Hand in by: 7-6-2022
The participants in this course come from a variety of fields and you all have your own interests, strengths, and opportunities for learning. This is why you will have the opportunity to focus on something that is of value in your current academic and (upcoming) professional careers. A large part of the work, responsibility, and fun in this course resides in undertaking your own, extelligent exploration of the past.
Guidelines
- The aim of this project is to create an extelligent (as in: something that is based on knowledge and aims to share knowledge) digital experience of something from the past (e.g. a past process, event, figure, building, organization, intellectual movement, etc.) using a tool of your choice, e.g.:
- Using Twine (or another game engine)
- A 3D model with Sketchup (or another 3D modelling tool)
- An interactive timeline or other visualization
- An ABM
- Something else, like a small webpage combining some of the tools explored in class or even tools you will learn (or already know) by yourself.
- This course takes a broad view of history, so don’t worry about sticking to specific time periods, source materials, or regions. Note that while the subject matter and its context is important, the aim of this project is to learn to apply a digital tool to a historical topic.
- You will need to already be or rapidly be able to become at home in the topic you choose. It is therefore best to choose a topic that has your interest.
- A safe approach would be to build out on the past you pitched for the first assignment and may have developed further during the course.
- Make sure the scope of the topic is suitable for the time allocated for this project: 40 hours, or in other words, a full work week, or in other words, actually a really short period of time. Rome wasn’t built in a week, and neither were major digital experiences like Assassin’s Creed, The Transatlantic Slavery Database, or Stanford’s Orbis.
- Pick the right tool for the job and make sure you can explain your selection. Also make sure the tool is right for your current level of technical knowledge. Allocate time to learn how to use it. Don’t wait to get familiar with a tool that you will need to undertake the project, even if it will be covered later in the course.
- a safe approach is to use one of the tools we covered during class (or one of the other digital tools you learned during your DH minor)
- Design for use by a specific group of people. Think about who would be the end user(s) of your digital experience? What would they need to undertake the experience, what can they gain from it? Tip: if you want to take your project to the next level, test this with actual people that would fall in the group of users, evaluate their user journeys, reflect on this (and if time allows) iterate on your design by adapting it based on their feedback.
Report
Accompanying your main output, a digital experience of the past, please also write a max. 1500-word report that provides:
- An introduction of the past that your experience offers and why you think it is important to unlock knowledge about it in the way you did.
- Its design, including user journey(s), a short description of the tool you picked and an argumentation for why you picked it.
- The production process: what challenges and successes did you encounter on the way, how did this change the original design. Include the results of any user evaluations you may have done here.
- A reflection on the final output and what you learned from making it.
- A timetable.
Your grade will reflect the quality of the output, the fittingness of design, your execution of it, your reflection on the workflow and final output. The entire project will be graded relative to your level of skill in digital humanities.
Teamwork
Is allowed to a maximum team size of 3. If you choose to work together for this project, everyone will share the same grade.
Note that this will increase the scope of your project as you will have as many hours x 40 available for the project as there are members in the team (i.e. team of two has an 80 hour project).
All team members should have contributed a similar amount of hours to the project, with a variance allowed of 10% (4 hours, i.e. you should put in minimally 36 and maximally 44 hours in a group project). The hour allocation should be clear from the project timetable.
A group project is a great way to work on something collaboratively and of a greater scope, but do not underestimate the challenges involved in a group project!
Re-Take
The date for the re-take of this project is 29-7. If you receive a failing grade you need to re-take the final project.