A series of posts and how-tos on some great ways to set up your Canvas sites This collection of posts showcases some of the key features of Canvas that can be used to help students engage more fully with your course online. Principles of clarity, design, and accessibility drive these posts, which include the following: …
Training Materials for Literature in Context
For folks interested in contributing materials to Literature in Context, a federally-funded "Slow DH" project that is also an OER, I thought it would be helpful to make these training materials available. Eventually, they'll be up on our site, but for the time being, I've assembled them here. This summer, John O'Brien (UVA) and I …
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An “Agile” approach to writing studies?
As I've been working through an online certificate in project management, I've been thinking a lot about how what I do as a teacher, as a writer, and as a technologist is a form of project management. Can writing studies persist in a world where the humanities are less valued, and where AI is making …
Curriculum Design from Higher Ed to Articulate 360
Reinventing yourself is hard, but there are always pathways from what you do now to what you want to do--often it's just figuring out what those pathways are, and how one context translates to another. I've been teaching in higher education, using CMS tools like Canvas and Blackboard (RIP), for the last 20 years. I'm …
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Whither the college essay?
There's been a lot of talk recently about the future of the college essay in the era of AI like ChatGPT and Jasper. Using artificial intelligence and the vast training material of the web, ChatGPT takes a user-generated prompt and returns an essay, a poem, or other genre of writing that is not only polished …
Design Tools
Creating an engaging and useful Canvas home page In 2018, Canvas launched a tool faculty can use to develop more advanced design aspects in course creation--it's not very pretty, even four years later, but it can be useful if you're willing to dive in and explore. Here is a home page for an asynchronous online …
Small Multiples in Tableau, Details in Illustrator: A Quick How-To
I have been a big fan of small multiples ever since I learned how to make them--at some point, the enjoyment I take in seeing them come together will fade, but for now, I'm all in. A friend (hi, Tina!) recently asked how I got small multiples into the static viz, and I thought this …
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Developing a research strategy
In this post, I wanted to talk a little about my research design process. As I mentioned last post, I knew I wanted to create a network visualization, and I also knew I wanted to test Clover's theory about the self-consciousness of horror as a genre. What would I need to do this? My approach …
When Your Darlings Bite Back: A Century of Horror Film about (Un)Making
I've been pretty silent on this space for a while now, because all my time has been consumed with finishing my degree project for MICA's Data Analytics and Visualization program. But the end is in sight! What have I been up to? Basically, tearing my hair out. But also, working with a lot of IMDb …
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Using Hypothesis in your classroom
Downloadable Session HandoutDownload Active reading is an essential skill for students to master, especially in higher education. Your students should not just be memorizing things, but synthesizing ideas with other ideas, including their own, to develop new concepts and deepen or problematize narratives already in play. In the literature classroom, and in the writing classroom, …
Tonya Howe 