Doing Digital History @ Ball State University
Collected here are examples of Department of History student and faculty digital research that contributes to a campus-wide initiative in digital scholarship and immersive learning that had been awarded nearly $1 million in external grant funding and over $300,000 in internal awards. This initiative is aimed in large measure at cultivating a collaborative culture of innovation, experimentation, and inquiry at Ball State University. Our long-term goal is to make the technology and skills inherent in digital scholarship more transparent, more accessible, and more widely adopted by incorporating it fully into the range of our professional practice. To this end, our faculty participate in campus-wide events hosted by the Digital Scholarship Lab and the Department of History offers digital history courses in our undergraduate and graduate programs and has a Digital History Option in our M.A. program.
The Digital History Option allows students to take courses and pursue a major project that uses digital source materials and methodologies. While any graduate student may take the seminar in digital history methods, the Digital History Option provides a directed course of study that prepares students for a number of possible careers that utilize emerging electronic technologies. Historical archives, libraries, government research facilities, broadcast media, and many other fields use these techniques in addition to traditional forms of research. This graduate track provides the same solid base of study in historiography and research methodologies as the Thesis and General Options, while preparing students for careers in fields that are only now emerging. Whether they plan to go on to a doctoral program in history or enter into an alt-ac career after graduation, students who complete the Digital History Option will be prepared to use their Ball State University training to engage with today's constantly changing digital world.