The use of digital methods to either ask historical questions or display historical data is growly rapidly.  This course introduces students to the exciting world of digital history, including digital mapping, visualization, digital curation, and some basic programming. These are skills that students will be able to apply to a range of historical problems, and will also be useful in a variety of future careers.  

*If class is in person, please bring your laptop/electronic device to every class*

1. (8/9) Introduction: What is Digital History?

Reading: Watch introductory video and read the various parts of “Concepts in Digital Humanities: https://libguides.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/Intro-DH

Browse:

http://www.digital.ntu.edu.tw/

2. (15/9) What is data? Introduction to EXCEL

Sections 1.1, 1.2,. 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 4.1, 4.3 of Beginning Excel https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/beginningexcel/front-matter/introduction/

3. (22/9) Visualization with Tableau I [decide topic for final project]

Reading: Do Tableau tutorials: https://public.tableau.com/app/resources/learn  

Students might also want to browse https://youtu.be/-KfpkyTrrtc

4. (29/9) Visualization with Tableau II [create sub-groups]

MEET IN DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP LAB

Reading:  Become a Tableau Jedi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22A4XVoUEs; browse: https://gephi.org/users/tutorial-visualization/ . 

5. (6/10) Text Mining with Voyant I

Reading: https://medium.com/dh-tools-for-beginners/voyant-tools-2-0-less-common-tools-for-text-analysis-a922cfcd85cb ; OCR for Neo-Latin.

6. (13/10) Text Mining with Voyant II

Learn all major voyant tools: https://voyant-tools.org/docs/#!/guide/tools

7. (20/10) Creating a Web Presence

WordPress.org (not .com) 

Reading https://wordpress.org/support/ “Basic usage & Customizing”

8. (27/10) Digital Mapping with QGIS I

Reading: explore the following resources: Google MyMaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/, Timeline https://knightlab.northwestern.edu/ .  Do QGIS Lessons 2.1-2.2 https://docs.qgis.org/3.10/en/docs/training_manual/index.html

9. (3/11) Digital Mapping with QGIS II

Reading: QGIS Lessons 2.3-2.4 https://docs.qgis.org/3.10/en/docs/training_manual/index.html ;

10. (10/11) 3-D Modelling I

Register for SketchUp Free (www.app.sketchup.com) and watch tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bJPNnO3HQ ; study https://research.reading.ac.uk/virtualrome/

11. (17/11) 3-D Modelling II

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb5SpjKy44s ; Do free trial of Kubity Go https://pro.kubity.com/

12. (24/11) Video Creation (Openshot)

Reading: Openshot tutorial: http://www.openshot.org/static/files/user-guide/introduction.html

Teaching Evaluation at start of class.

13. (1/12) Reflections & Final Project Troubleshooting

10% Attendance and Participation in Lecture

Students are expected to attend and contribute to lectures. Students are also expected to do the set reading ahead of class and do any set homework exercises.  Although students will become expert in only one or two digital methods, they must learn the rudiments of all the methods covered. 

N.B. Students will also be expected to attend at least three meetings of the digital humanities seminar (advertised on the Faculty of Arts website), as well as office hours on at least one occasion.

10% Weekly Response Paper

10x 200-word response papers for weeks 2-12.  These should answer the question: “How is this week’s tool(s) useful for creating or disseminating historical insights?”  Please answer with reference to the specific skills you have learned from doing the tutorials. Post on Blackboard forum.  Due by Thursday 9am each week (absolute deadline). 

30% Discussion in tutorial (7.5% each tutorial)

In each of the tutorials, each of the subgroups will collectively present their ideas/progress (in the form of a PowerPoint with relevant data/visualizations/etc.) and seek feedback from other students.   Each tutorial will be devoted to a different stage of project management: planning, build-up, implementation, closeout. 

50% Final Group Project

Students will complete a coherent group project on one of four topics of their collective choice (Africa and China from antiquity to the present; rare books about China in the CUHK Library, history of Macau, pandemics in Asian history, western books in CUHK library [if in person]).  Depending on numbers, students will be divided into small groups, each responsible for a different element, e.g. data/visualizations, maps, app, video, website (+overall coordination), programming component (if someone particularly wants to learn this), etc. Students should communicate regularly and I suggest you set up a Whatsapp group for this purpose.  Each group will keep a project diary (also called learning log) of which methods they learned, how many times/how long they communicated, collaborated, how they organized their time/effort/etc.   Grade will be based on both the collaboration/teamwork process (20% based on learning log) and the final product (30% based on the project). 

Due date December 9, 5pm.

Readings

The Programming Historian (https://programminghistorian.org/en/)

Grade Descriptors

請注意大學有關學術著作誠信的政策和規則，及適用於犯規事例的紀律指引和程序。詳情可瀏覽此處。

學生遞交作業時，必須連同已簽署的聲明一併提交，表示他們知道有關政策、規則、指引及程序。

• 如屬小組習作，則所有組員均須簽署聲明；所有組員 (不論有否簽署聲明及不論有否直接或間接撰寫有問題的內容) 均須負上集體責任及受到懲處。
• 如作業以電腦製作、內容以文字為主，並經由大學「維誠」系統 (VeriGuide) 提交者，學生將作業的電子檔案上載到系統後，便會獲得收據，收據上已列明有關聲明。
• 學生充分知悉到他們的作業可能會被人工智能內容檢測軟件審查，以確定其原創性。
• 學生充分知悉科目中採用人工智能工具的做法。在經允許下使用某些人工智能工具的情況下，學生已按照科目老師的指示明確註明出處和引文。

未有夾附簽署妥當的聲明的作業，老師將不予批閱。

學生只須提交作業的最終版本。

學生將作業或作業的一部份用於超過一個用途 (例如：同時符合兩科的要求) 而沒有作出聲明會被視為未有聲明重覆使用作業。 學生重覆使用其著作的措辭或某一、二句句子很常見，並可以接受，惟重覆使用全部內容則構成問題。在任何情況下，須先獲得相關老師同意方可提交作業。

由大學職員/老師製作的教學材料，包括課堂筆記、作業及考試題目等，其版權屬香港中文大學擁有；學生可從大學採用的網上教學系統 (例如Blackboard) 下載由大學職員/老師製作的教學材料供其學習使用；惟未經相關職員/老師事先同意下，不得分發/分享/複製這些材料予第三者。