Abstract:

The paper discusses approaches, methodologies, results, and insights gained from an ongoing digital humanities project. This project is focused on the digitization, cataloguing and providing of open access to the Ivo Maroević Slide Collection through the cooperation of university teachers and undergraduate and graduate students across several courses at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS).
Professor Ivo Maroević (1937 – 2007) established the Museology Section within the Department of Information and Communication Sciences at FFHS, University of Zagreb. Since the commencement of his teaching career, in 1983, he has created a rich collection of more than 9000 photographs. Following the professor's teaching courses, the collection is divided into three sub-collections – Museology, Protection of Monuments and Urbanistic Topics.
In the project's initial stages (2012-2017), students have been involved in the digitization and cataloguing of the collection. From 2019 to the present, students also participate in more advanced digital humanities tasks - from structuring controlled vocabulary, mapping terms to relevant thesauri (e.g., Art and Architecture Thesaurus), enriching metadata and providing metadata for contextualization. The methods of student engagement and quality control are applied from Project-based Learning and crowdsourcing projects methodologies, but they were revised and improved concerning the specific needs and requirements of the educational context. During the entire project, we developed a unique 'edusourcing' model. This model encourages a collaborative approach between students and teachers, using digital methods to document and facilitate access to the university's photography collection.
In this paper, we aim to discuss how to manage a hands-on digital humanities project while achieving learning outcomes. We want to share our experiences, on how combining Project-based learning, Collaborative and Problem-based Learning, and the principles of the crowdsourcing approaches, enables students to acquire and apply knowledge and increase their engagement and motivation as well as critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills.

Keywords:

Digital humanities, photographs, digitization, project based learning, student engagement.