One Strategy for Digital Humanities

Knowing how to read is a more obvious but just as important question as knowing what to read. English literature curriculum has historically been more interested in the second question, but the new digital age gives the first one a new and urgent importance.

Typical first courses required for English students include introductions to research tools and to literary periods. From then on, the rest of the course of study hones in on specific genres, authors, and texts, with the assumption that students know the general contexts. 

May I suggest an additional mandatory prerequisite: English 299: Digital Literacy. The assumption that students raised in a digital age already know all of what digital tools can offer is is like assuming that a child raised in a library automatically knows everything about books — yes, chances are, that child has read a lot already, but they are limited to the extent of their own whims. Students today have used the Internet a lot, but they have likely only learned the tools that they have naturally been drawn to. 

As one who thought himself to be a DIY champion, this attractive graphic shared by Gideon Burton brought me to a new humility, and made me wish I had a class about digital literacy. Not everything can you learn by yourself.

Much has been done by way of commentary on digital literacy. Doug Belshaw has commented on the difference between digital literacy and web literacy (one, he says, is a subset of the other). Gideon Burton has written extensively about the three C's of digital culture -- consume, create, and connect -- and how knowledge of these amounts to some degree of digital literacy. There is even a website, Literacy 2.0, dedicated to parsing out this very subject.

Loving to read does not make one a literary scholar. We need a course that instills digital discipline and understanding to empower students to use new tools in effective ways. Without it, students will drown in the ocean of the ever-changing web. We can throw them a lifejacket and teach them how to swim.