Unleashing the Power of Digital Research:

Digital Research as Experiential Learning

Blink and you’ve missed it – the newest fad, the latest technology, or the trendiest pedological approach to learning. What hasn’t changed is our understanding that experiential learning, the process of learning by doing, is one of the best ways for students to be engaged and motivated to attain and retain knowledge and skills.

Experiential learning at American University aims to immerse students “in real-world experiences that enhance [their] knowledge and build skills for future success.” As educators, we are responsible for making sure our students can engage with the future of knowledge, not just the tried and true. We already embrace innovative methods and tools for our own scholarship, now we want to pass those along to the scholars of the future.

The question then becomes what does this look like on a 21^st Century academic campus like ours? One growing approach in scholarship is digital research, which is the application of technology to the traditional process of scholarly exploration, discovery, and sharing, and encompasses any scholarly activity that uses technology to expand its possibilities and reach.

Digital research includes everything from using computational methods to analyze large datasets quickly and accurately, to using text mining software to make certain types of research questions possible, to creating engaging scholarly products with digital platforms such as digitally curated exhibits or interactive databases.

Digital research projects can be a powerful upgrade to our educator toolkit that involves our students in new forms of research and brings them with us into a dynamic scholarship community. The applications of this approach to scholarship are particularly impactful when we look at them as unique experiential learning opportunities. Experiential learning through digital research projects equips our students with up-to-date digital skills and literacies that prepare them to be graduates who work, communicate, and share knowledge digitally.

Benefits of In-Class Digital Research

The process of engaging students with this variety of experiential learning starts in the classroom. Adding assessments that use digital research methods and tools to your existing courses opens new avenues for research, collaboration, and communication for your students.

For example, let’s say you want students to conduct a group research project on a topic related to course themes and share their research findings with the class. Instead of asking for a standard 15-minute PowerPoint presentation, you could ask students to develop a digital exhibition on the topic, integrating their research with visual aids and interactive elements of their choice on a digital web-building platform. This type of project would expand the reach and impact of their research by helping it reach a wider audience and it engages students with modern forms of collaboration and communication by having them build a public-facing, interactive or illustrative exhibition.

In alignment with American University’s Strategic Plan and Universal Design for Learning guidelines, incorporating digital research methods and tools expands student experiential learning opportunities and provides more diverse means of expression, both of which have equity and inclusion implications (American University, 2019; CAST, 2018).

Digital research projects foster engagement by giving your students chances to create and distribute new knowledge in modalities that best leverage their strengths and interests. Students will have the chance to align course materials and goals with meaningful personal interests and academic strengths. As educators, we are always looking for ways for our classes to blend rigorous academic learning and creativity with student engagement and success. As such, digital research is an important part of a student-centered instructor’s tool kit to enhance experiential learning.

These digital methods and tools are also independently valuable for our students to engage with. Our students often have limited exposure to what modern scholarship can look like and don’t always know how to leverage digital spaces to create success in the classroom. Involving your students in new forms of technology and inquiry equips them with essential literacies for our current world, such as computer literacy, digital literacy, and information literacy.

Students can become confident using computer systems and develop their abilities to access, evaluate, and produce reliable digitally acquired information. In an era of misinformation and disinformation, we have a responsibility to equip our students to productively navigate and participate directly with the information landscape they are facing.

How To Incorporate Digital Research Projects into Your Classroom

Digital research projects engage our students and support their unique learning journeys, but how do we incorporate them into our teaching and learning plans? Planning for a digital research project follows the same path as designing a more traditional research project, with a few new considerations for accommodating extra work with digital methods or technologies.

As of Fall 2024, the University Library launched the Digital Research and Inquiry Lab (DRI Lab) that serves as a one-stop shop for faculty wanting to learn about and incorporate digital research projects into the classroom. The DRI Lab can walk you through the thought process outlined below and provide expert advice and training on various tools from planning through implementation.

First, we need to ensure that project goals are aligned with our course outcomes. Start by thinking about your learning outcomes and ask yourself the following questions:

• What types of assessments would best demonstrate mastery?
• What tasks would students need to complete?
• What skills would students need?
• What research questions will students be answering?

Designing Effective Digital Research Project Goals

When introducing a digital research project, it helps to remember that the assessment design itself will steer the technologies required to complete it. The technologies are there to enhance the research itself, and students should still be engaging in traditional research tasks.

Once you iron out the research questions and tasks, then it’s time to think about options for final products and the tools that can create them. What final products would align with learning outcomes and students’ research goals? What methods or tools will students use to create that product? You can leave it up to the students to decide and accept any type of final product, or you can refine the options based on your goals for the assignment. To enhance accessibility, consider resources offered through the university, as well as tools that are free to use.

Supporting Digital Research Projects

After the design of your assessment is set, the next aspect to consider is how to prepare and support your students through this project. Remember that for many of our students, these digital skills are new to them. You’ll want to incorporate smaller scaffolded, project-based assignments throughout the semester that provide opportunities for students to practice the skills they will need for the larger research project.

Another important consideration is to build in enough time for students to be successful. Completing a digital project can take them more time than writing a paper, depending on the method, analysis, or technology that they end up using. Before you introduce the project, think through what support you will need to offer students through the creation phase. Make sure your students understand who they can contact for assistance with their project, be it you or other campus partners, and how to reserve materials.

Setting Clear Assessment Goals

Lastly, you want to develop a rubric that clearly prioritizes process and effort alongside final product quality. Evaluate digital projects according to the goals of the assessment, the quality of the students’ research processes, and the choices they made in creating and presenting their findings. Your students should not be expected to produce a professional-quality documentary or website as part of their research project if that is not one of the key learning outcomes for the course.

By focusing on their research contributions, you will help your students feel empowered to take risks and be more creative in their knowledge and skill development. Creative risk-taking is part of a strong experiential learning experience and digital research projects are a positive way to incorporate this into your courses.

Putting it all Together: An Example from CORE

Senior Professorial Lecturer Amanda Choutka in CAS has introduced a digital project in her CORE course, Doing Better at Doing Good. The students in this class complete a final reflection on their experiential learning experiences using a modality of their choice.

Professor Choutka designed the assignment so that the goals of the project are tied directly to the course learning outcomes. Students deeply understand the project’s purpose and goals before any talk of modality or technology enters the picture. Her students are then tasked with creating their own final product using whichever techniques fit both the project requirements and the students’ goals for the assignment.

To support her students, Professor Choutka provides plenty of resources and instructions, as well as examples of projects for inspiration. Leading up to the final assignment, students complete readings on multimodal composition and write smaller reflections that help them practice the skill of their final, larger reflection. Students also complete an “in-progress” conference with Professor Choutka to make sure they’re on track. Lastly, grading is completed using a labor-based rubric that considers the effort and care a student has put into the project. This rubric focuses on their ability to successfully communicate, reflect, and integrate their learning experiences rather than on requiring a professional-level final product

Professor Choutka relies on the library to support both her and her students throughout the semester. After reviewing the assignment with the class, Professor Choutka invites DRI Lab staff to come speak with students two months before the project’s due date. This gives students time to experiment with new modalities and technologies and time to seek out help if they run into any roadblocks. This also means that students have already met DRI Lab staff and are more comfortable signing up for consultations with them.

By designing her project this way, Professor Choutka sets her students up for success as they navigate the exciting but potentially unfamiliar world of digital research.

Getting Started with The DRI Lab

Working with the Library’s new Digital Research and Inquiry Lab (DRI Lab), we are admittedly biased in favor of these projects. This passion comes from our years of work as instructional designers in academia, where we’ve seen the difference in students and their learning when we apply a greater variety of experiential learning methods and tools to knowledge creation and sharing.

The DRI Lab is here to provide expertise and guidance on assignment design, technology selection, and project planning to support student success. We offer tools, training, and one-on-one consultations to both instructors and students who want help navigating digital methods and resources effectively. We hope to see you in our lab this fall, so we can further cultivate what experiential learning looks like on our innovative campus.

For more information, see https://www.american.edu/library/services/digitalresearch/ or email us at digitalresearch@american.edu