Digital pedagogy assignments can be stand-alone components of a course or be complementary or supplementary to more traditional coursework.

Assignments may be digital in origin or begin as a traditional assignment such as a paper and then be moved into a digital format. In the case of the latter, students are given the opportunity to learn about translation, be it the act of translating a paper into a digital project and/or translating academic writing and content for the general public.

The two sections "Learning Outcomes" and "Mode/Method/Tool Process" will assist with assignment design. The second section is especially useful if you do not know the method(s) and tool(s) you want to use.

Like with all assignment design, designing a digital pedagogy-based assignment should be driven by the learning outcomes. If you have already decided on the method (e.g., mapping) and tool (e.g., ArcGIS), designing or refining your assignment might be mainly a matter of selecting the desired learning outcomes and developing them further.

Related digital pedagogy learning outcomes include, but are not limited to, the ability to:

• Use digital tools to investigate scholarly questions

• Digitally present critical and creative scholarship

• Effectively organize information

• Navigate multiple literacies, e.g., information literacy, digital literacy, data literacy, and visual literacy

• Work collaboratively

• Manage projects

• Write for the web and/or public audiences

• Visually communicate

• Navigate intellectual property rights

• Comply with web accessibility standards

Guiding questions like these will help you identify learning outcomes:

• What literacies might students improve on or gain from this assignment?

• What communication, information organization, analytical, technical, and problem-solving skills does this assignment require?

• What will the assignment teach students about incorporating media (e.g., video and images) into their work?

• What will the assignment teach students about intellectual property rights?

• How will this assignment teach students to work in groups and manage projects?

After having identified learning outcomes, you can enhance them by creating more specific requirements. You can, for example, enhance an assignment's data literacy component by not just having students use datasets they can find but also having them create their own. This act of creation will give them a much deeper understanding of how datasets work. Another example would be having students create metadata for objects they incorporate into a digital exhibit. Creating metadata on top of writing captions will get students more engaged with the objects as it will require them to analyze them on multiple levels. An alternative to increasing specific and practical requirements is having students critically reflect on their work in the form of an essay, presentation, or by including a praxis component to their digital project that explains how they approached and accomplished their work (see praxis example).

There are numerous digital pedagogy assignment examples out there. You can find many at the University of Michigan’s Digital Pedagogy Repository and the #DLFteach Toolkit. The BC Digital History libguide can also help faculty from multiple disciplines imagine possibilities. A few examples by the creator of this digital pedagogy guide include:

Mapping Parable of the Sower (Basic mapping)

• See assignment

• See associated visual image exercise

The Watts Collection (Digital collection creation)

• See syllabus and assignments

Evolution of International Policy and Policy Areas (Timeline)

• See assignment

Introduction to Voyant (Text analysis)

• See assignment

Archives, Race, and Justice (Digital storytelling)

• See project instructions

The mode/method/tool process will help you identify the method(s) you want to use, get you thinking about possible additional learning outcomes, and point you in the right direction regarding tools. (Also, see for a list of possibilities.)

The Process

The mode/method/tool process walks you through a series of questions and considerations to help you narrow down the options and identify additional learning outcomes.

Mode in this context means the way in which students engage with course materials, experience them, or express ideas about them. Examples of modes include spatial, temporal, textual, hypertextual, immersive, graphical, and exhibitive. ‌The choice of mode should be rooted in the type of thinking and reasoning you want students to do. For example, a map is a spatial mode. Creating one compels students to think and process information spatially.

Method is the way in which students are doing the work, meaning conducting research or presenting scholarship. Examples of methods include text analysis, GIS, and augmented reality. Modes that correlate with these methods include textual, spatial, and immersive, respectively.

Tools are the technologies that enable the execution of a method and the creation or presentation of content. Tools mean anything from a digital platform like Tableau and ArcGIS to a markup language like HTML and coding language like Python. The tool selection process should take into account key factors like complexity, accessibility, and support availability.

Guiding Questions

Answer these questions to begin the decision-making process.

1.) Mode

To select the mode(s), begin by asking the questions:

• How do you want students to experience the content associated with the assignment?

  (e.g., Do you want them experiencing it spatially or temporally or both?)

• Relatedly, what kind of thinking and reasoning do you want them to do?

To get you thinking more about potential learning outcomes ask:

• What impact will the mode(s) have on their learning?

‌2.) Method

To select the method(s), begin by asking the questions:

• In what way should students engage with the assignment subject matter that will align with the determined mode? (The Mode/Method/Tool Combinations list below will help with this question.)

To get you thinking more about potential learning outcomes ask:

• What impact will the method(s) have on their learning?

‌3.) Tool

To select the tools(s), begin by asking the questions:

• What tool(s) facilitate the methodological approach?

• What level of learning curve should the tool(s) have?

• Who will be teaching and supporting the tool(s)?

• Are the tool(s) accessible for students with disabilities? If not, what alternative tool(s) can be used, and what additional help might the student need to use them?

To get you thinking more about potential learning outcomes ask:

• How might the tool(s) create opportunities for additional learning outcomes?

• What technical and scholarly skills will students gain from using the tool?

Mode/Method/Tool Combinations

The following are only some of the possible combinations:

Scenarios

The following scenarios are intended to demonstrate ways in which the process might work.

‌Scenario One

Mode: An instructor of a lower division history class wants students to understand and “experience” how the Himalayan mountain range impacted the relationship between ancient India and China. The instructor's main objective is to help students understand the affect of typology and distance, so it is decided that spatial is the best mode.

Method: For the methods, they choose GIS and mapping, because both methods will allow students to deeply engage with the geography of the region and will, through the use of such features as topographical layers, help them better understand the complexity of landforms.

‌Tool: For tool, the instructor chooses ArcGIS Online because it allows students to add marks (e.g., pins) and data layers as well as provides topographic base layers. The online version (as opposed to ArcGIS Pro) was chosen because it is supported on campus, it has less of a learning curve, and it is cloud-based and, therefore, accessible from any computer.

Learning outcomes: In addition to original learning outcomes the instructor identified such as students will understand how the typology of the Himalayan mountains affected encounters between ancient India and China, they identify other learning outcomes such as students will learn to find, evaluate and incorporate spatial data into their scholarship.

Scenario Two

‌Mode: An instructor of both a lower-division and upper-division political science class wants their students to see the evolution of political rhetoric in presidential inauguration speeches over time and, therefore, they decide that a temporal and textual mode are most appropriate.

Method: The methods they choose are timeline visualization and text analysis, which will enable students to see patterns and trends in the speeches as well as present those changes visually.

‌Tool: For the lower-division class, the instructor wants to keep the technology as simple as possible so that students can focus more on gaining foundational rhetorical analysis skills. In response, the instructor chooses, TimelineJS, which requires only basic data entry skills, and Voyant, a free cloud-based text analysis tool with an easy-to-use graphic interface.

For the upper-division class, the instructor wants students to learn more complex text analysis skills. They stick with using TimelineJS because they know the text analysis component will be demanding. For the text analysis tool, they choose Python for “scraping” the speeches from the web and for running the anaysis. The instructor feels comfortable giving this assignment because all of the tools are free, work on both Mac and PC, is supported by the Library, and there are multiple online resources.

‌Learning outcomes: In addition to original learning outcomes the instructor identified like, students will be able to identify and analyze trends in inauguration speeches over time, the instructor identifies other learning outcomes such as students will learn the basics of cleaning and structuring data and, in the case of the upper-division assignment, gain a basic understanding of coding.