philosophi.ca : Links And Bibliography

Back to MLA Digital Work Home

This is a list of links and bibliographic references related to the evaluation of digital work in the arts and humanities. This section was edited by Ronnie Apter.

Guidelines

Guidelines of Academic Organizations

MLA Digital Evaluation Guidelines:

http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital

"[These]�guidelines, which deal with the hiring, reappointment, tenure, and promotion processes, are designed to help departments and faculty members European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning implement effective evaluation procedures.� Institutions and, when appropriate, departments should develop their own written guidelines�.Written guidelines must provide clear directions for appointment, reappointment, merit increases, tenure, and promotion and should take into consideration the growing number of resources for evaluating digital scholarship." Adivce is given to both evaluators dn candidates. Among the recommendations is the desideratum for committees to review work in the medium in which it was created.

European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) Research Policy Statement:

http://www.eurocall-languages.org/research/research_policy.html

"This document has been drafted � (i) to establish a clearer understanding for departments, institutions, professional associations and decision-making bodies of the range of activities represented in the field, and (ii) to provide an organized and consistent perspective on the rubrics under which these activities should be evaluated. Assessment and academic recognition of work in CALL presents difficulties not only because of the rapid evolution of the field but also because of the emergence of new theoretical and methodological paradigms. CALL work can be categorised as research, development, and practice." The document goes on to define those terms.

College Art Association (CAA) Guidelines:

http://www.collegeart.org/guidelines/newmedia07.html

"This document is � as a description of circumstances, standards, and practices within the field. Frequently, colleagues and administrators are unaware of many critical issues in this rapidly developing area, and therefore initial hiring interviews and subsequent performance reviews can be difficult for both faculty and administrators. This document is presented as a set of guidelines to assist in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure, workload, compensation, funding, and support in this field, and to provide information about faculty working in this area that could be used in making accurate and comprehensive evaluations." Advise is given to both evaluators and candidates.

The Credibility of Electronic Publishing: A Report to the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada:

http://web.viu.ca/hssfc/Final/Credibility.htm

Like other such guidelines, this report addresses the concerns of peer review, but it also address the problems of copyright ownership, difficulties of controlling change in and preserving digital texts (both because of their fluidity and because of technological change, and version control.

UC Language Consortium White Paper on Evaluating Applied Linguists

http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu/white-papers/index.php

This document was prepared by representatives of the UC Language Consortium Steering Committee (http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu), which includes language faculty from each campus of the UC system, and approved on April 24, 2009. Its purpose is to provide the academic P&T committees with background information to assist them in evaluating applied linguists working in language, literature, and culture departments whose research deals with language pedagogy, CALL research, second language acquisition, applied linguistics or linguistics. As a response to departments seeking guidance in this area, we offer the attached white paper on "Considerations for Evaluation of Applied Linguists in Language, Literature, and Culture Departments in the UC System," which includes a list of the most notable journals in this field.

Guidelines of Specific Departments or Academic Units

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities:

http://cdrh.unl.edu/articles/promotion_and_tenure.php

"This document strives to provide a resource which outlines criteria for evaluating dossiers in this scholarly area."

University of Maine, New Media Department:

http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media

This "argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today's universities" suggests that " Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals" and states that "The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals."

See also the Addendum from the New Media Department defining criteria: http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/promotion_tenure_redefinitions.html

University of Victoria, Faculty of the Humanities:

http://web.uvic.ca/humanities/faculty/documents/meet_docs/evaluation.htm

This university does ot specifically address evaluation of digital publications, but does have a criterion for evaluation of academic research which reads: "Computer-based activities are considered a part of contemporary scholarship in the humanities and may be assessed in a manner similar to that of print publications (including refereeing, weighing of collaborative efforts, originality, contribution to discipline etc."

Organizations Interested in Digital Humanities

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO):

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/

Among its many publications, the ADHO includes "The NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials": http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities//ninchguide/

Text Encoding Initiative (TEI):

http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml

"The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium which collectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form. Its chief deliverable is a set of Guidelines which specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts, chiefly in the humanities, social sciences and linguistics. Since 1994, the TEI Guidelines have been widely used by libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars to present texts for online research, teaching, and preservation."

Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO):

https://calico.org/

CALICO "is a professional organization that serves a membership involved in both education and technology.� [It] is a recognized international clearinghouse and leader in computer assisted learning and instruction. It is a premier global association dedicated to computer-assisted language learning (CALL)�.CALICO now includes foreign language educators, programmers, technicians, web page designers, CALL developers, CALL practitioners, novice CALL users, second language acquisition researchers--anyone interested in exploring the use of technology for foreign language teaching and learning."

The site has information on how to join, CALICO publications, both book series and journals, and the CALICO Conference.

Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR):

http://portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal

"TAPoR is a gateway to tools for sophisticated analysis and retrieval, along with representative texts for experimentation. The tools of TAPoR can be used to manage electronic texts, experiment with online text tools, learn about digital textuality." Actual tools are online at this site for experimentation and for teaching techniques. Geoffrey Rockwell explains, "Much of the evidence used by humanists is in textual form�. The computer does not replace human interpretation, it enhances it. The concordance is an example of a research aide that predates computing. The concordance, like the index, allows the interpreter to find passages that share a common word about which you are asking. Unlike the index, the concordance is a presentation of the passages that "concord" together for reflection. Thus a Key Word In Context display shows one line of text with the key word searched for in the middle so that the reader can see if there are patterns in the way the word is used. Most text analysis tools build on the concordance. They break down the text (analysis) and then represent passages in new arrangements (synthesis) that aide the questioner list graphs of the distribution of a word. Text-analysis tools break a text down into smaller units like words, sentences, and passages, and then gather these units into new views on the text that aid interpretation."

Text Analysis Developers Alliance (TADA):

http://tada.mcmaster.ca

TADA has a wiki with materials on tool development for people interested in connecting with others who do development as part of their research practice. TADA is also developing a model for competition exchange that can provide an alternative to review for scholarly tools. See http://tada.mcmaster.ca/trex/ .

Journals of Interest

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN); ISSN 1092-8235 (online) - ISSN 1939-5256 (print)

http://www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln/index.asp

"The aim of the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks is to describe original work in asynchronous learning networks (ALN), including experimental results. Our mission is to provide practitioners in online education with knowledge about the very best research in online learning. Papers emphasizing results, backed by data are the norm. Occasionally, papers reviewing broad areas are published, including critical reviews of thematic areas. Papers useful to administrators are welcome. Entire issues are published from time-to-time around single topic or disciplinary areas. The Journal adheres to traditional standards of double-blind peer review, and authors are encouraged to provide quantitative data; currently JALN's acceptance rate is 25%. The original objective of the Journal was to establish ALN as a field by publishing articles from authoritative and reliable sources. The Journal is now a major resource for knowledge about online learning."

ReCALL; ISSN 0958-3440

http://www.eurocall-languages.org/recall/index.html

"ReCALL is a fully-refereed journal published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of EUROCALL. It is issued three times a year in January, May and September and is also available online to subscribers. The May issue normally contains selected papers from the previous year�s EUROCALL conference. The journal contains articles relating to theoretical debate on language learning strategies and their influence on practical courseware design and integration, as well as regular software reviews." Back issues are online.

CALL Review

http://ltsig.org.uk/call-review-the-sig-journal.html

"The CALL Review (CALL = Computer Assisted Language Learning) is the newsletter of the IATEFL Learning Technologies (formerly Computer) SIG. It is published three times a year, in spring, summer and autumn. Articles should be something between 800 and 3000 words (max). Papers should be sent as email attachments in any popular word processor format or as a PDF file. Any graphics should be sent as separate files (.jpg, .tif or .bmp).� The CALL Review is only available to members of IATEFL who have elected to belong to the Learning Technology (formerly Computer) Special Interest Group."

Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT):

http://jolt.merlot.org/

"MERLOT [Multimedia Educational Resource for Leaning and Online Teaching] is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is a peer-reviewed, open access, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in online education. JOLT is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December. The objectives of JOLT are to enable faculty to use technology effectively in online teaching and learning by learning from a community of researchers and scholars; enable academic programs to design and deploy academic technology to optimize online teaching and learning; build a community around the research and scholarly use of multimedia educational resources for online teaching and learning. JOLT welcomes papers on all aspects of the use of online multimedia educational resources for online learning and teaching." Subscriptions to JOLT are free.

CALL Electronic Journal Online (CALL- EJ Online):

http://www.tell.is.ritsumei.ac.jp/callejonline/

CALL-EJ Online is a international refereed professional journal on Computer Assisted Language Learning and related fields published semiannually.

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular:

http://www.vectorsjournal.org/

Vectors is anew international electronic journal that brings together visionary scholars with cutting edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the dynamic relationship of form to content in academic research , focusing on ways technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures social and cultural relations." Vectors is a publicaton of the USC School of Cinema and Television.

Forums and Collaborations

Humanist Discussion Group:

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/

"Humanist is an international online seminar on humanities computing and the digital humanities. Its primary aim is to provide a forum for discussion of intellectual, scholarly, pedagogical, and social issues and for exchange of information among participants."

Globalization and Autonomy Online Compendium:

http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/

"The Globalization and Autonomy Online Compendium [is] a collective publication by the team of leading Canadian and international scholars who are part of the SSHRCC Major Collaborative Research Initiative on Globalization and Autonomy. Using the Compendium, the team is making the results of their research available to a wide public audience. Team members have prepared a glossary of hundreds of short articles on relevant persons, places, organizations, events and key concepts and compiled an extensive searchable bibliographical database. They have written short summaries of their research that will be published in academic form in the 10-volume UBC Press "Globalization and Autonomy Series: Dialectical Relationships Shaping the Contemporary World." Finally, the Compendium contains position papers and peer-reviewed research articles on globalization and autonomy issues."

Rotunda (UVA Press):

http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/

"Rotunda was created for the publication of original digital scholarship along with newly digitized critical and documentary editions in the humanities and social sciences. The collection combines the originality, intellectual rigor, and scholarly value of traditional peer-reviewed university press publishing with thoughtful technological innovation designed for scholars and students. Our publications are produced by the staff of the Electronic Imprint of the University of Virginia Press.

MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching):

http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

"MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy." Members can contribute learning materials and get the materials reviewed.

Back to MLA Digital Work Home