Digital Humanities Seminar: Collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching in Digital Classics and Digital Humanities

The two digital masters modules offered by the Institute of Classical Studies are followed by students from the University of London intercollegiate degrees. As well as drawing on the expertise of the Digital Classics specialists in the ICS, these modules integrate the massively collaborative and international teaching offered by the Sunoikisis Digital Classics programme, which is run in collaboration with Monica Berti in Leipzig and others. Faculty from at least 30 universities in 17 countries have contributed to online materials or common sessions, on topics including computational linguistics, programming, text encoding, 3D imaging, geographic technologies, text mining, network analysis, visualization, and linked open data. Many participants also use the online sessions, which are delivered through YouTube, as supporting matter or lecture materials in their classics/digital humanities courses at home, and there are many different models for this. In both the Digital Cultural Heritage and Digital Classics programmes at the ICS, students follow the Sunoikisis DC modules in real time, and then attend a two-hour seminar the following week where we (a) discuss the issues arising from technologies and methodologies introduced in the preceding session, and (b) work hands-on together on the tools, software or methods. At the end of the semester, students taking the module for credit will design and complete a small project, implementing one or more of the topics that has been introduced. Here I will discuss the kinds of project students have undertaken in the past, think about the pedagogical value and risks associated with this free and open-ended practical assessment, and outline what I myself have learned from carrying out a wide range of new techniques on a small corpus of verse inscriptions alongside the students.