Abstract:

Advanced technological solutions and the swift development of online and blended learning have created favourable conditions for the advancement of digital humanities. Lying at the intersection of traditional humanities, i.e. linguistics, literature and culture studies, history, philosophy and digital technologies, digital humanities have provided conceptual theoretical backgrounds, methodological frameworks and tools for creating digital databases and archives, mapping and timelines, data mining, multimedia storytelling, text analysis and visualization.

Digital humanities have enabled scholars to collaborate across disciplines, create interactive visualizations and mappings, analyze large digital data sets, which creates the need to explore the potential of open-source digital tools for the enhancement of undergraduate education and research in linguistics. The aforementioned has determined the aim of the present research, which is to focus on the selection, classification and possible integration of digital tools into the selected courses in linguistics to scaffold the learning and research processes of undergraduate students.
The present study is an exploratory case study. It investigates the functionality of 20 digital tools, which enhance text perception and processing skills, enable the students to conduct text lexical and syntactic digital analysis, demonstrate text analytics, reflect a chronological and interactive narration, do timeline mapping or visualise textual data otherwise.

The research unfolds by selecting open-source tools, considering students' entry-level technical expertise, and proceeds with investigating the functionality of those tools, addressing their relevance for deductive and inductive instruction.
The yielded research results show that since the study is within one discipline (linguistics) and within one type of institution (university), the selected tools should adopt methodological classification, with common categories being text analysis, data visualization, geospatial analysis, network analysis, and multimedia storytelling. The functionality of the tools allows the delivery of the subject matter interactively and investigates text linguistic and rhetorical organization in depth, enabling the students to withdraw text analytics, visualise research results or be engaged in interactive storytelling. Moreover, the presence of a virtual learning environment, for instance, Moodle or Blackboard, provides seamless integration of digital tools into the study process.

Keywords:

Digital humanities, methodological classification, textual data visualisation, mapping, storytelling.