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MO5161   Skills in Digital History: Maps and Text

Academic year(s): 2023-2024

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 40

ECTS credits : 20

Level : SCQF level 11

Semester: 1

Planned timetable: To be arranged.

This digital humanities module provides students with an introduction to digital mapping in the form of historical GIS (HGIS) and computational approaches to the analysis of text. No specific technical knowledge is required before taking the course. Students will gain proficiency in the use of the software package QGIS to digitise historical maps, visualise and analyse geographical information, and produce rich maps for the illustration and heuristic exploration of historical information. In order to analyse large bodies of digitised text, students will learn regular expressions and named-entity extraction, carry our frequency and sentiment analysis, and the module will offer a survey of more advanced approaches such as topic modeling and the classification of texts. Finally, students will engage with scholarship in the critical digital humanities in order to critically evaluate the challenges and shortcomings of some of these methodologies.

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: 7 x 2-hour seminars and 4 x 2-hour practical classes over the semester.

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: 100% Coursework broken into 1 Digital Project or Critical Essay 50% and 2 Problem Set Submissions 50%

As defined by QAA
Coursework: 100%

Re-assessment: 100% Coursework

Personnel

Module coordinator: Dr K M Lawson