Toward Digital Scholarship Attainable for All
| By Lindsey Gervais, Digital Pedagogy Specialist and Margaret Waligora, Product Manager |
There are some exciting new developments for the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, including the greatly anticipated release of our Learning Center. This release represents our efforts to put learning at the forefront of our platform—providing students, instructors, and researchers with the instructional scaffolds they need to navigate and learn through the Digital Scholar Lab’s new workflow. Our instructor, librarian, and student users will soon be able to receive the assistance or instructional supplements they need wherever they are in the Lab, which will situate learning within the context of the research process. We’re excited to release our instructional materials, crafted in collaboration with our in-house scholars and experts within the digital humanities field.
Learner-Centered Curriculum Toward Scholarship
Our focus on teaching and learning is born from a significant need in the market for a comprehensive platform that incorporates robust primary source collections with top-shelf text- mining solution tools and a context-rich, project-driven learner experience. Our upcoming new workflow, Learning Center, and instructional support releases are framed with curriculum and best pedagogical practices in mind, all the while being guided by the principles held strongly by the greater research community. The Digital Scholar Lab is known for its simplification of complex tasks—we extend that in our next release with a toolbox of instructional supports that meet the needs of both students and scholars pursuing digital scholarship.
All of our Learning Center materials are designed to be digestible for users. Our goal is to empower users with the tools and support they need to understand and make use of the depth and breadth of knowledge and skill sets required for digital scholarship. Our Learning Center supports include videos with live walk-throughs from our digital humanities specialists, helping users navigate through the Lab and also understand why particular concepts or steps are essential to the research process. Along with our newly created video tutorials, we’ll be providing some sample projects to help spur research ideas, a new glossary, FAQs, and much more. These instructional supports drive users toward achieving their Digital Scholar Lab objectives, which are aligned with our research workflow and curriculum.
Already teaching with the Lab or text- and data-mining tools in general? Tell us what’s working for you!
Meet the Authors
Lindsey Gervais is a Digital Pedagogy Specialist at Gale where she assists in the learning design and development of Gale’s Digital Scholarship Program. With a doctorate background and research recognition in the field of Cognition, Instruction, and Learning Technology, Lindsey is helping to elevate the instructional framework of Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab. She is a graduate of UCONN and taught Educational Psychology and Research Practicum for undergraduate and graduate students for 6 years. She also prides herself on her creativity, being a coffee “snob”, and endless devotion to the performing arts.
Maggie Waligora (MLIS) is the product owner for the Gale Digital Scholar Lab. She holds a Masters in Library Information Science from Wayne State University. When she’s not in the office leading a development project, she can be found taking long walks with her partner Lee and their two dogs (Walter and Charlie), volunteering for causes she is passionate about, listening to audio books in the comfort of her home, or catching up with friends.