DART: Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching

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DART Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching

• . . . to initiate a meaningful and sustainable
  transformation of undergraduate education and
  professional practice in the field of
  anthropology.
• Caroline Ingram
• Steve Ryan
• The London School of Economics and Political
  Science
• Ann Miller
• David Millman
• Columbia University

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Issue 1 Overcoming barriers to use of digital
technology in undergraduate education

• . . . principal difficulties encountered relate
  to human capital, and by extension to
  institutional culture.
• --E. L. Simpson, report for Centre for Sociology,
  Anthropology, and Politics
• New approaches to training and professional
  development
• Institutional change

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Issue 2 Developing potential of digital library
approach

• Avoiding reinventing the wheel
• Making complex resources searchable
• Insuring reusability of digital assets
• Allowing choice of assets appropriate to specific
  classrooms

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Issue 3 Meeting challenges in teaching of
anthropology

• Teaching students to draw connections between
  everyday life and larger processes and concepts
• Acquainting students with process through which
  anthropological knowledge is produced -- and
  strengths and limitations of that process.

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Project Staffing

• 2 Postdoctoral Fellows in anthropology
  departments at each institution
• Portions of senior anthropology faculty
• Project Manager at each institution
• Learning Technologist (LSE)
• Web developer (Columbia)
• Existing technology and editorial staff

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Issue1 Professional development of Research
Fellows

• Encourage close and explicit links between
  teaching and research activities
• A supportive framework for re-thinking
  approaches to teaching
• Continuing and active engagement with other team
  members
• Building confidence and competence in using
  digital resources

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Issue 2 Developing potential of digital library
approach
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Individual Web-Environments vs. Scalable Digital
Library Resources

• Custom built individual digital teaching tools
• Broad range of approaches to citation and
  permissions
• Individual systems for tagging content
• Digital content organized for individual class
• Storage and access dependent on individual author

• Reusable libraries of digital resources
• System to standardize citation and track IPR
• Consistent metadata enforced by workflow rules
• Automatic correlation of digital resources to
  general conceptual structures and standards
• Reliable access and archiving

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Supporting Applications

• Editorial workflow manager
• track IPR, copyediting
• collect metadata
• repository deposit
• Metadata framework
• metadata participates in multiple schemas (DC,
  MARC, IMS LOM)
• extract multiple levels of granularity, e.g.,
  collection level, or full content structure
  site-building

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Supporting Applications

• Topic map indexing and navigation
• organization by multiple conceptual categories
• Access management
• support for Shibboleth transactions attribute
  policies
• multiple communities publication subscribers,
  University population, alumni, scholarly
  societies
• delegate authentication to appropriate community
• consistent authorization across distributed
  collections

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IPR Workflow
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IPR Workflow
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Metadata Framework
metadata elements
schema
MARC
site specific
author
OAI
title
caption
original title
. . .
restrictions
reference to image
reference to narrative
. . .
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Metadata Framework
MARC
OAI
elements can participate in more than one scheme
site
site
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Metadata Framework
export records as OAI (direct XML)
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Metadata Framework
export records as MARC (XML parse)
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Metadata Framework
export records to construct web site (XML to HTML)
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Metadata Framework
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Topic Map Index

• ISO 13250
• Round-trip XTM
• Automate site navigation
• multiple teaching methods for the same content
• inter-linkage among multi-faceted content

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Topic Map Index
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Topic Map Index
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Federated Access Management

• Shibboleth protocol
• federated administration
• privacy controls
• multiple communities multiple content providers
• Internet2 project (shibboleth.internet2.edu)

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Access ManagementCommunity Identity Forwarding
S. Devine
F. Anderson
G. Sellers
J. Helm
California public school origin
UCLA origin
IEEE origin
Rand origin
depositor, chips collection
faculty, research univ, reviewer History
premium corporate gt 50M, reader
student, grade level 4
Columbia repository
UW repository
LC repository
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Architecture

• Maintain separate layers to manage
• content acquisition
• metadata attachment
• content storage
• persistent identifier
• access control
• interfaces
• Allows maximum distribution and interoperation

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Architecture
browser
interface
structural descriptive metadata / indexing
access management
identifier/citation management
repository
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Issue 3 Meeting challenges in teaching of
anthropology
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Activities of the Columbia Fellows

• Enhance existing course South Asian History and
  Culture
• Develop new course for majors The Ethnographic
  Imagination

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Basic Approach

• Conduct baseline evaluation to identify student
  needs (observation, interviews, student
  questionnaire)
• Conceptualize digital means of addressing needs
• Create/compile library of digital resources
• Create specific assignments around digital
  resources

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South Asian History and Culture Student Needs

• Better grasp of important historical processes
  and themes
• Sense of everyday life
• Ability to connect historical processes and
  themes with contemporary life
• Better expository writing skills

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South Asian History and Culture Digital
Resource Ideas

• Generate key concept definitions, key figure
  bios, maps, for 19th, 20th century South Asian
  culture
• Choose/create multimedia digital content on
  contemporary South Asian life (e.g., photos,
  audio/video interviews, news stories)
• Integrate above types of digital assets in
  digital library
• Develop questions around digital materials for
  weekly essays and discussion sessions

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Ethnographic Imagination Student Needs

• Grasp distinctive strengths of ethnographic
  method, ethnographic writing
• Understand temporal/spatial limitations of
  ethnographic method
• Understand problems, limitations of ethnographic
  writing
• Develop better critical thinking, writing skills

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Ethnographic ImaginationDigital Resource Ideas

• Case study approach, on Sherpas of Nepal
• Compile digital library of materials (e.g.,
  historical and contemporary ethnographies, field
  notes, photos, film, Sherpa writings,
  mountaineering literature)
• Develop compare/contrast writing assignments

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The work at the LSE

• Focus on pedagogic issues in anthropology
• Rethink the role of different course elements
  that can be enhanced by digital technologies
• Develop a series of re-usable digital tools,
  methods, and approaches to address the key issues
  identified
• Embed tools in a digital learning environment for
  wider use
• Allow for customized use across a wide range of
  academic fields

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An example The video tool

• Designed to raise and share issues of
  understanding and interpretation
• Three stages - each stage providing more evidence
  for interpretation
• Structured activities and collaborative work
• Tool embedded in a wider resource environment

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Whats going on? Tool

• Stage 1 View a short video sequence, taken from
  the lecturer's own fieldwork. We provide some
  limited background information on the sequence,
  and some subtitled translation of the dialogue,
  representing one months experience in the field.
  In other words, the subtitles will be broken,
  only picking out greetings and simple words, and
  the background information will be limited and
  ambiguous. Each student will attempt to interpret
  the events, and submit their interpretation to a
  shared area on web. Then the collection of
  analyses is reviewed and summarised by a small
  group of students.

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Whats going on? Tool

• Stage 2 The process is repeated, but this time
  the background information and subtitles are
  equivalent to roughly nine months field
  experience. All students submit their new
  analyses to be synthesised by a new group of
  reviewers.

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Whats going on? Tool

• Stage 3 Repeat the process again, this time
  providing the equivalent of eighteen to twenty
  four months experience. A final discussion
  session compares the three meta-analyses. Will
  the students interpretations converge with
  increased information?

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Screen grab
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Next stages

• Evaluation and reflection on work to date
• Develop generic versions of tools
• Integration of LSE resources into Columbia
  environment

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Thank you - Comments and questionsCaroline
Ingram, LSESteve Ryan, LSEAnn Miller,
ColumbiaDavid Millman, Columbia