Teaching, Learning and Research in Final Year Humanities Computing Student Projects
Martyn Jessop · Digital Scholarship in the Humanities · 2005
This article discusses the teaching and learning that takes place during the project work performed by final year students on a B.A. Humanities with Applied Computing degree course. This is perhaps the first time that the student has had to tackle a large piece of independent research work. It marks a period of transition between the much more constrained and often unavoidably artificial exercises of earlier undergraduate years and the ill-defined and open-ended problems of the real world. As such it acts as a valuable preparation for the independent analytical thinking required in every profession. The pedagogy of the project work, methods of assessment and details of the support offered to students are explored. The article also discusses the students' experiences of research processes in the humanities and humanities computing. It is illustrated with two case study projects. The experiences of students and staff during the projects raise many issues concerning humanities computing as a field of study and are used as a starting point for exploring the nature of the discipline.