In the following you find a description of a range of situations under which certain types of courses are taught. The links will lead you either to a Web-site which has been set up for the course or a more extensive description of the preparation, conduction, assignements, assessments and evaluation of a course.
In the ideal situation, the teacher will be an experienced member of staff, an expert in her or his discipline, and with clear ideas on how computers can be used in the classroom and a good understanding of the limitations of the machine. The students will be fully computer literate with good knowledge of the standard computer packages for word processing, electronic mail, web browsing, databases and spreadsheets. There will be programming support staff with a good understanding of the discipline being taught, as well as experience in design and creation of teaching materials. There will be technical support staff available to maintain the hardware, to install programs and ensure the smooth running of classes.
The university or college will have a good, stable network of computers with classrooms which can be booked for computer based teaching, and open access computers rooms which students can use in their own time.
Computer classrooms should be designed so that there is a 'teaching station' with data projector and room for the teacher and their notes. Student work stations will be positioned so that they can see the teacher and the data screen, and the teacher has space to walk round and see individual screens.
EU regulations on desk space, height, monitor standards, lighting etc. should be followed (see Information Network of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work: http://europe.osha.eu.int/). Every institution will have copies of these regulations.
The teacher works with the programming support staff. They look together at the material being covered in the course and decide together what is going to be made available to students.
This may be a simple page of useful web links for the course, or it may be a collection of course materials written by the teacher and made into web browsable documents by the programming support staff. It may be a tailored program of interactive exercises and hypertext documents for the course.
Programming staff will design and create the materials and the teacher will test the usabilty and check the content well before the students are introduced to the material in class. There will be time to rewrite and retest the material.
This is a description of a rare circumstance. Some institutions have created it, with very successful results: University of Glasgow, STELLA (http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STELLA/).
|
1. |
Traditional courses which, although they are taught in seminar rooms with no access to Computers/Internet ask students to use basic skills in order to achieve accademically advanced things (i.e. Internet as research resource, Ethnologue, structured course Web-pages with links to relevant material, encyclopedias, electronic dictionaries ecc.): |
| Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg & Universität Bremen (D): Introduction to Romance linguistics, first year |
|
2. |
Courses in text-based disciplines that aim at integrating print media with digital media by making use of advanced applied computing techniques/modules or the Internet as a research/information resource |
| Universität Bremen (D): A Web-integrated course on language policy: La Francophonie, 2nd half of first year | |
| Universität Duisburg & Bremen (D): Corpus-based studies of varieties of Romance languages, normally 2nd to 4th semester; the same corpus material has been used, however, in courses on "Tense, aspect and mode" in courses taught for students of the 5th to 8th semester |
|
3. |
Courses which are devoted to advanced computing methodologies |
| University of Glasgow: Literary and Linguistic Computing for English, Junior Honours Paper, School of English and Scottish Language and Literature. | |
| Universität Duisburg: Introduction into text analysis, 2nd to 4th semester |
|
4. |
Individual courses which teach 'humanities computing' |
| University of Trondheim (NTNU): INFORMATIKK, SPRÅK OG KULTUR (Informatics, language and culture). One course can be used as part of a B.A. |
|
5. |
Degree courses in Computing in the Humanities / Humanities Computing |
| King's College, London: The B.A. minor programme, "Humanities with Applied Computing", allows an undergraduate student at King's to concentrate for approximately one-third of the degree programme on the application of computing to his or her main area of study. | |
| Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Faculteit der Letteren: Informatiekunde / Alfa-Informatica ("Humanities Computing") is the study of language, history and culture from a computational perspective, integrating theoretical, experimental and practical aspects of this study. (Most Information is in Dutch). | |
| University of Bergen: Humanistisk informatikk (Humanities Informatics). Courses and degrees up to B.A. level (Information is in Norwegian). | |
| University of Glasgow: The Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) runs an expanding academic programme in humanities computing at introductory, honours, and postgraduate level (Information is in English). | |
| University of Oslo: Språk, logikk og informasjon (Humanistisk informatikk) (Language, Logic, and Information (Humanities Informatics)). Courses and degrees are given on all levels up to the equivalent (more or less) of an M.A. (Information is in Norwegian). | |
| University of Tromsø: Dokumentasjonsvitenskap (Documentation science). This department teaches both Library Science and Documentation sciene. DS comes closest to Humanities Computing. Courses and degrees are given on all levels up to the equivalent (more or less) of an M.A. (Information is in Norwegian). | |
| Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta (Canada): Master of Arts in Humanities Computing. A new two-year Master of Arts degree in Humanities Computing has started in September 2001. The program integrates computational methods and theories with research and teaching in the humanities. It will address the demand for Arts graduates proficient in computing skills, able to work either in the realm of humanities research and teaching or in the emerging job markets of information management and content delivery over the Internet. | |
| University of Alberta (Canada): Combined Honours in Multimedia Programme |
| Last modified |
| Elisabeth Burr |