This symposium highlights the work of graduate students in the Sherman Centre’s Graduate Residency in Digital Scholarship. Through hands-on training, research mentorship, and interdisciplinary collaboration, residents have developed a range of innovative digital projects. Join us to explore how emerging scholars are engaging with digital tools and methods to advance their research across diverse fields.

Allan Roberts - Visual Communication of Ecological Models and Concepts 

For this project, I have been developing instructional examples focused on using the programming language R for the production of illustrations and conceptual diagrams of the type that are often used for communicating ecological science. Such visualizations can include things as diverse as life-cycle diagrams, illustrations of experimental layouts, scientific cartoons, and flowcharts. This project has explored the potential of R as a free, flexible, and powerful alternative to commercial illustration software. I have begun a series of small-scale R workshops that have been advertised to graduate students in biology at McMaster. I have yet to incorporate material from my residency project into these workshops; however, it should be feasible to do so in a future workshop.  

Anastasia Soukhov - Flipped Applied Spatial Statistics classroom: the learning experience of students in their own words 

This project analyzes two years of student reflections from Applied Spatial Statistics, a fourth-year technical course offered by the School of Earth, Environment & Society, that was redesigned to emphasis ungrading principles that foster intrinsic motivation. The course was fully redesigned using Scholarship of Teaching and Learning principles, notably adopting practices that de-emphasising traditional grades in favour for low-stakes, completion-based assignments and flipped classrooms. Using natural language processing on long-form reflections (Winter 2022 and 2024, approved by the McMaster Research Ethics Board), the analysis explores how these changes impacted student learning experiences. Findings suggest that most students responded positively, revealing insights into how and what they learned, offering valuable considerations for educators exploring alternative assessment and teaching strategies. 

Supriya Bains - Bridging Knowledge: Developing a Lab Website for Schizophrenia Research and Public Engagement  

While research is essential, the dissemination and mobilization of its findings are equally critical in creating knowledge that is accessible, usable, and meaningful to communities. It is often the case where research is limited to academic spheres through poster presentations and journal articles. This residency project seeks to lay the groundwork for a lab website that will evolve as we explore new frontiers in schizophrenia research. The website will feature an ‘About Us’, a collection of publications, past poster presentations, informative infographics, and extra resources – becoming a dynamic resource hub for the research community and the public. A prototype of these pages will be presented as a preview of the website, while the logistics and technical aspects of its setup are still in progress. 

Sarah da Silva - Simplifying Fitness Data: A New Tool for Aerobic Fitness Analysis  

Aerobic fitness reflects your body’s ability to use oxygen and is an important marker of health, particularly in children with chronic medical conditions. It has been established that children with chronic medical conditions have low aerobic fitness levels, but we know very little beyond that. To understand why it's low, a comprehensive analysis of their aerobic fitness is required. However, this can be a complex task given the many error-prone steps and layers of analysis required. This presentation highlights the development of a ready-made toolbox that combines all these steps, with just the click of a button. This toolbox is known as an R package and allows non-experts to analyze aerobic fitness data without needing to code. I plan to expand this toolbox into a format that can be easily used by anyone working with aerobic fitness data, for example, clinicians, researchers, and coaches. This tool will enhance our understanding of a key marker of health, potentially improving the care for children with chronic medical conditions and beyond.

Victoria Clowater - Understanding “WitchTok” Through the Rhizome : A proposed methodological approach to studying online communities  

In this project, I propose a new method for studying how beliefs and practices are disseminated through online communities on platforms such as TikTok. Building off my work studying the beliefs and practices in the witchcraft TikTok community known as “WitchTok,” I illustrate the importance of attending to subjective experiences online. Many researchers studying TikTok make methodological choices that could be replicated to produce similar results. Instead, I propose a “rhizomatic” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) method that turns against method, attending to subjective experiences on online platforms such as TikTok. I argue that rhizomatic methods are a valuable approach to understanding experiences on TikTok and how the ontological positions of users are influenced by the app, something that might be unexplained by other methods of inquiry.  

Eileen Stephens - SetDec

Applications or apps are commonly used as interventions for gaps in policy. SetDec (stylized as STDC) is an app that’s designed as an intervention for three points of contention for arts workers: artists being offered exposure as payment for their work, social media algorithms favouring users with large and established audiences, and set decoration warehouses shutting down during the COVID-19 pandemic or being destroyed in fires. With STDC, unionized set decorators can browse objects created by local artisans and craftspeople and rent or buy for film, theatre, and television productions. Further interventions being explored by STDC include nudging artisans to organize a union and operating the app as a member co-operative, with admin fees being redistributed to arts council members to further stimulate local arts. With frozen or reduced funding to arts organizations being a 30 year trend, a radical systemic change is needed for the arts to be sustainable in Canada. As such, STDC should be considered a stop gap and not a solution.