Assignments

Course Requirements

Most readings and course material will be made available to students by the instructor in a free or open access format.

Resources: Students are encouraged to bring personal laptops and or tablets for class meetings and to have those available. Students are required to maintain online access and resources are available on campus to facilitate students who do not have unlimited access at home.

Grading/Evaluation Criteria:

Attendance and Participation 100 points
DH Project Reviews 150 points
Group Work and Participation 150 points
Blog – Reading Responses 200 points
Final Project – Digital 300 points
Final Project Presentation 100 points
 TOTAL 1000 points

DH Project Reviews

You will complete three (3) separate reviews of digital humanities project from an available list. Each piece should be 500-700 words. Select from the digital humanities projects linked on the main page and prepare an evaluation of the content, research, tools and methods of that project. Consider the following questions and ensure that they are answered in your review:

  1. What is the project about? What is the major research question as you understand it?
  2.  How did the researchers go about answering this question?
  3. What does the DH site look like? Describe the interface, including the aesthetics, accessibility of information, various pages included.
  4. What digital humanities tools are used to complete this project? Reference our readings on “What do digital humanists do?” “How do they make that?” and “Thematic Research Collections.” You can also look at the lecture Powerpoint to review relevant terms and tools.
  5. What do you think could be added/removed from this project to make it more effective in presenting the research? 

For Project Reviews #2 and #3, please consider: 

6. What have you learned from the project you reviewed from Project Review #1?  In what ways can these projects be improved based on elements of the previous projects and vice versa?

Each review is worth 50 points.


Group Work and Participation 

Digital Humanities is a collaborative field of study. Much of the work we do this semester will require us working as a large collective or in smaller team. You will be responsible for and accountable to the larger community of learners by completing your tasks on time, providing encouragement and support to others and seeking assistance where necessary. Your ability to consistently work in a team situation will be assessed as part of this course. This will also include a project contribution statement, which will be submitted as part of the final project.


Reading Responses

  • This should be a 500 – 600 word reflection on one or more of the assigned readings or activities for the week.  All essays should be posted to the Course Blog, for which you have received login credentials. Remember that blogs are a form of public writing and your work will be visible to those who may encounter it. Be sure to submit your best work and be mindful to edit and proofread your work.

FINAL PROJECT

  • All course participants will work on the same project for the duration of the semester. You will be assigned clear roles and tasks for contribution to this larger project. All parts of your contribution must be submitted and uploaded to the appropriate platforms by the stated deadline. Your project grade will be based on content posted by that time. Any changes made to your submission after this date without the prior permission of the instructor will result in a grade of F on the project as it is a form of academic dishonesty.
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  • Project Proposal: You are required to write a 500-word proposal of an individual digital humanities project that you will submit as part of the larger Visualizing Caribbean Literature project. You should think about a specific  (or set of) theme, genre, pattern, author, relationship that you would like to pursue and formulate one to three research questions that you would like to explore and answer during through DH  methods and tools. Your proposal should also include a brief explanation of why you want to explore that particular topic (i.e. what interested you. It may have been your time period assigned, your work in cleaning spreadsheet data, etc.). Your proposal should end with a description of the DH tools and methods you would use to visualize the results of your research. You should select at least one but no more than three tools to use for this project. You should indicate what type (or combination) of project you will be doing based on options readings by Paige Morgan and Miriam Posner. Some examples are:
          • Wax collection of specific content
          • Digital Edition of an unpublished or out of print work
          • Twine Storytelling or interactive game or experience on selected books/authors/genres/themes
          • ArcGIS Storymaps or other experience on selected books and/or authors 
          • Knightlab JS Timeline and/or StoryMaps on specific books etc. 
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  • Annotated Bibliography: As part of your research process, you should consult secondary sources (i.e. resources about the primary texts and people represented in the spreadsheet) that provide insight and context on the topic you selected. You should complete an annotated bibliography of 5 sources. For each source, you write a 3-5 sentence paragraph summarizing the resource, explaining its relevance to your topic, and how you may incorporate some of the information you’ve learned in that resource. Please include archival, primary and secondary sources from a wide range of platforms and publications. You can include YouTube content (use your discretion for appropriateness and research worthy), articles from newspapers like The New York Times and The Guardian, academic journal articles and books found on Google Books and Google Scholar, interviews, websites, etc. You must provide all relevant bibliographic data (in APA format) for each listing as you would in a research paper references page. Please also provide the link to the resource or to its citation to allow us to create the Zotero entry at a later time.

Final Project Presentations

  • You will present the final project as a group to an audience in a virtual format at the end of the semester. You will prepare a five-minute description of your contribution to the project , which includes challenges, successes and outcomes, for the presentation.