Teaching

Teaching #

Examples #

Materialities of the Digital (University of Cambridge) #

This optional module is offered as part of the MPhil in Digital Humanities and taught by Anne Alexander. The course explores the materiality of digital culture through an investigation of the ‘things’ that undergird our networked world. It also introduces ways of thinking about how these things are made and connected with each other through networks, systems, infrastructures, and architectures with weekly sessions on topics such as cables and networks, data centres, sensors, drones and autonomous vehicles, borders and categories and crowds.

The overarching framework for the course engages with Andreas’ Malm’s theorisation of Fossil Capital, paying particular attention to the idea of “seeing power as power”, in other words recognising that the choices made by the designers of machines and systems which convert energy sources into ‘work’ are shaped by capitalist social relations as much as technical constraints and possibilities.

We explore these themes both in the classroom and through other forms of learning, for example through a walking-tour and field trip to the West Cambridge Data Centre, to examine the adiabatic cooling system and experience the heat and noise of the data halls firsthand. Students have also taken up the challenge of relying on a solar battery to charge their mobile phone for a week. This exercise is designed to prompt greater awareness of which types of phone activities consume the most energy and reflection on the relationships between user behaviour, design choices and social processes (such as the desire to be part of an ‘always on’ society).

The Battery Game - teachers’ instructions and sample reflections from students in the 2023/4 cohort

Data Environmentalism (University of Southampton) #

This second year elective module (that is, it can be taken by any Humanities student) run by James Baker draws on scholarship from digital media studies, environmental history, computer science, science and technology studies, climate science, creative practice, and archival science, to examine the past, present, and future intersections of data and the natural environment. It starts with some simple statements - that data is material, is produced by people, is made possible by resource extraction, needs power to survive, and inhabits and resculpts the landscape - before expanding out into a range of topics (TESCREALism and the ‘Californian Ideology’, the sacking of Timnit Gebru, pollution as a form of colonialism, energy (dis)proportionality) that encourage humanities students use their skills and perspectives to illuminate and challenge the ecological impacts of computational technologies.

The module ran for the first time in 2022/23. The latest reading list is available here. A few reflections from James:

Three things stand out from my experience of teaching Data Environmentalism. First, students - in the main - really cared, really wanted to know more, and enjoyed the challenge of working in a multi-disciplinary space. Second, they loved the week hooked around Crawford and Joler’s “Anatomy of an Amazon Echo”: I printed a huge copy for us to pour over in class, and that proved really generative. Third, it was extra work, but making the assessment activist focused - a ‘public outcome’ and a reflexive essay on producing the public outcome - was a big win, as it enabled the students to express their interests/fear/anger in forms that they felt had the potential to change things - such as a film on greenwashing in the tech sector or a magazine on NTFs.

The Digital Sustainability Game #

This is a card-based game, loosely based on the contents of the DHCC Toolkit. The cards can be viewed here, and the rules here. Players take the roles of organisations competing (and perhaps collaborating) to become more digitally sustainable. Two hours, and 3-10 participants, is about right, although it is flexible: we’ve played it with groups of 15-20 too. If you’d like your own copy of the card deck, get in touch.

Please also feel free to contribute to the Digital Sustainability Game Handbook, a work-in-progress.

These cards can also be used in other learning activities. For example:

  1. Warm-up activity. Deal a selection of random ACTION cards to a small group. Have them arrange these on a matrix, where one axis represents the difficulty of implementing the action, and the other axis the impact the action could have. The participants may want to use their own organisations for reference. Once the cards are arranged, choose one or two that look interesting, and have a discussion about them. Optionally, assign roles (organisation, government, stakeholders) and invite them to roleplay, explaining how the action was implemented and what the challenges were.

  2. Near the end of a workshop. In groups, pairs, or solo, invite participants to browse through the ACTION cards for inspiration of things they could actually do in their organisations. Choose a card, and then write SMART goals inspired by the card. The advice on the card will probably have to be adapted to the real world, and to individual circumstances.

Resources #

This section could use your input. Are you embedding climate and sustainability themes in your teaching? Please get involved! Meanwhile, here are a handful of links.

E-Learning

Calendar October 14, 2024
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