# How should we teach digital research workflows to undergrad philosophy students?

> Source: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422480>
> Published: 2026-06-06 07:46:53+00:00

I'm mainly looking for tools and resources, ideally focusing on open-source, open-access, and free options. Any suggestions on the presentation approach, along with any dos and don'ts, would be very welcome.

First: what ? What that "digital" is ? Is it important anyway ? Buttons clicking ? Learn kids to watch videos in some frames or full screen ?? That is just medium. So what need to be learned ? What is important to make it into kids brains ?

Domain knowledge is important. And domain knowledge is route to specialization. So there is many ways to learn, one or more per university "discipline"...

And all that requires time to memorize and practice to learning be persistent in the brain.

So we need humans-experts to verify AI stupid mishmash.

So students need to practice and memorize domain things so their internal neuron nets and etc be trained to know specialized domain stuff.

So make them use blackboard and paper and pencils as thinking tools while they use "digital" interfaces.

If someone want to prohibit real paper and pencils then ditch their "digital workflows" and ask who paid them to promote that software/hardware stack.

"knowledge to the brains" first, not time wasting on some screen watching because someone wants something something "digital".

And open source/open access is just form of medium. Of secondary importance.

Teacher need to prepare syllabus/conspectus (and know things there) or maybe whole subject (many lessons) and drop it on students. As always.

Problem is more on students side: learning need to be pushed to the brains anyways. It is just like gym.

Maybe main problem is this: students need to be interested or see reason for learning that knowledge pieces and pieces hidden behind that pieces...