State of the Art: Negotiating a Standards-approved Digital Humanities Curriculum

The University of Canterbury has recently completed development of New Zealand (and Australasia’s) first digital humanities degree program that is also standards-approved on a national level. The process required the development of document sets that were submitted for review by the University of Canterbury Faculty, Academic Advisory Committee, Academic Board, the New Zealand Vice-Chancellor’s Committee on University Academic Programs (CUAP), the New Zealand Vice-Chancellor’s Committee, and the Tertiary Education Commission. Fourteen national and international reviewers, drawn from technology education, information science, computer science, high performance computing and the digital humanities also provided their opinions. The program represents a significant baseline for future digital humanities programs, and the lessons learned during its development are of importance to the broader digital humanities community. Although New Zealand universities operate with basically the same degree of independence in course and program development as universities elsewhere in the world, the requirement to submit all new programs to a national standards body is unusual, if not unique. It may be that the University of Canterbury digital humanities program is the most closely scrutinised example the digital humanities community have seen. This has resulted in a program that is embedded within both the culture of Canterbury, and the national educational policies of NZ. It therefore comes with a higher degree of legitimacy, but also a complex set of stake holders. Moreover, because of the close policy ties between New Zealand and Australia (in education as well as other areas) the program has implications for the Australasian region as a whole.