I am proposing this one, not volunteering to facilitate. The session needs a blend of old hands and novices to work well. There may be some hierarchy here, but some people know stuff and some people don’t know stuff (yet).

Talk: situate DH as a field. What cool, useful, and brilliant things can you do as a digital humanist? How did you get started? What’s the single best piece of advice that you have for those interested in incorporating insights, tools, and methodologies of the field into their scholarship and teaching practice? If you’re new, why are you interested in DH? What inklings do you have of how it might shape your work or your first project?

The growing trend to offer courses online (Sloan Consortium, 2004) also reached the foreign language classroom, especially in times in which enrollment for foreign language classes are declining. In addition to the many benefits of online educational settings teaching languages online poses the same challenges as content classes, but also different ones.

I propose a session in which we exchange and share ideas/experiences for online foreign language courses at high school/university level, as well as hybrid courses. I co-developed and taught two  Elementary German online classes  for the University of Connecticut, and I could potentially start the discussion with sharing our concepts and some practical experiences gained from developing, teaching, and revising the classes.

As digital pedagogues, we can acquire technological skills and develop a sound theoretical framework for employing them in teaching and learning situations. But without access to the right hardware and software, and without the necessary departmental and institutional support (financial and otherwise), our skills and knowledge remain relatively useless within the classroom.  An effective digital pedagogy becomes more elusive when students’ own access and support are constrained. (Think of the student who lives in an area where dial-up internet is the only means of access to the web, or the student who can’t afford a computer and must rely on over-burdened, campus-based services.)

I propose a session where we discuss such challenges, but above all, brainstorm ways to surmount, sidestep, or otherwise work through these obstacles; it’s my hope that the session will empower participants to create an actionable plan. To that end, I hope that digital pedagogues who successfully have navigated access and support issues also will participate by sharing their experiences.