Digital Humanities Account

        After being asked to reflect on the English 250 class taught by Professor Burket at the University of Oregon, A few things come to mind. I think about the book Frankenstein, generative AI, filing systems, and the blog that I curated for the entirety of the course. I also think about my “college experience” relative to this English class and my initial thoughts during week one. Number one, this was my first college level English class- the first college lecture that I ever walked into. Number two, a large component of the class is creating a functional website, which I had very limited experience in and, after reading the syllabus I was feeling daunted. And number three, This is the class that my Literature-Loving grandma will ask me about at every family gathering, as she has for the last 12 years of my English education. 

        Upon successful completion of the Digital Humanities course, I  feel satisfied with the content I’ve learned and I plan to apply my knowledge to my upcoming career applications. This course has made me reflect on what may be the most profound technological advancement in Human history: AI. The complexity of our current breakthrough in the AI field is a vast and mostly unexplored topic, raising questions of ethics and intelligent life.  Professor Burkert offered insightful observations and drew connections between human sentience and AI “life”. We were taught the parallels between Victor Frankenstein, a mad scientist, and AI engineers. The scientist creating a creature with consciousness, and AI researchers essentially recreating human intelligence to serve mankind. Burkert also provided helpful instruction into the analytics of building a polished website. After finishing the course I will be more than happy to discuss my most recent English class with my Grandma over the holidays. I will tell her that Mary Shelley captured the fundamental question of AI Ethics, in the year 1818 in her novel Frankenstein. After that, I’ll have to rush home to work on my school of nursing application, and publish my own website documenting my progress and impressive portfolio. 

Digital Competency

        Over the last 10 weeks, we have been reinforcing ideas of digital competency by creating and posting on a personal blog. The class was introduced to Bryn Mawr’s Digital Competencies concept early in the course. Bryn Mawr’s digital competencies framework is a collection of digital skills, organized into 5 main areas of focus. Each category describes digital technologies college students can access and finish with a professional website. Among those categories the two that were especially emphasized through lab notebook requirements were Digital Communication and Data Analysis and Presentation.  

 

        Although I was a proud blog-owner in 6th grade (my own opinion pieces posted on a website called, Laurel’s Daily Chronicle), I was unfamiliar with the mechanics. The first few requirements were organizational, such as ending the URL with the correct “slug” and creating relevant headers to break up sections of text. The following requirements aimed to make the blog more accessible, such as embedding alt text for an image for accessibility purposes. By the end of the course I had an organized and visually appealing blog that stored my work. Each image posted on this website is correctly sourced and embedded with text, some of the illustrations I have created digitally and imported. I did not know what to expect when signing up for a digital humanities English course, but upon completion I am satisfied with my choice. When applying to medical schools in the following years, I will be happy to upload my educational accomplishments to an online portfolio. The portfolio will be neatly organized, containing a polished home page with links to titled resumes and letters. 

Collective Work Effort 

        Overall, the collective workload of this class aligns with the University of Oregon’s credit hour and student workload policies. We were given appropriate time to read the content of Frankenstein and other in-class readings. However, I found that if I were behind one chapter, the following reading assignment seemed to come quickly. My advice to incoming English 250 students is to take time to read the novel according to the due date, so as to avoid easily falling behind. The Lab notebooks were relevant to the course, however there were times that the prompt could not draw enough inspiration from me. For example, the first lab notebook was about computer filing systems, which at that point we had only read one article about file organization. However, After meeting with our discussion leader and my peer group I was able to expand on the topic. In general, I did not feel as if the class homework was overwhelming or interfering with my university experience. 

        It’s easy to succeed in Burkert’s class, especially with reinforcements from the Course’s General Educators. The required lab portion of the course was a helpful way to enforce ideas we had read about by collaborating with other students taking the class and instruction from highly educated GE’s. Through these weekly discussions I was able to meet some peers that I could draw inspiration and ideas from, as well as friendly acquaintances with a common goal in mind.