Digital Praxis Seminar

MALS 75500 | IDS 81640

Spring 2017

CUNY Graduate Center, Room 3212 | Wednesday, 4:15 - 6:15

Dr. Lisa Rhody

lrhody@gc.cuny.edu
@lmrhody
Office hours: Wednesday 3:15 - 4:15 | Room 3300.07

Course blog

Course group: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/digital-praxis-seminar-2016-2017/

Course hastag: #dhpraxis

Course repository: https://github.com/lmrhody/PraxisSpring17/

This syllabus: http://cuny.is/dps17

This syllabus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Description

Encouraging students think about the impact advancements in digital technology have on the future of scholarship from the moment they enter the Graduate Center, the Digital Praxis Seminar is a year-long sequence of two three-credit courses that familiarize students with a variety of digital tools and methods through lectures offered by high-profile scholars and technologists, hands-on workshops, and collaborative projects. Students enrolled in the two-course sequence will complete their first year at the GC having been introduced to a broad range of ways to critically evaluate and incorporate digital technologies in their academic research and teaching. In addition, they will have explored a particular area of digital scholarship and/or pedagogy of interest to them, produced a digital project in collaboration with fellow students, and established a digital portfolio that can be used to display their work. The two connected three-credit courses will be offered during the Fall and Spring semesters as MALS classes for master’s students and Interdisciplinary Studies courses for doctoral students.

During the Fall 2016 semester, students learned to recognize contemporary or long-standing challenges facing humanistic research and pedagogy and then placed those examples in conversation with readings in theory and technology. Considering opportunities and challenges digital technologies present to scholars engaged in humanistic inquiry, students identified humanities datasets, contextualized the dataset's potential contribution within their own academic discipline, and proposed future DH projects. In Spring 2017, we will refine and evaluate DH proposals, develop a reasonable workplan, design effective collaborations, develop new technical skills, and produce a project prototype. Early in the semester, students will split into project cohorts. Students will self-organize, actively work toward mutually agreed-upon deadlines, and adapt to the challenges and realities that collaborative digital projects present. Upon completion, students will be able to demonstrate hands-on experience in the planning, production, and dissemination of a digital humanities project.

The class will present their work at the GC End-of-the-Year Digital Showcase with 10-minute, multimodal talks. Students are strongly encouraged to consider their work as genuine contributions to a public dialogue on the use of digital tools in and around the academy. While projects are not required to extend beyond the end of the semester, they should propose a timeline and trajectory that extends beyond the course itself. The Spring term is inspired by the work of the Praxis Program at the University of Virginia and the One Week | One Tool projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Praxis projects are made possible with support from the Graduate Center Provost’s Office and the GC Digital Fellows Program.

Learning Objectives

Students will...

plan and produce a digital humanities project that includes a revised proposal, data management plan, prototype, and scholarly outreach;
develop scholarly collaboration skills (ie leadership, consensus building, joint evaluation, resource sharing) by working with a peer cohort to produce group project prototypes;
describe individual scholarly contributions to the cohort's collective effort;
justify key technical, scholarly, and interpersonal decisions especially as they relate to humanistic values through team-based lab journals, public blogging on our course site, and oral presentations;
identify and aquire necessary new skills independently.

Requirements and Structure

Weekly Class Sessions

This is a praxis-based course, so most of our class sessions will be devoted to team meetings, project work, informal and formal presentations, and consultations with Graduate Center Digital Fellows. Weekly readings will be assign on an as-needed basis. Students are expected to be working independently and collaboratively every week on their projects and project plans.

Progress Reports and Social Media Presence

Each team will produce at least one public, process-oriented project report each week, to be posted on our shared course blog and tagged with a project-specific tag. Reports should catalogue project activities, discuss the progress that's been made, explore tricky problems, reach out to the general public with questions, and cultivate interest in the project.

Each team should also create a social media presence for their projects and use such accounts to share information and build an audience for the project.

Individual Lab Journals

Each student will keep an individual journal that should be used to catalogue weekly activities and progress, explore sticky questions, share personal reflections, and work through problems. Journals can be posted publicly to the course blog or kept privately. They should be shared with Prof. Rhody every week and are due by midnight, Sunday.

You must let Prof. Rhody know where you will be keeping your journal by midnight, February 8th, when your first post is due.

Project Requirements

Projects should relate to the digital humanities as explored through the Fall semester.
Project plans should address all aspects of the project life cycle, from development to deployment to testing to launch to sustainability.
Projects must be made publicly available and project code must be open source and accessible online.
All code must be logically organized and clearly documented.
A prototype of the project must be realized by the end of the semester.
Projects will be launched publicly at the final class of the year.

Project Report and Personal Reflection

A final project report (15-20 pages) must be submitted by each team at the end of the semester.
Each student in the class will also submit a paper (3-5 pages) that details their contributions to the project and how the experience of working on it fits into the arc of their professional development and interests.

Grading

75% -- team project grade
25% -- individual grade, based on lab journals, faculty consultations and your contributions to the team project.

Readings

To be determined based on project needs and in-class discussion.

Schedule

Week 1 | February 1

In class: Welcome, introductions, logistics, role definition, project discussions. Presentation from GC Digital Fellows on productive sessions during office hours.

Week 2 | February 8

Due:

Attend at least one event at NYCDH Week, taking place around the city.
Post draft project proposals to couse blog by midnight Monday, February 6

Guest instructor: Jason Rhody
In class: Evaluating and refining project proposals. Prepare to workshop project proposals on blog in light of the following articles.

NEH Proposal Evaluation Process
Evaluating Collaborative Digital Scholarship (or, Where Credit is Due) by Bethany Nowviskie
How to Evaluate Digital Scholarship by Todd Presner
Short Guide to Evaluation of Digital Work by Geoffrey Rockwell

No Class| February 15

Due midnight: blog post with revised project proposals and/or reflections on digital project evaluation criteria

Recommended: GitHub Workshop 6:30-8:30; Register in advance

Week 3 | February 22

Due midnight Sunday: rank project proposals, personal journal entries (NYCDH Week reflections).

In class: Project results, group formation, group roles, and collaborator agreement. By the end of this class period, you should have a list of group members, responsibilities, and an agreement for modes of communication and meeting deadlines.

Read/watch:

Rockwell's Quick Guide to Working in Teams - Geoffrey Rockwell
One Week | One Tool - Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
And so it begins: day two of OWOT by Mia Ridge
Day 3 of OWOT: Of Names and Stories and Gophers by Brian Croxall
OWOT, day 4. by Amrys O. Williams
Final Refelctions from One Week One Tool: The Blur of Days 4-5 by Jack Doughterty

Week 4 | March 1

Due midnight Sunday:

Revised Project Workplans: Each group needs to review their workplan and deadlines, assign/choose tasks, and post a revised project workplan. Each workplan should include the following: -- A list of tasks and the dates they are due -- A person responsible for each task -- The name of each team member associated with a role for each project -- A description of the agreed upon workflow (mode of correspondence, where the data will live, where the site will go, regular group meeting dates, ways to ask for help)

Due by class:

personal journal: What is your role on the project? What will be challenging for you? What skills will you need to learn and/or improve upon? What is your plan for doing so? What intellectual or scholarly stake do you have in the project? What are you looking forward to?

In class: Identifying existing resources and project needs. Create actionable steps to fill project gaps.

Project presentations: All projects.

Week 5 | March 8

Due midnight Sunday: Group blog post on data types, project resources, content journal entries.

Due Wednesday: Individual post on how data management plans can help improve your own research practices.

In class: Collaborative group work. Data management, storage, and sharing practices.

NEH sample data management plans
Data Management Planning Tool
Draft data management plan

Project presentations: All projects discuss data management plans.

Week 6 | March 15

Due midnight Sunday: Group data management plans

Due Wednesday: Individual 1-2 paragraph biographical and research statements that answer questions such as: who are you? what is your academic background? what are your research interests? what are your responsibilities on your project?

In class: Outreach and Scholarly Communication

Outreach and Publicity - from Histories of the National Mall
Social Media for Digital Projects
Chosing a platform for your Digital Project

Other materials to consider:

HathiTrust Digital Library, Communications Working Group Charge
Social Media for Scholarly Projects
Hypothes.is

Who/Where are your audiences?

Digital Humanities Now
dh+lib
DH Slack - via Amanda Visconti

Project presentations: Outreach and Scholarly Communication Plan

Week 7 | March 22

Due midnight Sunday: Project website draft (basic landing page, about page--methods) and social media) + journal entries.