Awardee: Osman Nemli
Semester of Award: Spring 2019
Materials Awarded: Software: digital license for year-long access to ESRI’s ArcGIS digital mapping and digital story-telling software.
Project Description:
Philosophy is no stranger to mapping, whether that includes representations of a geographical milieu or pictographic representations of ideas and concepts (concept or argument mapping). That being said, philosophy is somewhat new to incorporating mapping into the classroom environment and new to participating in mapping within the digital humanities. This project aimed to address both of these aspects within specific course settings.
During the 2019-2020 AY, the Frances D. Fergusson Technology Exploration Fund allowed me to incorporate ESRI’s ArcGIS digital mapping and digital story-telling software for two introductory-level philosophy courses. These courses were: (1) “Critique on the Border” (Fall 2019), a first-year writing course cross-listed with URBS focusing on philosophical critique and border studies (critique applied to geographic areas; and (2) “Biopower in the Age of the Anthropocene” (Spring 2020), a course cross-listed with ENST and STS that addressed powers that make life and death during the geological-historical period associated with the Anthropocene (the geological designation of anthropogenic climate change). The decision to apply the fund for this technology in particular stemmed from preliminary discussions with Senior Academic Computing Consultant, Baynard Bailey, who suggested working with digital mapping software and put me in contact with Academic Computing Consultant and GIS Analyst PVE LLC, Neil Curri.
The purpose, for using this technology in introductory-level courses, was to expose students to the digital humanities and a specific widely used digital technology to get their ideas across. Though somewhat of a generic expression, “getting one’s idea across” was an apt description of what I hoped to accomplish with this software, what I hoped students would be thinking about in both courses (directly relevant to course content), and how various formats alter or relate to one’s content and ideas. The way in which we present our ideas is never completely separable from those ideas, and this particular digital software enabled students to include multiple mixed media, while also plotting or mapping their concepts.
The final project for each student in both courses was to create a digital story that incorporated various digital (and non-digital) maps, mixed media, and central concepts learned throughout the course. In other words, concept application and its relation to geospatial circumstances were highlighted. While the learning objectives for each course were different — one course was a relatively small first-year writing seminar, the other course was an introductory level course cross-listed with multiple departments— ESRI’s software was amendable to differences across learning objects, course content, and student activities. The Fergusson Fund allowed, above all, students to test out their writing and research skills and apply them to a platform that required their to focus on how the content they wished to express matched onto digital format.
In both classes these final projects were, in addition to other course assignments particular to the genre of the course, scaffolded and thus built up. So while quite some time in and out of the classroom meeting times was spent working on the technology, this very practice enabled students to raise questions in a classroom setting related to the reading that otherwise would not have been possible. Working with mapping and digital story-telling technology thereby affected the work considered more a staple of an introductory philosophy course, such as reading, writing, and classroom discussion.
Separately from the work in the classroom and with my students, I was able to work extensively with Baynard Bailey and Neil Curri regarding the use of this digital software throughout the academic calendar. As a result of our work together, we presented our experiences at the Fall 2020 Virtual NEARC (North Eastern Arc) conference, dedicated to those interested in working with GIS software and specifically committed to making the use of such software more accessible in the classroom and throughout academia.