Your end of term project this semester is a project proposal, where you write a proposal that outlines a digital humanities project. Your project will process and present sources in a way that achieves a research, creative, or educational goal relevant to the larger humanistic themes explored in our class.
In short, you should propose a way to do something humane with digital tools. Use the our work on the scrapbook project and the projects on the DH projects list inspiration. Propose doing something like one of them, but make it your own!
Required Elements
Your proposal will be built as a WordPress website. Your project proposal website include pages devoted to each of the elements below. These pages should be linked via a navigation menu.
- Overview: A dedicated landing page designed to quickly introduce a new reader to your project proposal. Your landing page should allow the reader to quickly get a sense of what your project is about and what it is for.
- Goal and Significance of Proposed Project: This page should explain the goals that this project will attempt to achieve. Depending on the kind This could be a research question, a creative goal or a learning outcome.
This page should provide an introduction to this goal and then move on to establish how this goal is part of the “digital humanities” as explored in this class. You could explain how this goal achieves something “humane,” draw parallels between the goal of your project and the work done on other DH projects or in our scrapbook project, or explain how this goal relates to humanities disciplines like History, English, Philosophy, Gender Studies, etc. - Project Sources: This page should explain the sources you will need to complete your project. What kinds of underlying data or artifacts will your project require?
Explain how you selected these sources and why you think they are appropriate to the project’s goals. Explain how the project would necessarily be different with a different selection of sources.
Name the specific sources you will need and explain how you could obtain them. Consider technical steps and social ones (asking for permission, etc) that would be required. Explain why you think your project is a good, appropriate use for these sources. Are there any potential problems that might prevent you from getting these sources? If so, what sorts of back up sources of data might you use? - Source Processing: What sorts of processing will you need to do to your sources to complete your project. Consider both the work of making sources machine readable (especially for sources that start out as non-digital objects) and the work of getting sources ready to be presented in the form you will ultimately want to present them in. For example, adding or standardizing location data for mapping projects, cleaning up text for distant reading, building network links for network visualizations, etc. What sorts of technical tools, data formats, metadata standards, etc will be appropriate for this processing step, and why? What choices do you anticipate needing to make as you process your sources?
- Processed Source Presentation: How will you present your processed sources to best answer your research questions, achieve your creative goals, or fulfill your learning outcomes? Will you build a map, a graph, an exhibit, something else? Try to give the reader a sense of what the specific presentation you would build for the finished project would look like and how it would function. You might do this with a written description (consider referencing existing DH projects as models) or a visual mock-up.
Explain why you think this is the best format to achieve your goals. Explain how you will build this presentation both in terms of the tools you would use to build it (software etc.) and the design choices you would make with those tools.
I will not give arbitrary word-count requirements for each page, but each page should give a through accounting of the required material for that page (using text and images as appropriate). It is unlikely to fully address the prompt for each page in less than 200-300 words.
Finally, each member of the project must submit a statement of collaboration, where you report out any last minute hurdles and include one item your team did well and one hurdle (and how your team addressed it). This document (150 words max) will be submitted via D2L by each team member. Your final finished project will live on a WordPress web page public to all living at a domain set up by your professor.
Teams
You should plan to work on a team in this project. You are free to form your own teams, but teams should not have more than 3 members.
Evaluation
Your project will be graded according to the quality of its content and the presentation of its evidence. As a written and drafted document, form and style are inherently related to content and function. The rubric below will be the basis for scoring your project website. The score earned based on the rubric will be worth 85% of your total score. An additional 15% will be awarded so long as you complete your statement of collaboration.
I will grade group projects collectively. If you feel a group member has not completed their share of group work, I must be informed before the due date and steps must be taken to attempt to bring the delinquent member back on track before I will permit group members to be assigned individual scores.
| Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Unacceptable | |
| Details | The project proposal is highly detailed and specific. Specific sources, methods and technologies are named in the project proposal for every step of the process. The sources, methods, and technologies named are clearly described, and the reasons why these sources, methods, and technologies are appropriate to project goals are clearly and completely described. | The proposal names at least some specific sources, methods, and technologies needed to achieve its goals. These sources, methods, and technologies are appropriate to the project goals, even if the reasons why they are appropriate may not be fully fleshed out in the proposal. | The proposal names some sources, methods, and technologies needed to achieve its goals. However, some of these may be only vaguely described or not fully appropriate to the project. | The proposal does not name the sources, methods and technologies needed to achieve its goals. |
| Humanities Relevance | The proposal describes a project that would make a unique, interesting, achievable contribution to the larger project of “the humanities” or “humane” knowledge. This contribution is clearly and completely described in the proposal. | The proposal describes a project that would make a contribution to the larger project of “the humanities” or “the humane.” However, this contribution may not be fully described in the proposal, leaving the reader to suss it out on their own. | The proposal attempts to describe a project that would make a the larger project of “the humanities” or “the humane.” However, this attempt goes astray somehow. Perhaps it stays too close to its source material, or reaches for a goal too interested in completeness or efficiency. | The proposal makes no attempt to connect with the idea of “the humanities” or “the humane.” It is simply a business or technology proposal, or something else not relevant to these ideas. |
| Style | The visual and written style of the proposal is unique, clear and professional. | The visual and written style of the proposal is professional | The visual and written style attempts to be professional, but this attempt is marred by many small errors. | The visual and written style of the piece is very unprofessional, sloppy, dashed off. It shows little sign of care or revision. |
Project Technologies
Your team will be given a WordPress installation to manage for the public facing project.
