10 Reflections
Rachael Samberg and Timothy Vollmer
In this chapter, we cover the pedagogical takeaways from the four-day Institute (held June 2020), and reflect on the lasting impact it made eight months later, as evidenced by our observations from the plenary post-Institute check-in.
Design thinking is effective for teaching LLTDM
Participants felt empowered after the Institute to understand the basic contours of the legal literacies for text data mining and applying them to their own work, whether that be developing their own TDM projects, advising DH researchers, or working with TDM issues in libraries and archives. The participants’ own words say it best:
- “I can say with confidence that I understand the four literacies better”
- “I really feel that I am coming out with much more both theoretical and practical knowledge than I expected.”
- “I will be much more intentional at the outset of any TDM project about working through all of the pertinent literacies in a systematic way…the way the Institute was structured into different literacies provides a repeatable framework to treat potential problems prospectively.”
- “I am taking home a lot of new insights from this Institute in combination with a feeling of empowerment that will allow me to reach out to the specialists and directors at my institutions in order to push for more TDM collaboration and a bolder approach concerning materials and datasets for international cooperation. I know now what the important legal issues are and how to use them to form my arguments and that is more than I could have wished for. Also, the Institute broadened my perspective with regards to issues that I did not have on the radar that much at the beginning and I am looking forward to engaging with these topics in the future, to integrate them into my teaching, and to advocate for them where I can.”
The pivot from our initial plan to host an in-person Institute to a virtual one was met with applause. In particular, the participants valued the interactive format fostered by the design thinking model, with different touch points and small group discussions. Again, in their own words:
- “The deliberately thought through breakdown and mix fostered incredibly valuable discussions and I would hope this kind of framework is used as a best practice for future DH institutes of all kinds going forward. Also, thank you for such an amazing virtual experience which I can only imagine took a tremendous amount of work to coordinate and plan with limited time to shift to an entirely different format–I was overjoyed to critically engage with complex subjects and for the chance to get out of my everyday pandemic routines.”
- “I found this to be the best example of how to manage hands-on learning in a virtual environment. I think the planning team did a FANTASTIC JOB pivoting to a fully online environment without losing the feel of an in-person intensive.”
- “The multi-modal communication (Slack, Mural, Zoom) enabled far more inte