Please join us on Monday, April 24th, 2023 from 4:00 – 5:30 pm Eastern/1:00 – 2:30 pm Pacific for the DEFCon Speaker Series: “Community Engagement, Information Curation and Storytelling through Digital Portfolios,” with Eduard Arriaga, Associate Professor and Chair of the Language, Literature, and Culture Department at Clark University. Eduard is a scholar of critical race studies, Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American studies who is passionate about using digital humanities to develop critical interdisciplinary research. We’re so excited that Eduard is joining us for April’s DEFCon Speaker Series!
Workshop: Community Engagement, Information Curation and Storytelling through Digital Portfolios
This workshop will discuss the use of digital portfolios both in traditional and community-engaged courses. Portfolios are usually seen as collections of previous work that students tend to dump in a given structure, making it less useful and significant for their own learning. However, this session will discuss how digital portfolios can be used to foster critical, reflective and productive skills through which students become agents of their own learning process. From a practical standpoint, the workshop will explore the use of Wakelet (a free online tool to create digital portfolios), and participants will be able to experiment with the tool and reflect around the possibilities and challenges for their own teaching practice. By discussing examples of digital portfolios developed by both students and learning communities (researchers), the workshop will aim to reflect around the role played by these pieces in engaging communities, curating information and telling stories. The session will be a mix of lecture, discussion and hands-on activities that will help us reflect on the usefulness of these tools in the DH classroom.
Bio: Eduard Arriaga is Chair and Associate Professor of Language, Literature, and Culture at Clark University. He develops interdisciplinary research at the intersection of fields such as critical race studies, Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American studies, digital studies, and digital humanities. He is currently writing a book examining the way Afro-Brazilian marginal communities, through hybrid and communal digital practices, challenge “algorithmic determinism” in search of data and social justice. He has received a number of awards and honors, including the Institutional Leadership Award from the University of Indianapolis. Arriaga earned a master’s in Hispanic American Literature from the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Colombia and a doctorate in Hispanic studies and migration studies from the University of Western Ontario.
