Technology and the Humanities: Courses for Students and Faculty

At the end of most English classes, students hand in a term paper or an essay exam that they have written by themselves in their dormitory rooms or in the library. But at the end of "Research and Technology in the Humanities," an experimental class taught this past fall at the University of Michigan, students handed in multimedia CD-ROMs and pointers to World-Wide Web sites that were the products of collaborative work on multimedia projects. The results of these projects were striking -- both in the quality of the products and in their implications for the use of technology in the humanities classroom.

"Research and Technology in the Humanities," a trial venture between the University of Michigan's English Department and School of Information, was designed to see what could happen when computing came to the humanities and humanities came to computing. Co-taught by Eric Rabkin, Professor, English Department, and Victor Rosenberg, SI faculty, the course trained students in multimedia development and collaborative technologies and encouraged students to think critically about the humanistic implications of the technology they were learning and using. Students learned the technologies in the context of pursuing a project in the humanities. The course was designed to help people learn many of the new information technologies, understand the ways diverse technologies influence our thoughts, deeds, and culture, and use appropriate technologies to address as effectively as possible at least one major area of humanistic concern. Professors Rabkin and Rosenberg first conceived the course in 1994 as a four-part experiment: a one-week seminar for faculty in the humanities, a two-week seminar for graduate teaching assistants, on-going supervision of teaching assistants, and a semester-long course for upper level undergraduate and graduate students.

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