2015 Summer Institute

For a week in mid-June 2015, more than 20 faculty, graduate students, and librarians from Grinnell College and the University of Iowa gathered for the first Digital Bridges Summer Institute at Grinnell. Participants came with the goal of revising a new or existing course to incorporate digital tools discussed during the Institute. They represented a broad swath of disciplines in the humanities and related fields.

In the morning sessions, speakers from Grinnell College and the University of Iowa shared their experiences with a variety of digital tools. For example, Lindsay Mattock (Library and Information Science, University of Iowa), Monessa Cummins (Classics, Grinnell College), and Sara Ramey (her student) co-led a session on developing scholarly collections with Omeka. Cummins spoke with participants about how she had developed an Omeka library of images of Roman monuments for her survey course on Roman art and archaeology. During the afternoon workshops, participants were given the chance to use the technology presented in the morning sessions. At the end of each day, participants and presenters spent time reflecting on the use and pedagogical value of the technology, reflecting our belief that technology is not an end in itself but a means to answer humanistic questions. Jean Florman, Director of the University of Iowa Center for Teaching, led a final session in which she helped faculty strengthen the intellectual connections between the digital technology discussed in the workshop and participants’ learning objectives for their courses.

Ted Underwood, professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was the 2015 Summer Institute guest speaker. He presented on the subjects of text analysis and topic modeling, and how students can use this technology.

2015 Summer Institute Schedule

2015 Summer Institute Presenters

2015 Summer Institute Participants