THATCamp offers a gathering of individuals from many disciplinary and professional backgrounds, and that mix of experiences is one of the things that make it such a great opportunity for collaboration. But, so much work in the digital humanities is driven forward by literary and media studies, I’d like to propose that the historians in the crowd take an hour to talk about ways to form a loose affiliation of those individuals who share our disciplinary commitments and questions.

I think it might make sense to strengthen/create some channels that will let us share questions and methods with others historians (academic, public, independent, and enthusiast). I’m not sure that the outcome of this session might be: a working group? a group blog? an aggregator of conference sessions and meeting events? What do you think we need to grow the sense of community and innovation among digital historians?

I would be interested in having a conversation about using blogs to enhance student engagement with course material. How do you use blogs? For research? For reflection? What has/has not worked for you (or: what would you like to do with a blog?)? What skills can blogs help students develop? Is the class blog an intermediate step in some larger project or is it the final product? What is its relationship to other assignments? If there is interest, we can extend the discussion to the use of other social media in the classroom, e.g., Twitter.

This workshop (Friday at 1:30) will be aimed at working through the practical and pedagogical choices about creating a digital history course. We will explore sample syllabi, discuss potential projects, survey various tools, and identify obvious and not-so-obvious pitfalls to constructing a class that engages students in the scholarship and practice related to digital history.  [Not an historian?  Come join us anyway.  Most of these ideas and approaches apply to incorporating technology into any course.]

Note: while there are no formal prerequisites to this workshop, please come with ideas for a course that you can discuss with the other workshop participants.

Why should STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) have all the fun? It is time for the humanities to embrace the studio model as a pedagogical means to foster intellectual curiosity. MIT has NuVu; let’s create THATClass! Bring your ideas on partnerships, collaboration, technology integration, hands-on projects, uncovering content, and ways to apply knowledge and skills rooted in the humanities to develop the future of secondary (and post-secondary) education. ==> Saturday

Looking past MOOC mania, there are many models for online teaching and learning. We’ll start the conversation at this workshop with some lessons learned from designing two asynchronous online history courses: Hidden in Plain Sight and Virginia Studies. Instructors include Kelly Schrum, Celeste Sharpe, Nate Sleeter, and Jeri Wieringa.

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