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Making Digital Scholarship accessible for all – New Learning Center added to the Gale Digital Scholar Lab

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| By Lindsey Gervais, Digital Pedagogy Specialist and Margaret Waligora, Product Manager |

In this blog post we’re delighted to share some exciting new developments made to the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, including the much-anticipated release of the Learning Center! This release represents our efforts to put learning and teaching digital methods at the forefront of the platform – providing students, instructors and researchers with the instructional scaffolds needed to navigate and learn through Gale Digital Scholar Lab’s workflow. Users can now access the assistance or instructional supplements they need wherever they are in the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, allowing them to situate learning within the context of the overall research process. We’re delighted to release this suite of instructional materials, developed in collaboration with our in-house scholars and experts within the digital humanities field.

A Learner-centred Design

Gale’s focus on teaching and learning in the Gale Digital Scholar Lab is born from an often-heard need in the market for a comprehensive platform that incorporates robust primary source collections with high-quality text-mining tools, all within a context-rich, project-driven learner experience. The Gale Digital Scholar Lab is known for its simplification of complex tasks – we’ve extended that in our next release to include a toolbox of instructional support that meet the needs of both students and scholars pursuing digital scholarship. The new Learning Center, framed with curriculum and pedagogical practices in mind, is guided by the principles held by the wider research community.

The Learning Center can be used as a standalone destination to teach digital humanities concepts and illustrate a typical workflow.
The Learning Center can be used as a standalone destination to teach digital humanities concepts and illustrate a typical workflow.
The Learning Center focuses on the three main components of the Gale Digital Scholar Lab workflow: Build, Clean and Analyze.
The Learning Center focuses on the three main components of the Gale Digital Scholar Lab workflow: Build, Clean and Analyze.

All materials in the Learning Center are designed to be digestible for users. Our goal is to empower users with the tools and context they need to understand and make use of the depth and breadth of knowledge and skill sets required for digital scholarship. ​The Lab Learning Center includes walk-through videos from our Digital Humanities specialists, helping users navigate through the Lab and also understand why particular concepts or steps are essential to the research process, not just how the process works. Along with our newly created video tutorials, the Lab now includes: sample projects that can be used to spur research ideas or study a worked example collectively; a new glossary; FAQs; and much more. Faculty can use these instructional supports to drive users toward achieving their learning objectives in the Lab, which are aligned with our research workflow and curriculum.

Sample Projects in the Learning Center can be used in learning and downloaded into any users Content Sets for analysis and replication.
Sample Projects in the Learning Center can be used in learning and downloaded into any users Content Sets for analysis and replication.
Learning objects from the Learning Center can be found embedded throughout Gale Digital Scholar Lab to help users and provide links to more information as they use it.
Learning objects from the Learning Center can be found embedded throughout Gale Digital Scholar Lab to help users and provide links to more information as they use it.

Already teaching with the Lab or text- and data-mining tools in general? Tell us what’s working for you! You can tweet us at: @GaleEMEA, @Elle_Gervais and @mwaligo1.

Want to read more about the development of the Gale Digital Scholar Lab? Check out: Lifting the lid on how we created the Gale Digital Scholar Lab.

About the Author

Author photo - Lindsey

Lindsey Gervais is a Digital Pedagogy Specialist at Gale where she assists in the learning design and development of Gale’s Digital Scholarship Programme. With a doctorate background and research recognition in the field of Cognition, Instruction, and Learning Technology, Lindsey is helping to elevate the instructional framework of Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab. She is a graduate of UCONN and taught Educational Psychology and Research Practicum for undergraduate and graduate students for 6 years. She also prides herself on her creativity, being a coffee “snob”, and endless devotion to the performing arts. Lindsey’s Twitter handle is @Elle_Gervais.

About the Author

Author Photo - Maggie

Maggie Waligora (MLIS) is the product owner for the Gale Digital Scholar Lab. She holds a Masters in Library Information Science from Wayne State University. When she’s not in the office leading a development project, she can be found taking long walks with her partner Lee and their two dogs (Walter and Charlie), volunteering for causes she is passionate about, listening to audio books in the comfort of her home, or catching up with friends. Maggie’s Twitter handle is @mwaligo1.