence that they could replicate some of the methodologies that were utilized without assistance, and a future iteration of the initiative would do well to ensure that the project’s dataset can be gathered quickly, allowing more time for students to gain familiarity with some of the more technical aspects. This experience was shared by the geospatial interns, who spent a considerable amount of time having to digitize physical materials. When defining those objectives which will determine the success of a project, it is essential to allow for the time necessary to investigate challenges and problems, both technical and intellectual, that arise throughout the research process. Supervisors must also account for seemingly obvious yet often overlooked social realities, like students wanting to take holidays during the summer semester, which was when these internships took place.
The danger in such programs is that mentors will impose their own value systems
on their participants, expecting them to adhere to scholarly principles and
standards that undergraduates cannot reasonably be expected to have attained.
Even faculty with extensive teaching experience might find that they are
demanding too much of participants who are embarking on what is likely their
first major research undertaking, and expectations must be continuously
revisited
Institutional limitations must also be considered–the reality of engaged
scholarship is such that it is not always feasible. Penn State, and other
institutions like Bucknell, where similar programs are already in place, has a
network of faculty and staff whose remit is to support digital scholarship and
undertakings of this nature. At other institutions, where faculty may be working
without appropriate support from suitably-qualified peers, implementing such an
approach might prove to be far more challenging. Having undergone significant
investment in personnel whose mandate was to develop the institution’s capacity
for digital scholarship, Penn State is in a position to pursue such initiatives.
The culture of the departments involved is such that the inherent power
differentials in staff and faculty-like employee classifications did not
influence the internships–the projects operated as a nearly flat hierarchy, with
all faculty, staff, and students contributing as important stakeholders. In a
different context, wherein such an initiative might be contained within the
hierarchical structures embedded within an institution, one could envision
problematic scenarios where student time is prioritised in terms of labour, and
dichotomies within employee classifications are reinforced in the minds of
emerging scholars. The danger in these models, which involve both intellectual
and practical components, is that interns might develop false scholar versus
technician personas, based on the perceived roles of contributors. It is
imperative to the future of digital scholarship, which has considerable issues
around the division and acknowledgement of labour, that artificial
power-structures are not reinforced in the minds of the next generation. This
extends to both the students
Administrative support must also be in place, particularly if course credit is
going to be one of the motivating factors for students. The geospatial interns
had the option of obtaining credit through their respective departments, an
option which one of them pursued. While a commitment to alternative modes of
learning is present in particular schools and departments at Penn State, one
cannot assume that cultural differences do not exist across disciplines, and
that similar administrative support for engaged scholarship would be present
across the entire institution. Cost is also a major consideration, particularly
here, where the Bednar program allowed us to pay students for their
participation in the internships.
Engaged approaches to teaching digital scholarship provide a mechanism to explore areas of interest in a collaborative and multidisciplinary manner. A digital project requires contact with primary and secondary sources through the lens of digital technologies. By creating opportunities to take an inquiry and explore it in a project environment, interns are learning the importance of understanding how these sources can be negotiated and manipulated through the digital, and what the deep and significant repercussions of this act might be. Given the resources, appropriate planning, and clear objectives and success metrics, we conclude that the internship model can be a highly effective learning experience for students, both to develop their digital literacies and professional skills. With the right guidance and meaningful work, the digital-project-as-pedagogy can be a powerful teaching approach in the digital humanities.
The conveners of this initiative would like to thank Nicki Hendrix, Joe Fennewald, Barbara Dewey, and Christopher P. Long for their support. Funding for this project was generously provided by library endowments made possible through the charitable contributions of Donald W. Hamer and Marie Bednar.