Digital Proficiency Modules
The DITI offers a variety of digital modules. This page first outlines the key concepts for our modules, and then provides a list of relevant tools and their availability, along with links to sample modules in our GitHub repository (F = Free, L = License Required). Find out more information about tools and their accessibility here. Northeastern University also offers software via Information Technology Services (ITS).
For definitions of the tools and concepts covered here, visit our Glossary of Terms page.
Citation Management—Citation management software is used to help researchers organize different sources, analyze source usage, and produce citations. Citation software streamlines the processes of creating citations, managing citation formatting, and automatically filling in citation details via identifiers like ISBNs or DOIs.
Data Management, Analysis, and Visualization—When working with data, whether that data is textual or quantitative, there are a number of methods and software packages available. Software and programs that work with data are able to take data structured in particular formats and analyze that data in multiple ways, including statistical analysis or textual analysis. Researchers may also use these tools to create visualizations of their data.
Digital and Data Ethics—Digital and data ethics are the principles that guide users and producers as they research, collect data from, and make choices in digital spaces, all of which have much broader consequences. It is especially important to think about who has access to data, what they are doing with it, and how their actions may impact individuals and societies. Understanding the political, social, and economic contexts of how data is stored, shared, and analyzed can help researchers, users, and creators assess potential impacts.
Digital Text Analysis—Text analysis is a way to read, understand, and make inferences about texts and what they represent. We cover three main types of text analysis methods: text encoding, qualitative coding, and computational text analysis.
Geospatial Mapping—Geospatial, as an adjective, refers to data specific to a particular location. GIS, or geographic information system(s), capture, store, manipulate, and mange spatial or geographic data, typically for research presentations or platforms.
Podcasts—Podcasts are popular audio mediums for conveying information in engaging ways. When developing a podcast, creators need to think about story-boarding, scripting information, how audio will be recorded, what audio content can and cannot be used under copyright, and specific tools to edit audio.
Website Building, Web Design, and Digital Archives—Web design encompasses the various skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites, including interface design and web accessibility.
Web Scraping—Web scraping is the process of extracting data from an internet source and downloading the data to a local repository. The scraping process can be done manually, but is usually automated using software because of the large amount of data typically involved. Some websites may prohibit web scraping, so our web scraping modules focus on ethical applications.
Available Modules and Tools
See our citation management modules for Zotero (F) and EndNote (F/L).
We have a number of modules introducing specific tools that can be used for data management, analysis, and visualization:
- R (F) – works with both textual and numerical data
- Stata (L) – works with numerical data
- Python (F) – works with both textual and numerical data
- Excel (L) – works primarily with numerical data, but textual data can be used
- NVivo (L) – works with textual data
- Tableau for data visualizations (F) – works with numerical data
- Google Forms and Sheets (F) – works primarily with numerical data, but textual data can be used
See our digital and data ethics modules.
See our qualitative coding with NVivo and computational text analysis modules. Tools include:
- TEI/XML (F)
- Web-based text analysis tools (i.e., Voyant, Lexos) (F)
- R (F)
- Python (F)
- NVivo (L)
See our geospatial mapping and storymapping modules. Tools include:
- Tableau (F)
- Knight Lab’s StoryMap (F)
- ArcGIS (L)
- Carto (L)
See our podcasting modules for Audacity (F).
See our website building, introduction to WordPress, digital archives, and digital storytelling modules. Tools include:
- WordPress (F)
- Omeka (F/L)
- Jekyll (F)
- Drupal (F/L)
- Wix (F)
- HTML/CSS (F)
See our general web scraping and and Twitter web-scraping modules. Tools include:
- TAGs for Twitter scraping (F)
- Python – BeautifulSoup and Selenium (F)
- R (F)
- Javascript (F)
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Links and Resources