{"id":2241,"date":"2021-02-04T16:46:31","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T23:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=2241"},"modified":"2021-02-04T16:50:05","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T23:50:05","slug":"teaching-technical-skills-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/teaching-technical-skills-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching technical skills online"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here I am, still blogging like some kind of caveman. I guess I should be using Substack or Medium or something, but maybe blogs will come back in style, like other artifacts of the ’00s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, in the past, when people asked me whether I could teach my digital humanities classes online, I hemmed and hawed. Tools like web-based visualization software have made it easier to share work across platforms, and heaven knows there are plenty of cloud-based collaboration tools out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that worried me was teaching new tech skills, which is a big part of my classes, and particularly my Intro to DH<\/a> classes. I am super, super picky about how to do this<\/a>, as I’ve mentioned before. My feeling is, I get one shot to teach the students this new skill, and if something goes badly wrong, I’ve not only missed my shot, but I may inadvertently lead someone to believe they’re not capable of learning the skill. It’s why I teach every single skill myself, rather than invite people to give workshops; I just know exactly how I want it done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"screenshot<\/a>
While my students work through a tutorial, this is my view from the “teacher dashboard.” Notice the blue boxes with numbers in them at the lower left-hand portion of the slides. They tell me how many students are working on that step. I can tell, for example, that at least some students were able to get past the downloading-software step, which is a relief.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Thus, when my students work through tutorials together, my habit has been to wander somewhat unnervingly around the room, peeking over people’s shoulders and checking to see whether someone had a question that they’re not quite willing to raise a hand to ask. It’s important to me that they be able to tell from my affect and expression that their questions are not<\/em> stupid, and I worried about the way that distance would limit my ability to connect with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But necessity is the mother of invention, and this quarter, like most faculty, I am teaching entirely online, including my Intro to Digital Humanities class for grad students<\/a>. It is not at all unusual for my students to tell me at the outset of class that they consider themselves bad with technology, and so it’s particularly important to me that they don’t leave the class with this impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I had to figure out how to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n