Training Interfaces for the 2020s

Session Chairs: Toma Tasovac (DARIAH-EU, Belgrade Center for Digital Humanities), Vicky Garnett (DARIAH-EU, Trinity College Dublin)

Speakers (in alphabetical order): Ricarda Braukmann (SSHOC, DANS-KNAW), Vicky Garnett (DARIAH-EU), Ellen Leenarts, (SSHOC, DANS-KNAW), Costas Papadopoulos (#dariahTeach/ Maastricht University), Marianne Ping-Huang (#dariahTeach/ Aarhus University), Susan Schreibman (#dariahTeach/ Maastricht University), Toma Tasovac (DARIAH-EU), Tatsiana Yankelevich (SSHOC, LIBER)

Abstract

This panel session will look at the experiences of three emerging and established training initiatives within the Digital Humanities Training sphere.  Since 2015, the increase in training resources that address the needs of researchers, particularly in the area of research data management and train-the-trainer materials has grown considerably.  Projects launched since the mid-2010s more and more have included training and education as strong components of their mission.  Yet with this increase in training, education and skills development, where do these training initiatives see their training materials meeting the future needs of researchers, especially in the context of available interfaces, both for the creation and consumption of learning resources?  And crucially, how has the Covid Pandemic changed the modalities of creating and making available learning content?

The speakers in this panel will address these issues with a view to initiating a conversation about the development of virtual training interfaces for the 2020s and beyond.

Finessing an interactive user-interface for DARIAH-Campus

Vicky Garnett (DARIAH-EU) 

Toma Tasovac (DARIAH-EU) 

DARIAH-Campus was officially launched in December 2019.  It was formulated as part of the DESIR project with the intention to provide a sustainable one-stop shop for existing training resources created within the DARIAH community, while also providing original training resources written by and for (digital) humanists at all career stages.  One of the crucial elements of design for this platform was the ability for the creators of these resources to upload their content themselves via a  GitHub repository, thus giving control of these resources back to the community.  This interactive interface has become a unique selling point for DARIAH-Campus, but also a barrier to some users who are less tech-savvy.  Focus within the team has shifted therefore to  creating, testing and launching a dual-interface to support and enable different editorial workflows: one based on the GitHub workflow allowing direct submissions via GitHub, and a second with a Content Management System built on top of the GitHub workflow, making the process more user-friendly.  This presentation will give an overview of the challenges and barriers DARIAH-Campus has faced in developing and finessing its user interface in the nearly 2 years since its launch.

#dariahTeach: Multimodal Interfaces for Student-Centred Teaching/Learning

Costas Papadopoulos (#dariahTeach/ Maastricht University)

Marianne Ping-Huang (#dariahTeach/ Aarhus University)

Susan Schreibman (#dariahTeach/ Maastricht University)  

This paper focuses on the interfaces developed for #dariahTeach (https://teach.dariah.eu/), the open-source, freely-available online platform for digital arts and humanities curriculum, with a particular focus on the courses that were recently released as part of the project IGNITE: Design Thinking & Making in the Arts and Sciences. These courses, developed specifically for Masters students, took a multimodal approach to course content, utilising videos, audio, timelines, slideshows, and interactive quizzes. They were utilised in both formal postgraduate educational programmes (in the Netherlands and Denmark), as well as in less formal workshops and summer schools during the lockdown. This presentation will discuss the interactive design cycle used to develop these courses, as well as the integration of what are considered more playful learning objects (videos, interactive quizzes) alongside more traditional assignments (e.g. articles and book chapters) for a virtual classroom experience. The presentation will reflect on the lessons learnt through focus groups, interviews, and surveys to utilising #dariahTeach both before and during Covid-induced virtual teaching.

Interfaces to training and engagement for virtual training resources during COVID-19 – SSHOC Case Study

Ellen Leenarts, SSHOC, DANS-KNAW

Tatsiana Yankelevich SSHOC, LIBER

Ricarda Braukmann SSHOC, DANS-KNAW 

The Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC) project aims to support and raise awareness of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).  Within the project, a team of researchers are tasked with organising training events, and building a training network in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), all with the purpose of raising awareness and supporting knowledge exchange in SSH and Open Science.  The team has done this through the development of the SSH Training Discovery Toolkit, a curated train-the-trainer focussed collection of materials; and by establishing the SSH Training Community, which brings together more than 150 trainers in the field.  They have also established workshops around Research Data Management, engaging virtual training, and evaluation, etc. Here in particular, the global pandemic forced the addition of another interface, as these workshops originally intended for face-to-face delivery were moved to the virtual space.  This presentation will discuss the challenges SSHOC has faced in terms of metadata around training resources that are necessary for creating the SSH Training Discovery Toolkit interface, as well as how they overcame the challenges that moving training workshops from the real world to virtual space created.

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These presentations were delivered at the DARIAH-EU Annual Event 'Interfaces', September 2021.