The Spring 2020 edition of St. Lawrence University Magazine features an article on the Digital Scholarship Program at SLU.
The article, “The World As We Know It: Remote Transitions and Augmented Realities,” by Katie Navarra, begins by noting the vital role SLU’s LIT and digital scholarship teams have served in the transition to remote learning amid the global COVID-19 outbreak. But, as the article goes on to point out, the university has had a longstanding commitment to embracing the latest digital technologies and modes of digital research and learning.
One technology highlighted in the article is the Oculus Vive VR headset, which Visiting Associate Professor of European History Carolyn Twomey uses, with the help of Director of Research and Digital Scholarship Eric Williams-Bergen and others, to help students “walk” the streets of Ancient Rome in 320 AD.
The article also highlights the work of Juraj Kittler, Associate Professor of PCA and English, who uses mapping features like StoryMap JS to encourage his students to make the most of their native tech-savviness while also helping them to visualize how events have unfolded in a particular space, and Judith DeGroat, Associate Professor of History and member of the Digital Scholarship team, whose students work to convert their 25-page research papers to a digital narrative format, a media-rich, story-driven presentation of their findings online.
Also featured is the Digital Scholarship Fellowship Program, along with fellows Fernanda León Canseco ’22 and Ntsieng Botsane ’22.
Canseco discusses how her involvement in the Digital Scholarship Fellowship Program has, among other benefits, allowed her to collaborate in the online cultural journal Aquí y Allá.
Botsane speaks about the connections she has made between her work as a digital scholar and her two majors, Global Studies and Art History.
“The program has gone as far as teaching us about visual literacy, as it relates to photography, and this has helped me in doing visual analysis in art history as well as in my pursuit of photography,” Botsane is quoted as saying. “With regard to global studies, we were able to realize the power of visual communication in global media.”