Digital Humanities projects provide an array of new ways for students to present their work to “live publics” who will read and experience it firsthand. Web design platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress make it exceedingly easy to broadcast student projects to the university community or even the general public via email. Likewise, imaging programs like Photoshop and GIMP provide improved polish for physical and virtual displays. For example, in my own teaching I have worked with students to create websites and an annual museum-style exhibit (see my website for examples www.alexjberinger.com/#!student-projects/chlk).
These living, breathing publics are substantially different than the speculative publics of traditional papers, which typically address the narrow audience of a professor or a yet-unrealized future audience. For this session, I would like to invite discussion about the diverse issues of working with students on projects that go out to broad live publics.
Many of the questions we will address are practical: How to select a platform and/or software for going public? How to structure assignments to ensure a high level of quality (and thus transmit a final product that students will feel comfortable presenting to live publics)? How does the act of putting work online or in physical installations create incentives and pressures that change the way that our students approach their work?
Other questions will be more theoretical: How might addressing a live public affect a student’s sense of agency as he/she transitions into future professional and social situations? How does a “live public” affect a student’s ability to experiment and thus find his/her own voice? Do students need to be protected from the (potentially harsh) judgments of live publics? If so, how does an instructor determine what constitutes a reasonable level of editing or revision requests in student work?
Since this is such a broad subject—and one where the notion of “expertise” seems ambiguous at best—I would eagerly invite others who have worked with live publics to partner with me on this session.
