From Student to Teacher: Learning then Implementing DH Pedagogical Practices

the first time at Michigan State University.This class was designed with graduate students in mind to fulfill the pedagogy requirement, as part of the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate.Throughout the semester, students in this course read and discussed a number of texts on topics ranging from computational thinking, to postcolonial digital humanities (DH), to reframing failure; and they were subsequently asked to begin thinking through how these topics might be incorporated into their own teaching philosophies.This culminated in the final project, for which students had to "create pedagogical materials designed to be used in a professional setting of [their] choice, inside and/or outside of the university" (Handelman and Mapes).These projects were developed and revised throughout the semester and then presented in class during the final weeks of the course.Although graduate students are often expected to teach as part of their funding package, pedagogy is not necessarily at the forefront of their training.As Stephen Brier argues in "Where's the Pedagogy?" the pedagogy of DH is often an "afterthought," as a focus on research results in "minimizing and often obscuring the larger implications of DH for how we teach in universities and colleges and how we prepare the next generation of graduate students for careers inside and outside of the academy."DH 861 was designed to address this lack by prioritizing opportunities for graduate students to develop their own pedagogical practices specific to their own fields, explore the through lines from goals and objectives to activities and assessments, and engage with a larger network of DH teacher-scholars who provide first-hand insights into incorporating DH pedagogy in a variety of undergraduate classrooms.By participating in a semester of DH 861, graduate students at MSU have the opportunity to develop a pedagogical practice that centres DH and develop materials that they can take not only into their own classrooms at MSU as scholars, instructors, and DH communicators, but also utilize in their future careers.As a graduate student in this course, I decided to use the final project of DH 861 to create a general education humanities course that, while not technically a digital humanities class, incorporated digital humanities tools, methods, and values into the curriculum.I launched the course "Redefining Renaissance: From the Early Modern through the COVID-19 Era" in summer term 2022, a mere two weeks following the end of my time in DH 861 and the redevelopment of the syllabus and assignments for my final project.In this class, students completed small exercises rooted in DH pedagogy and developed final projects in the forms of websites, multimedia posters, or podcasts, accompanied by a reflection paper.Teaching this course provided an opportunity to implement what I learned in the pedagogy course immediately and under continued mentorship while reflecting on the process of meaningfully incorporating DH into the undergraduate classroom, even if DH was not the focus of course content. Engaging with DH Pedagogy as a Graduate Student in DH 861There are several options for graduate students who hope to concretize their commitment to pedagogy while pursuing their degree at Michigan State University.The first is via the Certification in College Teaching, which