Instructors: Susan Brown and Team (University of Guelph)

The Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC) provides an online space in which scholars can engage with the possibilities for online scholarship either individually or in groups. CWRC provides an environment that supports best practices in the production of online collections, editions, born-digital essays, anthologies, collections, monographs, articles, or encyclopedia entries, or bibliographies, and supports the inclusion of visual, audio, and video sources. This course will provide an introduction to many the principles and practices underpinning digital scholarship, including the ways in which scholars can work collaboratively by adopting online standards and tools.

The course is suitable for those wishing a general introduction to digital humanities as well as for those wishing to initiate a longer-term project, providing a general introduction to key principles associated with DH scholarship, ranging from platform-independent data formats and metadata standards to text markup, preservation challenges, and semantic web principles. It will touch on practical, institutional and cultural challenges associated with collaboration, as well as strategies for deciding what types and levels of collaboration are right for particular individuals or projects.

Hands-on experience will be provided within the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory’s online environment. However, long-term participation in CWRC is not a condition of the course; participants will be able to export the digital objects they create. Participants will be invited to contribute over the course of the week to a collaborative class project, but will also have the option of bringing their own materials to begin to develop individual or group projects. Participants should bring a wireless-capable laptop.