Your final work for Core 2 is to produce a project proposal that includes a proof of concept. Yes, I will be reading it for a grade, but your true audience for this proposal are the gatekeepers who hold institutional purse strings, allocate resources and space, approve curriculum, or administer technology resources. Your job is to convince this hypothetical reader that your project is intellectually and/or pedagogically vital, builds on but doesn’t duplicate existing work, is done in the most effective and efficient way possible, uses the right tech, and most importantly: that you can pull it off in the time frame that you have available to you.

This project proposal does not have a fixed length requirement. You are welcome to follow the guidelines for the NEH Digital Humanities grants, or another discipline specific set of requirements. This proposal can as also double as a first draft of your ITP Independent Study proposal. Generally, it needs to include an abstract or summary with a clear problem statement, a project narrative that gives the practical, historical, theoretical, and technical contexts for the project proposed, a clear work plan or project timeline, and proof that you can complete the project. Proposals typically include a budget; you may choose to include this, but it is not required. You may find it useful to include your personas and your use case scenarios. Some disciplines may have other, discipline specific requirements; please include those.

The proof that you can complete the project sometimes comes in the form of your biography, or a description of how the proposed project builds on your previous and related work, but in this instance, you need to complete a proof of concept for the project. This will be different for each of you, but it needs to demonstrate that you have learned enough about the task at hand that you will be able to complete it. Most of this learning is technical, but it might not be exclusively technical. Some examples of past proofs of concept:

• When proposing a group wiki assignment, one person created a simulation of one assignment at the halfway state, with the text edited in character by the user accounts for each of the 4 personas described.
• When proposing a mobile app, one person found an open source quiz app they could build on, changed the text of one of questions, and recompiled the app.
• When proposing a student assignment to create multimedia historical maps of NYC neighborhoods, one student created a sample map with the Google Maps API that contained a map point for each type of media expected to be used (video, audio, photograph, text).

You will be turning in a text, and giving a presentation. The presentation will take place on one of the last two weeks of class May 16 or 23. These will be 15 minute presentations with 15 minutes of discussion/feedback afterwards. We will invite all ITP faculty to join us, though we don’t expect all will be able to make it for all of the days. One advantage of presenting early: you can incorporate your feedback into your text. The text as a .doc/.odt will be due May 23rd. We’ll sign up for timeslots in class.

This semester’s collaborative Wikipedia assignment will focus on using Wikipedia in the classroom. We’ll be building on your experiences editing Wikipedia last semester and at the editathons this semester (and any other Wikipedia experiences you have).

The Wiki Education Foundation has created a set of online training modules for instructors who are interested in using Wikipedia with their students. We’ll use these modules as the basis for our assignment this semester.

You will work collaboratively in three teams. We will sort out these groups in class.

To begin, everyone should work their way through the Orientation for New Instructors. There are 3 additional modules, each a case study of a possible Wikipedia assignment:

1. Designing a Writing and Research Assignment

2. Designing a Translation Assignment

3. Designing a Media Contribution Assignment

Each team will choose one case study and use it to collaboratively create an assignment to be used as a final (substantial) project in an undergraduate class in one of your disciplines (or a multidisciplinary assignment, if you’d like).

Your completed assignment should include:

– Assignment type and topic, and the (hypothetical) course the assignment will be used in
– Student learning outcomes and goals for this assignment
– What students will do on the assignment
– What students will submit for the assignment
– How you’ll assess students’ work on the assignment

We’ll also include a week for online peer review of the assignment — everyone will take a look at each group’s assignment when it’s a complete draft, to offer constructive feedback.

In your final version that you submit to me, include a brief writeup to discuss these questions:

– What will your students need in order to complete this assignment? Training? Time? Space? How will you ensure that they get it?
– What will you need in order to support your students in their work on this assignment? How will you get it?
– Can you think of any challenges you might encounter as your students work on this assignment? What could you do to mitigate them?
– How do you think your students might benefit from working on this assignment (other than getting a grade)?

While we won’t be publishing this on Wikipedia, I’d like you to do your work on this assignment in Wikipedia to more closely align with what your hypothetical students will do. Please choose one of your group members’ sandbox pages to be the drafting space for your assignment, and use your (and my) talk pages for conversation about this assignment and to ask questions.
Revised: feel free to use any technology you’d like to communicate with your group.

Check-in points:

• March 7th: Complete the Orientation for New Instructors. Draft your work plan.
• March 14th: Begin initial contributions to the assignment (using whatever technology you’d like).
• March 28th: Finish complete draft of assignment, and post on our course group forum. Begin peer review — please comment on your colleagues’ assignment drafts on the course group forum. Note that everyone should comment on each group’s draft.
• April 4th: Peer review phase ends. Begin final work on assignment and writeup.
• April 11th: Final assignment and writeup due — post these on the course site.

As we have discussed, your midterm assignment is to create at least two different project proposals that each have at least two scope variations: one full and a reduced version.

Each of the (at least) two proposals should follow this structure:

1. An introductory descriptive paragraph, which should include a problem statement, and say *what* your tool/thing will do. This is your abstract, or elevator pitch. This should not have the full theoretical framing of the project. That will come in the final.
2. A set of personas
3. A use case scenario (where would someone find your tool/thing and how would they use it). Keep it short.
4. How you will make the full fledged version. This is your “ideal world” version that fulfills all of your visions and fantasies (what tools you will use, how you will get them, how confident you are that all the moving parts will work together, etc)
5. Your assessment of how much time this will take, and how much of the skills you currently know and what you would have to learn.
6. How you will make the stripped down version. The stripped down version is the minimally viable product. It is the most *bare bones* version to prove that what you are trying to get at is viable. (what tools you will use, how you will get them, how confident you are that all the moving parts will work together, etc)
7. Your assessment of how much time this will take, and how much of the skills you currently know and what you would have to learn.

You are welcome (but not required) to repeat the last two steps with scope variations in-between the full fledged and bare bones version.

Two proposals with two scope variations can be effectively in 4 to 7 page range (though you will be turning in online). I’m less concerned with page count, and more concerned with your process (as with all assignments in this class).

You will hopefully notice that you have done a lot of this work already. We’ve structured it this way. Your job here is to combine and revise the work you have already done, fill the holes, and assess each project’s feasibility.

The proposals will be submitted using Social Paper prior to class on March 21st.

Class that week will be dedicated to workshopping the proposals. The format we will follow will be that each participant will choose one of their two proposals to present orally. You will have 5 minutes to present, and we will have 5 minutes for feedback. Think of this as a pitch. You will want to lay out the project abstract, present very short versions of your personas, give one use case scenario, and then talk about how you would build it, and how long you think it would take.

This semester we will be working on three major assignments, with continuous blog writing throughout.

Provocations and responses: We’ll continue the practice of having several students act as motivators and write provocations on the blog on the reading/subject of the week, and carrying on a conversation on the blog in advance of class. Since class meets on Mondays, please post your provocations by the end of the day Saturday so that discussion can start Sunday. Several of the provocation assignments will scaffold towards the three larger assignments below.

Project Abstracts/Short Proposals: Your midterm assignment is to create at least two different project proposals that each have at least two scope variations: one full and a reduced version. Details on the full assignment will be given February 8th and the assignment is due March 21st.

Collaboration and Wikipedia: Your Wikipedia assignment this semester is to work in teams to create a Wikipedia assignment plan for an undergraduate course. We’ll discuss the details in class on February 29th, and the assignment plan is due on April 11th.

Final Project Proposal and Proof of Concept: Your final project is to turn in a proposal for a larger project, that includes a proof of concept. Your goal is to convince us that your proposal is relevant and productive AND that you can actually pull it off. The details will be discussed on March 21st. We will have three days of presentations at the end of the semester, and the written proposal will be due during finals period.