Independent but Connected: My Day of DH

Hi! I’m @adamheid and this is my Day in Digital Humanities

MMmm, or Massive MOOC Monday Mornings

7:00 a.m. Wake up.

I’m up and to the french press, pressing a double-batch of strong, black coffee. Clothe self, then off to Lehigh University where my fiancee is a Masters student and Teaching Assistant, and where I am enjoying one semester of yet-undetected free library use and wifi access. This is where I establish my Mobile DH Command Center, easy to pack up should my loitering ways be discovered.

From here, with but a Chromebook and a pair of Beatz headphones, I take five courses from all over the country. This Spring, I am enrolled in:

(1) The Modern and Postmodern, with Professor Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University via Coursera.

(2) Gamification, with Professor Kevin Werbach of University of Pennsylvania, also via Coursera.

(3) Social Media, with Professor Maria H. Andersen of Instructure, via Canvas Network

(4) Writing History, with Professor Robert Cassanello of University of Central Florida, via Canvas Network as well.

and (5) The Ancient Greek Hero, with Professor Gregory Nagy of Harvard University, via EdX.

So in essence, every Monday morning I commute some 1600 miles down the Atlantic coast, without spending a dime on transportation. Each Monday, I have about 4-5 hours of new lectures that get uploaded, which I try to watch immediately (as I successfully accomplished today). In addition to this new audio/video content, the week’s assignments are introduced. I read through these and make a list of resources I will need. More often than not, these MOOCs (and most MOOCs, for that matter) rely on open access resources, so it’s only a matter of downloading and aggregating the necessary texts for the week. Sometimes, as in Modernism and Postmodernism, entire novels are assigned, which I would prefer to have a physical copy of, so I either stretch my legs in the library, or use www.bookfinder.com to find the best deal on purchasing the text.

Periodically throughout the morning I pause the lectures to drift out into the Twitterverse, just a little, making sure I don’t miss any breaking news in the field of Digital Humanities, Education Technology, and Rhetoric and Composition.

Thus, 1:00 p.m. and break for lunch, then back to the library, where I have usually lost my spot to a more deserving (or at least, paying) undergraduate. No worries, however, as cyborg-self sets up shop anywhere. Now from a lounge chair on the library commons, I check my email correspondences, which is to say: assorted housekeeping tasks such as filing bookfinder receipts into the appropriate folder, checking on new Twitter followers, and an occasional communication from various Digital Humanities communities and publications/journals/blogs.

After said digital correspondences, it is time for production: written assignments and peer-assessment (in turn) for my MOOCs, blog posts when requested, book reviews–the daily grind of all graduate students and independent scholars alike.

And so it goes, as Vonnegut would have it, until 4:00 p.m. tolls, the fiancee finishes her responsibilities, and we head home.