From Archives to Argument Symposium:
Day 3: Advancing Digital Scholarship through Text and Data Mining
Teaching and Pedagogy with The Gale Digital Scholar Lab - Sarah Ketchley and Lindsey Gervais
The concept of working with texts as data within the broader field of digital humanities can seem overwhelming to the novice. Barriers to entry include practical tasks such as gathering sufficient data to analyze, formatting it correctly, and choosing an appropriate tool to use for analysis from the myriad of options available - many of which require proficiency with a coding language like Python or R.

The Gale Digital Scholar Lab provides a learning framework for new users, guiding them through the process of building a corpus of data, cleaning it, and then analyzing it using tools integrated in the platform. As a cloud-based platform, it is ideal for classroom use, since no installation or maintenance is required, freeing the instructor to focus on teaching concepts and content. This talk will highlight the main features of the Gale Digital Scholar Lab’s Learning Center, including detailed ‘how to’ material, sample projects, and a range of classroom content such as syllabi, learning objectives and project outlines. We’ll discuss a DH class recently taught at the University of Washington using the platform, covering pedagogical strategies and final project outcomes.