Papers occupy a privileged space in the academy as a key learning assessment: we use papers to determine the extent of student knowledge and make judgments about student thinking as well as their ability to follow directions or properly document their research. However, the assumption that a paper can fully assess students’ learning ignores many things about student experiences and ways of knowing.

In this webinar, Rachel V Willis and Julie Sorg Way discuss how digital tools can intervene and allow students alternative opportunities to express their knowledge in academically rigorous ways. These alternative assessments allow us to disrupt our traditional/Westernized ways of knowing and work towards decolonizing the humanities. This presentation will discuss inclusive approaches for using digital tools as alternative assessments as well as offer practical assignment ideas for embedding them into your courses.

Rachel V Willis is a PhD student at Old Dominion University studying rhetoric and the intersection of culture and technologies. She also is an instructor for the Westover Honors College at the University of Lynchburg. Willis’s research interests vary widely, ranging from pedagogy, masculinities and violence, cultural constructions of rhetoric, and the Digital Humanities. She likes beach volleyball and is currently spending too much time dissecting Game of Thrones’ last season.

Julie Sorge Way is a PhD student in Literary and Cultural Studies and Technology and Media Studies at Old Dominion University, and a college instructor of literature and writing at James Madison University. Her current research focuses on the role of women in 19th and early 20th-century Britain, especially as narrated in woman-to-woman periodicals and domestic advice literature of the time. She’s also interested in digital humanities, especially feminist DH, building and designing interactive digital editions, and ways to improve the online reader experience across different platforms. She loves to spend time in archives, both dusty and digital.

This will be the fourth of a series of HASTAC Webinars that will run through the end of the summer. In this series, HASTAC Scholars will facilitate 45-minute webinars on topics ranging from Interview Prep or Blog Posting to Networking, Personal Statements, and Pedagogy Strategies for Adjuncts.

Call-in details and link for the webinar are below.