Developed by TA Beatrice Maria Rosso under the guidance of Ted Cachey, Pizzo Family Chair in Dante Studies, the Dante Atlas Network is a digital humanities project and multimodal assessment currently live at danteatlas.org. The project emphasizes visual learning, interdisciplinary inquiry, and collaboration. Students map Dante’s imagined geography, connect literary passages to real and symbolic places, and reflect on how space, movement, and meaning interact throughout the Commedia.
The discussion of alternative assignments has become increasingly central in pedagogy to promote meaningful student engagement, critical thinking, and knowledge development in the age of AI. Rather than treating AI as a threat to traditional assessment, we created an assignment that approaches it as an opportunity to rethink how students engage with course material.
In line with current educational models that emphasize asset-based learning, the aim was to design tasks that foster creativity, critical thinking, and active participation. Within this framework, AI is not excluded but repositioned as a tool that can support student interpretation.
Our goal is therefore to pursue a more human-centered design for homework, assignments, and knowledge testing, in which AI, if used, promotes critical thinking rather than replacing it.
Digital Humanities in the Classroom: DAN
The Dante Atlas Network (DAN) is the result of an effort to create an alternative assignment in Professor Cachey’s class Dante II. In previous years, students were required to summarize and present an academic paper on Dante’s Divine Comedy. This format often limited direct engagement with the primary text and prompted us to reconsider how students approach the poem.
Something fundamental about the poem is its deeply geographical nature, as the poet mentions an astonishing number of geographical locations, often referencing the medieval geopolitical landscape. This element of the text has frequently proven to be hard for students to approach because many of the locations may not be familiar to most.
These considerations were the basis of the development of the atlas. DAN is an interactive and collaborative platform that is publicly accessible online. Students are assigned two locations, one from the Purgatory section of the poem and the other from the Paradise section. A shared map was created using Google My Maps, a tool that allows users to build collaborative and customizable maps.
The assignment consists of three steps:
- Check your assigned location.
- Pin the location on the shared map.
- Write an analysis (around 300 words).
In their analysis, students are required to provide commentary on the text, basing it on at least two scholarly sources, and to provide a personal explanation or interpretation of why that specific location is mentioned.
The map was then linked to the published website, where students have the option to be listed as contributors and publicly recognized on the digital platform. The website itself was programmed with the assistance of AI, in which chunks of HTML and Java were assembled and combined to resemble what DAN does today.
The assignment was designed, in light of the AI question in pedagogy, to shift the focus from a passive and generative activity to one that requires retrieval, interpretation, and contribution. While AI can assist in producing the post, the step-by-step, public, and interactive activity requires a substantial level of engagement from the student.
The AI Question
The question of AI and its role in the pedagogical setting still stands. Even in alternative assignments, it’s fundamental to think about how students might be engaging with AI and the potential ethical implications in a collaborative, public-facing project.
I am currently conducting an IRB-approved questionnaire, under the guidance of faculty members Tessa Gurney and Katie Boyle, to better understand whether and how students used AI tools in the completion of their posts. Informal feedback gathered through conversations and email correspondence suggests that the assignment was positively received and that the public-facing nature of the website created a sense of pride in their work.
These considerations aside, this multimodal example is a creative way we have engaged our students in more human-centered assignments to deeply engage with our Dante course content.
Beatrice Maria Rosso is a graduate associate at Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Italian studies at the University.
Originally published by at learning.nd.edu on July 08, 2026.