Negotiating Network Analysis: Balancing Historical Thinking and Data Science Learning in Digital Humanities with Net.Create

Abstract

The ability to understand and analyze massive amounts of information cuts across disciplinary lines but is particularly salient in the disciplines of both history and data science. This talk will leverage activity theory to explore an activity system that supports students and researchers working with complex information by integrating a collaborative open-source network-analysis software tool called Net.Create. I’ll explore the ways in which Net.Create transforms the limitation of large class sizes in history classrooms into a resource for students’ collaborative knowledge building, how Net.Create provides a platform for students to draw on details in a historical text to collaboratively construct a larger network, and how collaborative data entry supports the historiographic practices of citation and revision for both students of history and professional historical researchers alike.