Everything you need to know about the final class project!!
What’s in this assignment guide
The Task, or What is a Project?
Grades, Assessment, and Expectations
Keeping going: key steps and milestones for the project
Deadlines
September: Project consults over Zoom with Dr. S to discuss ideas and get started (signup links are on the course schedule).
Tuesday October 10 NOON Central time: Proposals due on Canvas.
Beginning of Thanksgiving week: meet with Dr. S to consult on progress on project; required progress milestone
Wednesday December 6 noon: Projects due
Monday December 11: Revisions due
Purpose and Goals
The purpose of this assignment is for students to pursue a topic of interest to you while learning to apply the methods and tools learned in the class to share cultural heritage research in a way that the general public can benefit from your knowledge!
Completing this assignment fulfills class learning objective #5: identify a cultural heritage research question and develop and/or implement a plan to use one or more technologies to research that cultural heritage research question.
The Task, or What is a Project?
In the project, you will develop and answer a research question about cultural heritage data or cultural heritage in a digital context. The project should have some form of public engagement; typically this means the project or a part of the project will live on your website on the OU Create platform.
Your project can take a variety of forms; here are some examples (but if you have another idea, please share it with me during our consult meeting!!!):
- Series of blog posts on a research question
- Digital archive/exhibit using Omeka (Omeka also has timeline and map plugins)
- Substantial participation in a crowdsourced project plus critical-analytical reflection about it
- 3d model and reflection
- Digital edition of a cultural heritage source + reflection
- Wikipedia editing project + reflection
- Cultural heritage game/storytelling with Twine
- Digital publication on a research question using text & media on Scalar
- Digital map of cultural heritage objects pertaining to a particular theme/genre
- Digital timeline of something pertaining to a cultural heritage issue (movement, artist, author, cultural heritage site, etc.)
- Computational analysis of a cultural heritage collection, such as a body of literature (if you don’t know what this means, maybe pick something else)
- Proposal for a larger project beyond the scope something that could be created in one semester in this class
- Something else?
The format is flexible. The size of the project is also up to you. Consider that:
- the format and method are appropriate for your research questions
- the research questions can be answered using these methods and formats
- you conduct adequate research into sources about your topic and/or data collection is conducted to answer your research questions
- your data, sources, etc., are documented.
Since this is a public creation, you will need a license for your project telling readers how they can use your work and a link from the main page of your site.
- Look at the options for Creative Commons licenses (https://creativecommons.org/choose/)
- Keep in mind data or media from another source might be under copyright or under its own license.
Grades, Assessment, and Expectations
Projects are required for all graduate students.
Undergraduates should at least complete a proposal for a project; undergrads wishing to earn an A final grade in the course should complete the entire project.
The project will be assessed on:
- the relevance and significance of the topic for cultural heritage data
- how effectively the methodologies and technologies have been applied for the research questions and for public engagement
- the quality and depth of analysis and research (what this means will vary depending on the type of project)
- documentation
- nuts and bolts requirements (functional webpages presenting the project, a license for your project, link(s) on your website, clear readable grammar/spelling/style, etc.)
There are several steps or milestones to this project. Each step/milestone needs to be completed satisfactorily to move on to the next step. Sometimes this aspect of class work is hard! It can be hard to to be asked to change something we have already worked on, or to be asked to do more work. Try to keep in mind that this project is a process, and that since it is public work, my comments are designed to help you succeed in presenting your best work to the public.
I will give you FEEDBACK that you can use to REVISE over the semester:
- The five items above will be the basis for rubrics for the project on Canvas. I will fill out the rubrics when I assess each step of the project
- I will also give you written feedback about what works great and also, if anything needs revision, next steps for you to take to revise. For a successful project, you will want to follow those steps.
- For the early steps, I will also give you feedback on how best to progress. For a successful project, you will want to follow that feedback. If my feedback doesn’t make sense to you, let me know — sometimes a quick consult on Zoom can clarify things!
Getting Started
First and foremost: what are you interested in? Design a project that allows you to pursue a passion or address something relevant to you. The key is it needs to be on cultural heritage. So if your passion is education: a project mapping demographics of who attends OU over time is not about cultural heritage, so not appropriate for the course (it’s more sociology and social science); however, some great options regarding education might be a digital archive or exhibit of historical photographs of tribal schools in Oklahoma, or digitizing and providing a public archive of historical documents related to some aspect of education, or a computational analysis of historical text documents related to an educational institution, researching and editing Wikipedia entries about educational institutions in Oklahoma that don’t have entries or have short/undetailed entries.
Start by thinking about:
- what interests you, what are you passionate about
- what questions do you have about your passion
- what mode of work do you like–building websites, writing essays, creative projects, etc
- REVIEW THE SYLLABUS SCHEDULE — read ahead for the topics and issues!!! This will give you more ideas
If you want to browse some heritage collections to get ideas, check out this Guide to Primary (Historical) Sources and this database of sources related to Women and Social Movements and this Guide to History of Science Primary Sources.
We will talk about your ideas together in our Zoom consult in September and turn them into a realistic or actionable project.
Keeping Going: Key steps and milestones
1. Topic consults are required in September; I encourage you meet with me on Zoom later in the semester if you want more advice, need to talk through something, etc. See “Getting Started” above for how to prepare for our consult!
2. Proposal due Tuesday October 10 Noon
Submit the research proposal to Canvas. The proposal should include:
- Research question
- Format of project
- Basic “outline” or “design” of project (including subtopics/subsections)
- Preliminary bibliography/works cited list in any format you prefer (MLA, APA, Chicago I don’t care as long as it’s consistent) listing your sources.
How to do research? Pro tip: Rando Googling is not always your friend
- Go to the OU Libraries site
- click on “Discover Local” and enter your topic in the search screen
- find relevant books and articles at OU
- be sure to consider physical books in the Library as well as electronic resources you can access from your computer
- Use the Library Guides listed in the “Getting Started” section above
- Guide to Primary (Historical) Sources
- database of sources related to Women and Social Movements
- Guide to History of Science Primary Sources
- Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are OK when used smartly:
- as starting points to get an overview of some issues in your topic
- finding links to other resources online (check the reliability of those sources, though: can you verify that the people who created those sources are genuine experts?)
- finding images and other media: media in Wikimedia Commons is more expansive than in Wikipedia, especially for cultural heritage objects, sites, topics. Be sure the license on the media you reuse allows reuse, and be sure you credit the source of the media on your site
- Ask Dr. S or a librarian on the OU Libraries chat about relevant databases at OU
How to cite your research? Purdue OWL website has guides to every major citation style; click through to the format you have chosen and see examples for how to cite books, articles, websites, etc.
Beginning of Thanksgiving week: meet with Dr. S to consult on progress on project. By this point you should:
- have conducted most of your research (books/articles, assembling sources for the project) and have compiled a works cited list in MLA, APA, or Chicago format
- have your platform up even if not complete (for example, your Omeka site is up and running with some objects if you’re using Omeka, or your timeline should be started with a few entries if you’re using a timeline program, etc.)
- be able to show Dr. S these items in the consult
Between the second consult and December 6, work on your project!
Project due Wednesday December 6 noon. Submit your link on Canvas when it’s ready. I will try to provide feedback by Thursday night.
If your project grade is Incomplete, you may use the Flexibility Token System to revise — any remaining edits are due Monday December 11 11:59 pm.