We use “digital liberal arts” as an umbrella term covering digital approaches to pedagogy and scholarship, in particular where they reflect and enhance the international inflections of liberal arts practiced at our institutions. Our use of this term includes digital humanities, digital literacies, and the use of technology to enable new forms of interdisciplinary scholarship or pedagogy.

Listed below are some examples of digital methods and types of digital projects. AMICAL aims to support the use of such digital approaches in the liberal arts classroom. In practice, this often means projects based in humanities disciplines, or projects involving interdisciplinary collaboration that is not based solely in the sciences.

Example digital methods and project types

• Text analytics
• Network analysis
• Data visualization and analysis
• Mapping and spatial analysis
• Timelines and temporal analysis
• Blogging
• Annotation
• Online exhibits and digital storytelling
• Digital editions
• Podcasting
• Digital oral history

Methods, tools and pedagogical choices

See the following for descriptions of such digital approaches, including pedagogical goals that might motivate choosing that method and examples of specific tools for each approach.

• Digital Assignment Guides from Princeton’s McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning
• Choosing Digital Methods and Tools from Harvard’s Digital Arts and Humanities

Projects and initiatives we have supported

We are interested in supporting a wide range of initiatives: from individual digital projects, to course redesigns with elements of digital literacy or scholarship, to campus-wide curricular initiatives involving digital literacies, pedagogy or scholarship.

Here are some digital projects AMICAL has supported (as of Nov 2021):

• Analyzing Kyrgyz Narratives (AKYN) is a collaborative course-integrated digital project that recorded, transcribed, and analyzed six metrical oral Kyrgyz verse narratives by two different Kyrgyz performers of the epic Manas.
• A digital history of Hausa narratives in a multilingual translation project across borders (collaboration between teams at Franklin University & American University of Nigeria).
• Collaborating on a Digital Cultures course to redesign syllabus, create rubrics, present lectures, and offer feedback on final digital projects to students (consultation between the Mellon Fellow and faculty at the American University of Central Asia).
• Italian-American digital oral histories (faculty-technologist-librarian collaboration at John Cabot University)
• Course module combining library special collections with curating online exhibits (library-faculty collaboration at Al Akhawayn University)
• Incorporate digital methods in an Academic Travel course (library-technologist-faculty collaboration at Franklin University)
• Use of digital methods and tools in liberal education courses (faculty-library collaboration at American College of Greece).
• 3D modelling projects involving local cultural heritage (faculty-library collaborations at American University of Central Asia).

You can also find a longer list of members’ digital projects (only accessible by AMICAL members), and smaller projects and course interventions have also been presented at AMICAL Conferences over the years. We also maintain a list of members’ digital collections. You may contact us to add projects or collections to these lists.