Gates To Advise New Digital Learning Group

Du Bois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. was appointed Tuesday to the advisory board of Digital Learning Interactive, a company providing online resources to college professors.

Gates, who chairs Harvard's Afro-American studies department, will also work with the company to create a teaching guide to the Harlem Renaissance.

Digital Learning Interactive works to find new web-based methods to engage students in their courses, according to founder Robert Fisher, who taught history at Harvard for six years.

"There is a real disaffection for print textbooks. [They are] not engaging and don't resonate with students today," Fisher said.

Gates, who could not be reached for comment, has written numerous scholarly pieces concerning Afro-American studies, and recently co-edited the Encarta Africana, an interactive encyclopedia of African culture on CD-rom.

Fisher said the company has much to gain from the teaching and writing techniques of Gates, whom he called the go-to guy on the Harlem Renaissance.

In a press release, Gates said he believed the work on the Harlem Renaissance could provide a valuable new way of evaluating the movement, especially since much of its vitality is difficult to convey in text.

"Given that the Harlem Renaissance coincided with the Jazz Age, the Internet is an ideal medium to deliver representative film clips and music tracks of the 1920s and 1930s to provide a truly interactive and engaging experience," Gates said.