Running Head: TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES CLASSROOM 4 METHODS FOR INTEGRATION

Technology in a Humanities Classroom - 4 Methods for Integration

Group 4:

Brendan Alexander

Diana Loewen

David McMullen

Christopher Sandor

University of British Columbia

TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES CLASSROOM 4 METHODS FOR INTEGRATION

Technology in a Humanities Classroom - 4 Methods for Integration

Introduction
Computers, smartphones, tablets, and other forms of technology have been a part of our lives for

many years. As many classrooms shift away from traditional models of teaching, some educators want to

use this technology to support their curriculum, but fear that they lack the skills or knowledge of how and

where to begin (Spencer, 2012). Perhaps more than any other subject area, the humanities relies heavily

on the conventions of classical education. Willingness for educators to adapt to new methods of

technology-supported instruction will go a long way in propelling humanities education forward. In order to

discover methods, content, and practices that we can use in our careers as educators, we have compiled

and analysed content and literature related to four main facets of technology in education, as applied to

the humanities: 1) Social Media, 2) Media Creation / Mashups, 3) Game-based Learning, and 4) Online

Learning. Our hope is that a comprehensive approach will serve to illuminate the complicated marriage

between technology and humanities education, while providing a sound basis for our own professional

use.

Social Media use in Secondary Schools

Informal vs. Formal Learning

Students who use Social Media outside the classroom are constantly learning but more often

than not educators perceive a students Social Media use as frivolous and assume they are doing very

little learning at all. Many educators express concerns that students are using Social Media for all the

wrong reasons and for no actual purpose. They believe that when a student posts content on Instagram

it is only to share the details of their lives and perhaps to see how many likes they can get or when a

student creates a movie and uploads it to YouTube it might only be to see how many subscribers, views

or followers they can receive for their channel or a video they have posted. These activities essentially

distract from learning rather than help learning, (Andrews, 2016). It should be noted that while many

students may create content for these reasons, certainly not all students are creating content for these

purposes. Regardless of the purpose for this creation and posting of content students are certainly

learning and creating on their own time. I think, as educators, we need to understand and come to the

conclusion that whatever the reason for the creation and posting of content through Social Media that

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learning is certainly happening and more often than not this learning is significant (Bull, Thompson,

Searson, Garofalo, Park, Young & Lee, 2008).

The fact that a student is choosing what and when to learn in an informal manner is

significant. The power of student choice and a student fueling their own interests when and how they see

fit does have a significant impact on student learning as plain and simple a student is choosing to learn on

their own time and therefore this is more engaging and will be learning on a deeper level than being told

what to learn and when to learn at school. The difference between formal and informal learning can be

significant and we must not be quick to dismiss the informal learning that a student is choosing to do as is

discussed by Bull, Thompson, Searson, Garofalo, Park, Young & Lee (2008). In fact, we should be

looking to tap into this informal learning that many students are spending significant amounts of time

on. This will be an issue for both secondary and postsecondary institutions as students embark upon

more and more learning outside of formal institutions.

Engagement

To engage students in learning we need to begin to meet them where they are. Increasingly

secondary students are using Social Media in their everyday lives and educators are now starting to meet

the students in this world. It is important for students to understand that using Social Media for formal

learning is a much different prospect than using it in their everyday lives and until schools are ready to

take on the challenge of awarding students for informal learning educators will need to help students

differentiate between informal and formal learning. Secondary schools and secondary teachers are

beginning to have students use Social Media for learning and what Social Media really does is to make

student learning visible and forces students to engage with content (Dabbagh and Kitsabta, 2011). When

used properly Social Media can extend the learning far beyond the classroom. This visible learning can

be for their classmates, parents but it can also go far beyond the classroom and this is where the power

of Social Media lies. Many students wish to produce quality work for their teachers but when the

possibility that all of their classmates, school, parents and a wider community will see their learning this

certainly raises the stakes. Once these stakes are raised the quality of student work improves as well as

engaging students further (Heick, 2015). Whether this is a student blog or using Instagram this all

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revolves around making learning visible and when this happens we often see an increase in student

engagement and learning.

Challenges of Social Media

It is important to acknowledge that using Social Media for learning does come with

challenges. Schools, school districts and institutions all have guidelines or are developing guidelines for

both teacher and student use of Social Media and some of these guidelines are more restrictive than

others. Student privacy is and will continue to be a concern for schools and educators who use Social

Media. Other barriers to using Social Media in schools is also school culture. Many educators are loath

to add something more to their plates unless it will actually add value and enhance the learning for

students in their classrooms. Educators must also think very deliberately about why they are using Social

Media prior to using it for learning (November, 2012). Social Media needs to be used appropriately and

the correct tool needs to be chosen for the correct task or learning outcome (Vie, 2015). Using Social

Media without deliberately thinking about the purpose can certainly be very discouraging for those who

are beginning to use Social Media to help students learn.

Examples in the humanities (and other disciplines) from a school context:

Tool Examples Website

Students can become a character in a novel and tweet as the character Twitter
would. Students can create 140 character poems and analyse each
others. Students can also follow their teacher on Twitter who can then
tweet out problems, questions, homework or class announcements.

Essentially Facebook for educators and can operate as a Learning Edmodo

Management System. It allows students and teachers to comment, post,
hand in assignments and peer review assignments. One advantage is
that it is not public and this is the attraction for many educators.

Allows students and teachers to share and comment on pictures published Instagram
on this app. Can be used in a variety of ways from the simplest form in a
photography class to publish work, can be used in physical education
classes to share locations on hikes or even geocaching events. It can be
used in geography classes to show examples of landforms.

Allows students and teachers to interpret text together. A very strong and PRISM
relatively unknown tool for collaborative writing as well as reading of
text. Prism claims they are crowdsourcing interpretation.

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TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES CLASSROOM 4 METHODS FOR INTEGRATION

There are many different blogging platforms students can use to make Blogger
their learning visible. Blogs can be effective in publishing any type of
writing, whether it is the humanities or the sciences. Most blogging
Glogster
platforms invite feedback and this is where they can be most effective in
improving writing and learning.

This can be effective for not only consuming content but especially for Youtube
producing content. Instead of having students watch or consume the
Khan Academy mathematics lessons why not have students produce their
own lessons to share with the class and the wider world. Students will
gain a deeper understanding of the content and concepts they are
teaching. Students can also record activities in physical education to look
at form or share their learning or performance at home.

This suite of tools allows students to collaborate using Googledocs, GAFE

Google Slides and enables teachers to use Google Classroom. This can (Google Apps
also operate as LMS and allows students to submit assignments as well for Education)
as get peer and teacher feedback for assignments. It is a powerful
collaborative tool but is also not visible to the public.

Mashups
Definition
Web 2.0 technology created a more interactive internet where users could mix and remix content

on the Web (Liu, Horton, Olmanson, Wang, 2008. p. 246). Out of this participatory technology emerged

things like wikis, blogs, and something called a mashup. This is a creative combination of two or more

sources of digital content to produce something new. It can be created using source material from things

like photos, text, video, wikis, or social media. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo! and other web

providers have released open access to web content allowing users to produce original creations using

samples from other sources. (Mashups for Education. n.d. Whats a Mashup? para 2.) This would allow

someone to take photos, upload them to a site like Flickr, and then geotag these photos using Google

Maps.

Uses in Education

Advantages for Educators and Students

There are two ways an educator may use mashups in their classroom: using created mashups to

teach a lesson; or having students create their own mashups. The benefit of using mashups in the

humanities classroom is that it is an experiential learning process. Students are actively participating and

experiencing learning, rather than passively taking in information like they may have been with a more

traditional lesson. When they are engaged in learning the content in this way they are also developing

21st century skills such as problem solving, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.

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Advantages of using mashups in a classroom can be summarized by the following: mashups

engage students in deeper learning; ask students to classify and organize knowledge; connect to real-

world situations; encourage collaboration; create ideal conditions for learning (experiential learning); and

cause students to learn by doing, (Smith, S. Educational Uses of Mashups).

Considerations

Some of the more particular concerns educators have related to creating mashups are issues of

copyright; content flexibility; content appropriateness for age group; lack of mashup development

resources in educational settings; and lack of technical support for people interested in creating mashups

(Liu, Horton, Olmanson, Wang, 2008).

Copyright and Appropriation. Many educators are concerned about appropriation when

students begin to work with content creation on the internet. To address this issue, organizations such as

Common Sense Education offer lessons and resources to help educators teach digital citizenship and

specifically copyright law and plagiarism in early grades. (Copyrights and Wrongs. n.d. Common Sense

Education. first para.) Lessons on plagiarism and copyright are available from Common Sense

Education, the link to which will be provided in the section below. Teaching digital citizenship may help

students understand that there is content online that is not age or school appropriate. There are many

other resources available online, or you might try contacting your school district to see if they have

resources or even a speaker available to discuss this issue.

Technology. A final concern that may influence an educator's ability to integrate mashups into

their lesson planning is the technology itself. Whether or not teachers are familiar with, or skilled in the

use of the technology, there can still be challenges that may limit their ability or desire to include this

activity in their humanities classroom. Some of these are: infrastructure and access can be spotty;

budgets are small and resources scarce, opportunities for professional development are limited, and

technological obsolescence means that keeping up with upgrades and the latest apps or gadgets is too

time consuming.

If an educator is truly interested in creating mashups or using existing mashups in their

classroom, we recommend that they try some of the lesson ideas from the following section for

themselves.

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Lessons and Links

The following table is dedicated to helping educators use mashups to facilitate student learning in

a creative and engaging way.

Website Purpose Link

Mashups for There are links to http://mashupsforeducation.weebly.com/index.html

Education research, and lesson
ideas for a variety of
subjects, including
humanities.

7 Great 7 great tools for creating http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2015/12/7-great-

Tools to mashups, such as using
create digital Histry to create
mashups in multimedia timelines or tools-to-create-digital-mashups-in-class.html
class Explain Everything to
make a variety of mashup
creations.

100 Scroll down to the Tools http://mashable.com/2009/01/08/google-maps-mashups-

Mashups section for the Google tools/#Lgf00p2e7gqC
using Maps tools so that you
Google can create your own
Maps. mashups using Google
Maps tools.

Teaching This website also offers https://www.teachingcopyright.org/curriculum/hs/3

Copyright lesson plan ideas for
teaching copyright to
students. Including one
specifically related to
remixing and creating
mashups.

Common This webpage has Digital Citizenship:

Sense lessons and ideas for
Education teaching students K-12 https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/digital-citizenship
about copyright and digital
citizenship. There are Copyrights and Wrongs (Gr.9-12)
teacher resources and
student videos. There are https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/lesson/copyrights-
also curriculum standards
posted on the webpage and-wrongs
for you to compare with
your own.

Remix Culture

So much of what we do on the internet is integrated and mashed up today. We might take

pictures using Instagram, then upload these photos to a program where we can digitally add paint or

stickers and then we post them to our Facebook account. Students engaged in creating mashups in a

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humanities classroom will be learning the curriculum and developing their 21st century skills in a

meaningful and fun way

Game Based Learning/Gamification

Teachers and parents often complain about the difficulty in engaging young peoples interest and

attention in the face of their enthusiasm for video games. In response, educators and researchers have

sought either incorporate the engaging elements of video games into pedagogy, Game Based Learning

(Gee, 2011, Willis, 2011), or incorporate video games into the classroom to provide an engaging

supplement, Gamification (Shapiro, 2014). This part of the inquiry will look at potential barriers to

incorporating games into a classroom. I will use my own context, a grade 3-4 class, as an example to

explore how to introduce video games.

Key Terms

Gamification. Uses game design elements that are not game based to engage and motivate

student learning. Gamification transforms the learning experience into an educational game through the

use of achievement badges, leaderboards, point systems, level progressions and quests (Pappas, 2015).

Game Based Learning. Integrates games into the learning experience to teach a certain skill or

achieve a learning objective. It can be integrated either in or outside the digital realm. (Isaacs, 2015)

Social Impact Games. A genre of electronic game that deal with challenging social issues with

the purpose of generating interest and comprehension through virtual experiences and encourages the

understanding of concepts and critical thinking. (Ray, 2013).

Potential Barriers to Introducing Video Games into Classroom

Time

As more gets added to the curriculum without any change to the amount of time students spend

in school, the issue of time is of great concern. This is one of the greatest barriers for teachers

implementing game-based teaching strategies (Joan Ganz Center, 2014). However if we look at games

as a way to present concepts in an experiential way and see them as an activity or project to introduce

new concepts or reinforcement; then they can be viewed as a valuable use of time. In my context,

elementary classroom teachers have more latitude in how they plan their day as they teach the same

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students for most of the day. With this flexibility, activities can carry over for multiple periods as the need

arises.

Cost

In a time of strapped school budgets, the cost of games is a major consideration. Teachers and

administrators will want to ensure that the purchase of games are worth the investment. Where financial

constraints are an issue, free games would be a good way to introduce these tools to the school. When

they have been successfully utilized, further investment may be more easily justified. In my context this

would be the best approach. Although there is already a growing interest in my school board for using

games in mathematics (Prodigy), we dont have the financial resources to invest in a class subscription to

a commercial game.

Curriculum Expectations and Standardized Testing

Teachers worry that time and attention taken away from meeting curriculum expectations and

preparation for standardized testing is wasted. Firstly, as games require different skills that are across

traditional curriculum boundaries, many expectations can be met.

Many sites like Graphite, allow you to filter your searches based on curriculum. There is also a growing

interest in game developers to meet the expectations of the educational market and therefore are trying to

incorporate expectations into the game design (Shapiro, 2014). In my context, we are already

encouraging students to play games to supplement their learning in mathematics, so using a game in the

humanities or arts as a project would not be seen as a distraction from implementing the curriculum.

Resources

Access to resources is also a major barrier to the use of digital games in the classroom. It is

important to access what infrastructure and hardware are available, as this will affect the type games that

can be used in the classroom. Does the classroom have wifi? What hardware is available to

students? Is BYOD acceptable school policy? In my context, I am fortunate to have a fairly reliable wifi

connection in my class. I have almost unlimited access to 10 iPads and 10 HP touch screen

notebooks. I have access to a set of 10 HP tablets and 10 Chromebooks. My school also has a

computer lab with desktop computers for the whole class, where I have a full period of access each

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week. I feel that my class has sufficient resources, as it is recommended to have a variety of hardware to

be able to expose students to a variety of devices. (Shapiro, 2015)

Our school BYOD policy is at the discretion of the teacher, but as a Primary/Junior teacher, this is

not really an option as my students are too young to have mobile devices. However, most of my students

have access to computers or mobile devices at home. Also our school has access to programs that

provide computers to students who are in financial need.

One issue that I see in my context, is that the programs for school devices are centrally

purchased and managed. This may limit the games that can be loaded onto devices and decrease the

flexibility in trying out new games.

Finding Games

It can be overwhelming looking for a suitable game to use in the classroom. It is a good idea to

look at reviews in blogs or sites that specialize in games and apps. Sites like Edutopia, EdSurge,

Edudemic, TeachThought, and Gamesandlearning.org can be a good source for game reviews. Sites like

Graphite and Games for Change have search engines and reviews that can be useful in finding an

appropriate game.

One way to distinguish between types of games is short-form and long-form. Short-form games

that you might find on smartphone that can be played in a short period of time. They are good for

learning a specific skill and can be played within a school period. Long-form are games that are more

open-ended that may take multiple school periods to play. They are known to facilitate skills like critical

thinking, problem solving, collaboration, creativity, and communication. Crossover game based platforms

can be used as either a short-term or long-term game. They can be used as a short simulation or for

more lengthy projects. Minecraft is a good example of a crossover game based platform.

Within these types of games are many genres that may interest students, for example, strategy,

role-playing, sandbox, and social impact games. Among these genres here are some games that would

lend themselves to an arts or humanities classroom.

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Game Genre Description

Strategy Historia is a social studies strategy game that
aligns with middle school curriculum in world
history, culture, economics, geography and
government through interactive game play.

Role-Playing Lexica is a role-playing game for language arts

(RPG) designed to strengthen reading and writing while
players explore a 3-D immersive environment.

Sandbox MinecraftEdu is the education adapted version of

the popular sandbox game. It is open-ended and
allows students to create their own worlds. The
educational version is less expensive than the
commercial version and has tools that allow it to be
adapted to the classroom.

Social Impact Republica Times is a free simple game that helps teach
media literacy. The player acts as a newspaper editor to
shape public opinion, increase readership while not
getting on the wrong side of an overbearing government.

Social Impact Fort McMoney is a hybrid of a documentary movie and

Hybrid game. It allows players to be immersed into the Alberta
documentary Oil Sands in Fort McMurray and see the complexity of the
film/game issues concerning the environment and economy.

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Social Impact Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is a puzzle platform

game that explores the cultural folklore of the Iupiat
Native Alaskan people. Through overcoming obstacles
the player unlocks cultural insights presented as short
documentary clips that share the stories and experiences
of the Iupiat people.

Conclusions

In my school context, there is already the understanding of the benefit of using digital games in

the classroom. The barriers appear the cost of purchasing a commercially available game. As our school

board has been promoting the free Prodigy game for supplementing the mathematics program, my

choices are limited to games that they students can play at no cost to the school. So while I would love to

use the game Never Alone with my students, we dont have the budget for it at this time. Other

considerations include the age appropriateness of the games and whether they can be adapted to the

curriculum. The Fort McMoney game, while it aligns with the Ontario Social Studies Curriculum, it is too

complex for the students I teach.

Historia seems like it might be promising as it aligns with the curriculum and could probably be

utilized at a variety of grade levels. As it a free game that is part of Google Play, access would be easier

as our board has recently moved to providing students with google access.

Ultimately incorporating digital games into my arts and humanities program is an area that I plan

to continue to explore and implement as I gain more knowledge and proficiency.

Online Learning

Perhaps no other academic subject is more closely connected to classical modes of learning than

the humanities, where the university campus has long been considered the hub of scholarly discourse.

With the massive shift in higher education towards online learning, the Humanities appear to be at a

crossroads; while news outlets report a crisis in enrollment in humanities-based programs, other

disciplines have adapted their programs to offer more inclusive, flexible, and economical online learning

models.

Meanwhile, educators in the humanities are left searching for answers to a modern dilemma for

classical education: how does humanities-based education embrace online educational delivery systems

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while staying true to its core traditions? An in depth look at the issues that face humanities programs

today, a look at the potential benefits of a shift to online learning models, and an overview of different

examples of implementation of online learning in the humanities, will allow us to better understand, as

educators, how to successfully integrate classical education with online learning.

The Enrollment Crisis

The Guardian online asks the question Could online courses be the death of the humanities?

(Mondon & Hoffstaedter, 2012). The article envisions a world where online learning is generalized and

ends up replacing other education delivery modes could seriously impact the original purpose of a

university (Mondon & Gerhard, 2012). The writers, Mondon & Hoffstaedter, are not alone in their

concern. Gene I. Maeroff, educational reformist and author of A Classroom of One, sees online learning

as a pursuit of career-oriented students (p. 144) rather than humanities students more interested in the

marketplace of ideas (p.144). Maeroffs opinion is echoed by a pair of New York Times articles: As

Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry (Lewin 2013) and Humanities Studies Under Strain

Around the Globe (Delany 2013), which paint a grim picture of the current state of humanities programs

under economic strains that limit their breadth, effectiveness, and intellectual capital. There is universal

evidence of a drop in enrollment in the postsecondary humanities programs across North America;

Statistics Canada reports a decrease of around 3% from 1997 to 2007 (Statistics Canada 2015), while the

Office of Institutional Research shows that the percentage of humanities majors awarded in the U.S.

dropped from approximately 25% to just 16% from 2005 to 2014 (Mariani, 2015). It should be noted that

there is some dispute over the validity or significance of these numbers. The Association of American

Colleges & Universities points out that while the humanities have decreased as a percentage of all

degrees, there has been an increase in the percentage of all Americans with humanities degrees

(Association of American Colleges & Universities 2013).

Whatever your stance on the enrollment crisis in the humanities or its source, there does seem

to be a sense among reporters and educators alike that interest in the humanities is waning in the face of

increased focus on STEM programs. With enrollment and funding issues ongoing, and an apparent need

for the humanities to modernize to meet the interests of contemporary students, a deliberate shift towards

the online classroom may be the answer humanities educators are searching for. Pew research has

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indicated that transitioning courses to online platforms made them more learner-centered and flexible,

with more precise student support, easier access to multi-media resources, and cost-cutting staffing

options (Twigg 2003).

Potential Benefits of Online Learning in the Humanities

Despite the apparent advantages to online learning, the humanities still lags behind other

disciplines with regards to quality e-learning degree programs. A 2013 Chicago Times article Online

courses changing college classrooms: But humanities classes remain rare in the digital world depicts the

shifting paradigm of higher education, where online learning not only allows for a flexible, affordable

degree pathway, but also acts as a counter-balance to the biases of traditional brick-and-mortar university

education (Keilman 2013). The article quotes a number of Chicago area students who prefer to study

online because it promotes active learning over the spectator sport of the lecture or face-to-face

classroom, while also giving a strong voice to those who may be less comfortable speaking out in a

traditional classroom setting (Keilman 2013). These benefits align well with the traditions of humanities-

based education which promotes democracy of ideas, participatory learning, and equal contribution in

discussion from all members of the learning community. A deliberate shift toward learner-centered

communities of web-based learning (Anderson 2008, Hutchins 2001, Khoo & Cowie 2011), in theory,

would provide a framework from which humanities programs could redesign portions of their course

catalogue, to offer either partial or complete online degree options.

A Push from Within: The Council of Independent Colleges

In his article A New Frontier for Online Learning, Martin Kurzweil outlines how the CIC intends to

utilize online learning as a solution to the struggle for small colleges to to maintain a robust humanities

course catalog (Kurzweil, 2015) due to budget constraints. Educators of the Council of Independent

Colleges look towards online learning, not as a hindrance to traditional learning in the humanities, but as

a way to elevate it by building their capacity for online [instruction], improving their students learning

outcomes and making more effective use of their instructional resources (Kurzweil, 2015).

The CICs initiative is a multi-year project (2014 2016) to assess the effectiveness and cost-

savings potential of online teaching and learning in the humanities at CIC colleges and universities (CIC

Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction 2014). In all, 21 colleges and universities will participate in

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the study, which will be reviewed for merit by digital education research and consulting firm Ithica S+R

(CIC Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction 2014). The 2016 review, paired with the second

evaluation from 2016-2018, should help to determine the validity of humanities-based online learning,

along with the effectiveness of cross college collaboration and course sharing (CIC Consortium for Online

Humanities Instruction Informational Webinar 2014).

The Digital Humanities Movement

In her New York Times article, Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities Riches (2010), Patricia

Cohen asks what the next big thing in language, history, and the arts is. Her answer: data. Educators at

top tech-minded universities such as Stanford and UCLA are at positioning themselves at the forefront of,

what has been dubbed, the Digital Humanities movement. The Digital Humanities simultaneously acts to

enhance the traditional knowledge and information base of the humanities while invigorating computer

science and data analytics by bringing new opportunities for data collection on history, cultural artifacts,

and the human experience, to the table (Stanford, 2015). The Digital Humanities movement evokes

another innovative solution to the tech vs. tradition conundrum, and offers a glimpse into how effective

online learning communities in the humanities might look. Rather than being at odds with traditional

learning, the Digital Humanities advances that modern technology be used to form new insights into

cultural artifacts and the human condition, through data and digitization. Ostensibly, the movement could

lead to a comprehensive change in the traditions of postsecondary humanities study, by shifting research

from the textbook to the spreadsheet, and discourse from the classroom to the lab or online community.

The Digitization of Resources

Central to the Digital Humanities movement is the digitalization of resources. Project MUSE, a

non-profit online archive of free digital books and journals, currently features almost 40,000 books and

close to 90,000 journals with over 60,000 and 20,000 reviews (Project MUSE). The project is a leader in

the ongoing movement to digitize and provide free public access to cultural artifacts such as texts, art,

photographs, recordings, and data. As technology has improved and become more ubiquitous too have

the possibilities for digitization or resources. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York leads the

charge for museums to provide an online window into their exhibits in order to enhance the physical

experience of exploring their museum while providing more points of access to the artwork (Lohr 2014).

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Efforts to digitally archive texts, resources, and artifacts, may render the traditional university campus less

desirable for humanities coursework than the online classroom because online learning platforms permit

students to conveniently explore and share a multitude of digital resources, allowing for a more

participatory, engaging student experience than the traditional classroom setting.

A Blended Approach: The Humanities Lab

If the digitization is a way to reaching back to the past using modern technology, humanities labs

enable the humanities to reach forward towards the future. Humanities labs such as the HUMLab at

Omea University in Sweden, Humanities Lab at American University, and the Digital Humanities Lab at

Yale University, provide blended workspaces where students can collaborate across online and physical

environments. The concept is simple; provide a shared, digitally equip workspace where students,

researchers, artists, entrepreneurs and international guests come together to engage in dialogue,

experiment with technology, take on challenges and move scholarship forward (HUMlab). Humanities

labs are a way of bridging the gap between traditional on-campus learning and the digital age. These

workspaces are pivotal in modernizing the humanities as they provide a place on campus for students to

engage with others in imaginative, progressive dialogue, spawning communities of thought and

cooperative learning that are more predominant in STEM programs (Hiatt 2005).

Conclusions

At a time when the humanities seems to need a reboot most due to declining enrollment and

budget cuts, movements in online learning, blended workspaces, and the digitization of resources, have

effectively given secondary humanities programs a lifeline. Whether or not the University campus remains

the traditional hub of scholarly discourse in the humanities may be less a product of the choices of

program administrators, and more a reaction to an overall shift. As higher Ed. goes, so do essential

higher Ed. programs. However, the path is clear for humanities programs to reap the benefits of a forced

revision. Embracing digital movements will enable humanities programs to diversify while remaining

economically viable and relevant to modern learners. Meanwhile, online learning solutions provide a more

student-centered approach, with flexible and fiscal learning options, convenient access to key resources,

and access to learning communities that promote equality, participation, and democracy of ideas.

Summary

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TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES CLASSROOM 4 METHODS FOR INTEGRATION

Whether due to fear over the lack technological aptitude or a strong bias towards traditional

modes of learning, humanities educators and administrators have been more apprehensive to embrace

technology as a tool of instructional support or learning enhancement. However, there is a strong

movement in education looking to push the humanities forward to better meet the needs of todays

students.

In online learning the humanities has a potential way to combat budget restraints, maintain

diverse course catalogues, and provide a learning experience that is more attractive to contemporary

students, all while providing a learner-centered educational experience that reinforces core humanities

principles of community, collaboration, and equality of thought.

Game based learning and gamification provide an engaging learning environment and a well-

designed learning experience to students by introducing games into the classroom and using aspects of

game design as a model for pedagogy. Games are well suited to language learning and literacy as well

as helping students to think critically by examining the games that they play and engaging students in the

issues that surround them.

Mashups can be used in a humanities classroom to engage students in a creative and

collaborative activity that enhances their learning experience through technology and their own

imaginations. Using or creating mashups provides an opportunity for dialogue about digital citizenship,

copyright, and appropriation and the rights of the creator.

Using social media in education has the ability to engage students in deeper learning both inside

and outside of the classroom. Social media requires that students engage in the learning process,

produce rather than merely consume content and make their learning visible to others rather than hide in

in the classroom. Using social media for learning is one way to bridge the gap between informal learning

that happens outside of the classroom to the formal learning of the classroom.

Through careful analysis of content and literature related to four main facets of technology in

humanities education, we have attempted to explore ways to integrate its use into our educational

context. It is hoped that our work will enable educators confidently include some, or all, of these

technologies in their humanities classroom.

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TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES CLASSROOM 4 METHODS FOR INTEGRATION

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