Digital Scholarship FAQ

This post answers some common questions about digital scholarship and offers information and resources on how to incorporate it into teaching and learning at Trinity College. It also provides example projects in different areas of digital scholarship, including podcasting, mapping, and digital exhibits.

Common Questions about Digital Scholarship

Sample approaches include: 3D printing, augmented reality, data analysis/visualization, data scraping, digital archives, digital editions, digital exhibits and storytelling, mapping, podcasting, text analysis, video projects, virtual reality, web design, etc.

A digital assignment invites students to explore a digital tool or approach and use it to explore course content. In some cases, these assignments produce work that can be shared with the public, such as a a digital archive, map, timeline, web site, etc.

Here are some examples of student work divided by approach:

Audio/Podcasting

Title: Across the Pond and Then Some

Created by: Hannah Ward

Link: https://edtech.domains.trincoll.edu/incubator/international-studies/across-the-pond-and-then-some/

Description: I created a Digital Story as part of my role as the Global Ambassador for the Trinity in Barcelona and Trinity in Cape Town study abroad programs. Through this experience, I was also fortunate enough to learn about the experiences of my peers who had also had transformative experiences in the respective cities and countries that they had spent time living and studying in.

Digital Exhibits  

Title: The New Woman: The Bicycle and “Rational Dress”

Created by: Sara Lambert

Link: https://padlet.com/saralambert/egzgzb4fdus4fsd0

Description: I created this Padlet for my English class on Victorian Short Fiction with Professor Sarah Bilston. The assignment was to create a digital exhibition about the Victorian New Woman. We could focus on any aspect of the New Woman, and I chose to look at the relationship between the popularity of the bicycle and the rise of the Rational Dress Movement. It explores how various parts of society responded to the New Woman, her choices, and her freedom. (https://edtech.domains.trincoll.edu/incubator/english-literature/the-new-woman-the-bicycle-and-rational-dress/ )

Created with Padlet. Read more about digital exhibits here.

Mapping 

Title: “Lead, Race, and Redlining in Hartford”

Created by: Liberal Arts Action Lab Housing and Environmental Justice Team (Claire Brouillard, Samuel Burg, June Decker, Nachum Levitan, Xavier Mercado, and Ellie Ryan)

Link: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c78f29da28b245cbbceff611d2b65d7b

Description: An examination of where lead is in Hartford Connecticut, and the relationship between redlining and risk of lead poisoning.

Created with arcGIS. Read more about mapping projects here.

Digital assignments allow students to think with technology in a new way. Though students use technology in their daily lives, incorporating it into course work allows them to learn new methods of analysis and then put them to work using course materials.  In a climate when students increasingly look for tangible skills they learned in their studies to use in their professional lives, digital scholarship offers new skill development to guide their intellectual development. This reflects Trinity College’s mission statement to prepare “students to be bold, independent thinkers who lead transformative lives.”

We’ve created a Digital Assignment checklist that can help you get started and consider key elements of a great digital assignment.

You can also fill out this form and describe what you’d like to create, and our Digital Learning and Scholarship team will be in touch to help you get started!

We’ve created the Incubator to showcase digital scholarship created by Trinity College faculty, students, and staff. There you’ll find sample digital assignments for inspiration, projects created in Trinity courses, and other resources.  Something to keep in mind is that digital work is just as valuable for the process as the product. We recommend including an element that asks students to reflect on their process as part of their assignment, with guidance here.

You can explore more work made by faculty, students, and staff at Trinity College here. 

To work with digital learning & scholarship to design a digital assignment or research project, fill out this form and our team will be in touch.