Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

This workshop offers the students the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills in the field of Digital Resources and Methodologies for Historical Research. The students will learn how to conduct bibliographical as well as textual searches on the Web and how to survey and select primary and secondary sources in the field of History of Political Ideas. They will also research and write, under the guidance of the lecturers, a detailed plan for their final Dissertation, using the tools and resources the Internet has to offer. They will learn to select, analyse and evaluate their findings according to clear and well defined scientific and epistemological principles.

The workshop will be held primarily in a multimedia classroom but will constantly be supported by online activities and exercises.

The students will be asked to complete a project report containing all their findings and the appropriate commentary on their work. The project can be design on a topic chosen by the student in agreement with the lecturers or can be based on the actual dissertation assigned to the student. All in term assessment is purely formative in nature.

Internet and the Web are precious tools for the student, the researcher and the scholar in the field of History. However, without proper knowledge and guidance, the novice researcher can easily fall into the traps set by an abundance of findings coupled with a scarcity of tools for analysis and selection of those findings.
Primary and secondary sources for historical research are available through the Internet today beyond the barriers of time and space: this provides all researchers with an extraordinary opportunity for discovery. Libraries, archives, commented sources, images, journals, even entire University courses can be reached easily and conveniently from any location. Still, many researchers, and undergraduate students in particular, need road maps and evaluation tools to navigate this abundance in a productive and scientifically sound manner.
This workshop provides insight, tools and knowledge to achieve this objective.
The students will begin this journey by working on an accurate bibliography of their chosen topic using the Internet as a source of references but also of full text articles, books, appropriate educational and research material; they will then elaborate their work by investigating their topic further, analysing the opportunities for analysis of the sources and for commentaries and conversations with the experts. They will learn how to select and evaluate websites and other web content for historical research. They will learn about and experiment with web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, podcasts, wikis. They will finally bring all their findings together in a detailed analysis of the outcome and the process, also creating their own tools to continue the research in the real life situation of thesis writing. The students will be offered an opportunity, and guided through the steps, of creating a bibliographical database and their own research website to organise and present their findings.

The workshop is divided into two sections (modules), each worth 3 CFU.

Module 1
Topics:
- Research methodology for the dissertation and online search strategies
- Finding primary and secondary sources online
- Bibliographical software;
- Networking tools to identify and get in touch with experts and online communities of practice;
- Online databases;
- Full text and journal archives and databases, online libraries and archives.

Module 2
Topics:
- Analyse and evaluation of online materials, with special reference to historical sources (academic and non-academic, teaching and multimedia materials);
- How to use and navigate through this kind of material;
- Online collaborative publishing (e.g. Wikis) and Open Access;
- Digital History: Italian examples;
- Social Networks in historical research and teaching.

➢ After the two modules, the students will be able to design and execute complex online searches supported by rigorous scientific principles and to safely manage the over-abundance of online sources in order to strengthen and develop their research work towards their final dissertation
➢ A number of exercises, all formatively assessed, with enable the students to become familiar with the topics at hand
➢ The summative assessment will consist of an individual project based on the general structure of a final dissertation on a topic chosen by the student (possibly also the actual topic of the dissertation, if already available)
No particular ITC skills are required. The students are only asked to have and be able to use an email account and to show basic web navigation skills and to be able to access the Internet and their email at least 2 to 3 times a week, privately or on university computers.

The lecturer will be supported in the provision of this course by Dr. Claudia Favero (claudia.favero@unito.it) and Dr. Giuseppe Sciara (giuseppe.sciara@unito.it).
The evaluation will be expressed with "approved" or "not approved" and no numerical marks will be given.

Attendance is compulsory.