Building Scholars and Communities of Practice in Digital Heritage and Archaeology

Summary

As digital methods have become more ubiquitous in archaeology, the challenge of teaching those methods has become important. Beyond the question of how and what we teach, however, there is an equally important challenge - how do we build communities of practice populated by scholars who are connected through a shared perspective on both the methods and the thoughtful application of those methods.

In is within this context that this paper will explore an approach developed at Michigan State University that speaks to both teaching (and learning) digital methods and the development of communities of practice in which those methods are relevant. The approach itself is informed by the activities in three separate venues: The Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship Program, the MSU Department of Anthropology Digital Heritage Fieldschool, and the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Institute for Digital Archaeology Method & Practice.

Ultimately, the goal of this talk is not just to discuss the Michigan State University approach, but to suggest a series of best practices for building capacity and community among students and scholars in digital heritage and archaeology that could be adapted and adopted in a wide variety of institutional, professional, or scholarly settings.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Methods and Models for Teaching Digital Archaeology and Heritage

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17325