Net.Create: Using Network Analysis to Support Digital Humanities in Large History Classrooms

这是一个EAGER奖使用网络分析，以支持大型历史教室的数字人文学习。它是一种创新的网络分析方法，将多用户预测性网络数据输入和实时可视化带入大学历史课堂，以支持教学和学习。该网络工具被称为Net.Create，它将提供一个易于使用的界面和课程材料，这些材料是从头开始设计的，可以在课堂上成功实施。创建支持数据的协作生成，作为一种解释来自多个历史文本的证据的方法，然后使用网络分析来理解历史交互的复杂性。创建还将提供实用指导，指导具有类似复杂交互的各种学科的教师如何调整网络可视化和分析技能，通常是STEM学科的重点，以支持学生参与人文和社会科学学习。网络分析是一种越来越受欢迎的强大计算工具，用于分析大型数据集。数字历史学家使用这些工具来表示和分析历史背景，因为它们支持学者研究人，地点和事件之间的广泛联系。虽然人文教师乐观地认为，这些能力也提供了独特的机会，支持学生学习历史，现有的工具不支持轻松融入人文课堂，还没有经验或理论支持，这可能是如何有效地完成。作为这种整合的一部分，Net.Create旨在帮助新手历史学习者认识到历史实践是如何扎根于论证而不是单一的权威性叙述的，方法是帮助学生创建和完善历史语料库的可视化，让他们看到这些丰富的背景，然后挑战他们使用这些可视化来发展和捍卫历史论点。分析将探讨如何净。创建工具和课程活动有助于学生的历史实践和学生对网络分析方法的理解，以及这些网络分析实践是否会导致新的历史学习，保留和理解。Net.Create的设计旨在支持学生在广泛的背景下参与具有挑战性的历史实践，并欣赏这些实践如何基于使用过去的证据构建论点。这些方法通过免费提供的工具，从最初试点的200名学生推广到全国各地的学生，并通过简单的定制过程跨学科推广。创建和相关的课程也提供了一个独特的机会，教学生使用人文课堂学习前沿的数字方法，以奖学金，可以适用于跨学科的界限。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力审查标准的支持。

This is an EAGER award to use Network Analysis to Support Digital Humanities Learning in Large History Classrooms. It is an innovative approach to network analysis that brings simultaneous multi-user predictive network data entry and live visualization into university history classrooms to support pedagogy and learning. The network tool is called Net.Create and it will provide an easy-to use interface and curricular materials that are designed from the ground up to be successfully implemented in a lecture classroom. Net.Create supports the collaborative generation of data as a method of interpreting evidence from multiple historical texts and then using network analysis to understand the complexity of historical interactions. Net.Create will also give practical guidance for how instructors in a variety of disciplines with similar complex interactions can adapt network visualization and analysis skills, typically the focus of STEM disciplines, to support students as they engage with humanities and social science learning.Network analysis is an increasingly popular and powerful computational tool for the analysis of large data sets. Digital historians have used these tools to represent and analyze historical contexts because they support scholars in looking at a broad range of connections between people, places, and events. While humanities pedagogues are optimistic that these capabilities also provide unique opportunities for supporting students in learning history, available tools do not support easy integration into humanities classrooms, and there is not yet empirical or theoretical support for how this might be accomplished effectively. As part of this integration, Net.Create aims to support novice history learners in recognizing how historical practices are grounded in argumentation rather than in single authoritative accounts by scaffolding students in creating and refining visualizations of historical corpora, allowing them to see these rich contexts, and then challenging them to develop and defend historical argument using these visualizations. Analysis will explore how the Net.Create tool and curricular activities contribute to students' historical practices and to student understanding of network analysis approaches, and whether these network-analysis practices result in new historical learning, retention, and understanding. The design of Net.Create is intended to support students in a wide range of contexts in engaging in challenging historical practices, and in appreciating how these practices are grounded in constructing arguments using evidence from the past. These approaches generalize beyond the 200 students of this initial pilot to students across the country via freely available tools, and across disciplines through an easy customization process. Net.Create and the associated curriculum also provide a unique opportunity to teach students to use humanities classrooms to learn cutting-edge digital approaches to scholarship which can apply across disciplinary boundaries.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.