OER1114 Oral Presentation pdf

Thursday 12 May 11.30 Cockcroft Theatre

Open Educational Resources in Digital Humanities

Simon Mahony & Ulrich Tiedau, University College London

Conference Theme: Academic practice and digital scholarship

Abstract: As digital technologies and communication channels have significantly changed the way we communicate and share knowledge, new ways of applying technology to the study of the human record are being found. These have resulted in new forms of academic practice and digital scholarship and led to fresh insights and perspectives on how we think about culture and creativity. The emerging discipline of Digital Humanities, in a process of becoming institutionalized, has a need of supporting open educational resourced which is what the DHOER project (Digital Humanities OER) seeks to provide. It is based at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, a university-wide initiative to create a unique environment where the full potential of the Arts and Humanities to challenge and inspire technology research is realised. Capitalising on UCL's interdisciplinary expertise in Information Studies, Computing Science, and the Arts and Humanities, this new centre forms the hub of a network bringing together researchers interested in the application of digital technologies to research problems in the arts and humanities and cultural heritage sectors in different departments and research centres.
The presentation will give an overview of the development of the discipline of Digital Humanities which has grown from the simple use of databases in scholarly work, to an approach in which technology is neither the servant of the humanities, nor its master, but an equal partner; the UCL take on Digital Humanities, and changing practices and ideas surrounding the value and impact of digital scholarship. It will also present the first OERs from a comprehensive range of introductory teaching and learning resources into the topics, techniques and methodologies of the emerging discipline of Digital Humanities that the DHOER project will be releasing.

Keywords: oer; open educational resources dh; digital humanities; ukoer