Last month at the TILTS symposium at the University of Texas, the twitter stream generated some discussion around the need for tool reviews, e.g., in the Digital Research Tools (DiRT) wiki. One suggestion was to incorporate developing reviews into coursework. I’d be interested in organizing a session that figured out how to do that. Questions to consider include:
- What level of student? Graduate? Undergraduate?
- Are there criteria or templates for a good review? For example, what projects use this tool? Can we cross-reference it with other resources, e.g., DHAnswers.
- What methods or process could we establish to help reviewers?
- How could we turn a review into an individual or group assignment? How do we scaffold this task?
- Can we prioritize tools to cover?
This idea is connected with another project in which I’ve been involved, DHCommons which seeks to help isolated digital humanists. It also may connects with some other sessions that I’ve seen proposed, e.g.,
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#1 by Laurel Stvan on April 13, 2011 - 2:15 pm
Yes, these three session ideas seem to share a useful common thread. I, too, am interested in seeing how we can get to a method of gathering and generating “suggestions about materials on the ‘you may also like’ model”. In addition, how can we generate some meta-awareness and reviewer skill among users so that they can say why they may like it, what features of a tool they need, and how to look for it.
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