Digital Integration Teaching Initiative

Types of Partnerships

At the core of the Digital Integration Teaching Initiative model is an ethos of collaboration: we aim to help CSSH faculty integrate digital proficiencies into the curriculum of their courses. The DITI team will work carefully with you on this integration: we don’t just parachute into a course to teach a discrete unit on a digital skill disconnected from the rest of the course’s contents. The integrative model we support takes time, careful planning, and collaborative work on the part of faculty members and the DITI team.

We offer several types of partnerships between faculty and DITI-trained graduate students to incorporate computational and digital skills into existing course content:

We are also able to accommodate other types of partnerships, with sufficient advance notice. Please note that some partnerships will take longer than others to develop, especially if the content is new. For all partnerships, however, both the class date and type of partnership must be specified before the semester begins.

Partnership Timeline

To ensure that we are able to accommodate all requests, we have established a timeline for DITI partnerships. Partnerships begin early in the semester before the class is offered in order to provide sufficient time to create class materials, reserve times for class visits, and modify materials based on faculty partner feedback. After the initial consultation, DITI team members will remain in touch throughout the planning and teaching processes to ensure the success of digital modules.

When you have completed the CFP intake form, the DITI team will reach out to schedule a planning consultation. We will also send information on how you can reserve a week or weeks for a class visit. We can only successfully do a limited number of class visits per week, and weekly reservations are done on a first-come first-served basis. Note that some weeks are historically more popular than others, particularly during the beginning and middle of the semester, so reserve your slot early if you want our visit to be early in the semester. We will make every effort to accommodate your schedule, but please be advised that we may not be able to schedule you during your desired week(s) if you are unable to meet us with or confirm the timing and logistics of your visit.

Partnership Roles

You do not need any specialized technical knowledge or skills to include a digital module in your course. That’s what the DITI team members are for! Our goal is for instructors to work closely with the DITI team so that in the future they will be able to teach the modules themselves, but DITI team members can remain available for assistance and ongoing planning. To ensure the module is successful and to help you understand what to expect, we have set out a few guidelines. Faculty members should plan to:

• Attend the class during workshop days and guest lectures. This helps faculty partners learn the material themselves, and address any course-specific questions from students as they arise.
• Distribute the appropriate materials, arrange downloads of data/software, and send advance instructions to students so they are well-prepared for the class as needed.
• Reserve time that works best for both the course and the DITI team members’ schedules; without sufficient lead time, DITI team members may not be able to accommodate a specific date.

Data Considerations

DITI team members span multiple disciplines and their familiarity with data in disciplines other than their own may be limited. We recommend that faculty partners select useful data for workshops, projects, and presentations during advance planning for the module. Faculty partners should plan to provide or point to datasets that are relevant to the course and to consult with DITI team members on what kinds of data are needed for different assignments or workshops. In some cases, the DITI team may be able to assist with data gathering. If faculty are unable to provide data resources, then DITI team members may be able to supply datasets; however, such data may not always be the most relevant for the course.

The DITI is guided by three principles: open data, analyzable data, and archivable data. If datasets are not arranged in an open, standard, analyzable format, then users of that data might have difficulty accessing it in the short- or long-term. We strive to remove all unnecessary restrictions over the data that we create, use, and share in the classroom and on our GitHub Digital Showcase. If at all possible, we would like faculty to follow these principles when it comes to selecting datasets, though we will do our best to work with files in any form. We prefer faculty send us data that are analyzable and non-proprietary, so we can avoid problems like: major software updates causing datasets to become inaccessible, difficulty with reading files on different operating systems and with different software, or proprietary data types becoming obsolete.

The DITI follows data and file formatting guidelines that allow for long-term storage and wide-range accessibility. If you have any questions about these data considerations, please contact a DITI member.

Below are lists outlining the data file formatting standards we recommend at the DITI:

Below are the data values we observe at the DITI and more resources explaining the reasoning behind these guidelines: