Master’s in Liberal Arts: Bringing technology, data into humanities and social sciences

NEW DELHI: With new-age technology like generative artificial intelligence penetrating coursework and case studies, private liberal arts universities are now offering humanities courses with the intersection of digital humanities. This new specialisation is on the rise among the universities.

Private universities like OP Jindal Global University and Alliance University offer specialisations or modules in digital humanities – which applies computational tools to humanities subjects such as literature – data and social sciences, data and cognitive science and more. For instance, Amrita Vishwa Vidypeetham, a deemed-to-be-university, is launching two new master’s programmes in social data science and policy and cognitive sciences in August. “Data science is well established and is progressing by leaps and bounds with new technologies like machine learning, generative AI, and advanced data analysis and visualisation. But there is a limited crossover of social sciences,” said Christopher Coley, head of programme, Social Data Science and Policy.

While many universities have started introducing some aspects of data sciences into their curriculum of liberal arts and courses, academics believe having full-fledged specialised programmes will give students an edge over others.

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Digital humanities, intersection of technology

In a world of evolving technology, universities have introduced digital humanities as a specialisation or a module for students studying liberal arts courses. They can use tools to find better results and understand contemporary issues. “We have large data sets and content to analyse. We believe that even literature students must have an understanding of working with data sets of literature and use software to find patterns in literary texts, which is a part of digital humanities,” said Ravi Chakraborty, director of communication for liberal arts, Alliance University.

OP Jindal Global has also introduced majors in the liberal arts programme in digital humanities, which brings together arts, humanities and technology.

Vice chancellor C Raj Kumar said, “We have designed the liberal arts programme to be able to evolve and …keep up with the rapidly-changing world. Our students are taught to ethically use the latest innovations in technology, including geographic information systems (GIS), artificial intelligence (AI), programming languages and performance analysis systems.”

Amrendra Pandey, associate professor, Kautilya School of Public Policy at GITAM University, Hyderabad, said that in their master’s course in public policy, they are teaching the use of data and statistics to solve different public policy problems. “We specifically train students to analyse databases of several government authorities like the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), World Bank and others. Through the focus on empirical results, we inculcate the skills in students to derive data-oriented analysis and results. We also teach coding languages like Python, R and Power BI software in our MPP courses, including analysis and visualisation of the data,” he explained.

Similarly, Lovely Professional University in 2023 introduced a specialisation on digital humanities in its MA English course as an experiment to see students’ responses. “This is our second year and we have found a good response from students and plan to translate it into all other courses,” said Pavitar Prakash Singh, head of department, School of Arts. The course of digital humanities includes digitisation of languages and analysis of digital literary data sets, he added.

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Liberal arts: New courses

Coly stated that there hasn’t been any translation of emerging technologies into the social science sector and that’s where they found a great opportunity to offer the programme on MSc in social data science and policy. He explained: “We found it aligned with the larger United Nations conversations where they are pushing data integration into national policies through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Department of Science and Technology and Niti Aayog, a government think tank. These ministries also need professionals who not only have technical skills in data sciences, but also have the practical know-how on what is needed for the society to influence policy in the best way possible, to have a strong backbone in social theory and research.”

This new programme combines social sciences and case studies, quantitative and qualitative methods, public policy and civics education with a strong data science component which includes programming code languages and the latest software for machine learning, AI, natural language processing and new emerging fields.

Another new launch is Master’s in Cognitive Sciences. “We realised that no other course is offering the intersection of behavioural and social sciences, which is one of the key areas we work in,” said Meltem Nandita Alkoyak-Yildiz, head of department, Department of Cognitive Sciences and Psychology at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.

“We consider cognitive sciences in the context of learning and through the course, blend it with technology. Our vision is to recognise the remarkable apparatus we have in our brain and its cognitive processes. We want students to understand from global philosophical perspectives because we usually consider the philosophy of mind only through a partial school of thought. So we have included Western and Eastern philosophies.

Further, if a student wants to learn about – within our specialisations – the sciences of learning technologies, we teach them socio-cognition and collaborating on social aspects of cognition, overall in the context of learning technologies,” she added.

Both courses will be launched in August 2024.

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Focus on solving problems

Many institutes offering these courses have highlighted that students studying interdisciplinary programmes with a human-centric approach have an edge over others in the job market. “People with liberal studies have a creative and human-centric approach, especially in new-age technology like AI. Artificial intelligence has opened up new technology and tools for research and methodologies for assistance and diagnostics,” said Ravi Shankar AV, professor, school of liberal studies, CMR University.

Yildiz added that in the era of immersive use of technology by organisations, there is a huge requirement for managers who know technology in the context of learning. “It is difficult to find professionals who know technology and can make decisions based on compassion and empathy, which is one of the rare skill sets,” she added. After a master’s in cognitive science, students could take up roles as instructional designers, learning technology specialists, and learning analytics specialists in big corporations.

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Further, Coly added that there are a lot of opportunities in the civil society organisations working on the skill and livelihood missions of the government.

Pandey found that despite public policy and data sciences being new in the country, many state governments are hiring students from these courses. “This year we have seen many state governments hiring students as analysts, whereas, private companies are taking them for their public policy divisions like Ola, Paytm, and a few others. Companies are also hiring in climate, environment-focused roles and consulting companies are hiring graduates from liberal arts institutes.