3. The Digital Monograph?

Since defending her own digital dissertation in 2005, Virginia Kuhn has honed a loosely established rubric, refined in collaboration with a group of students, with which to assess digital theses. Three areas, ‘Conceptual Core, Research Component, Form + Content’, each feature three additional foci that leave ample room for epistemological play and space beyond a traditionally alphabetized, linear text-only dissertation. For example, digital scholarship need not be ‘thesis-driven prose’, it can establish a ‘controlling idea’ presented in media other than text. Any kind of rubric or assessment measure, Kuhn warns, also requires a rethinking of review formats, however: annotation and feedback, too, will necessitate multimodal features such that radical scholarship and deep collaboration, echoing Ball’s and Fitzpatrick’s terms, become part of evaluative considerations, and feedback formats allow for non-linear, creative interruptions.