English 4400/5400 Digital Humanities. Forms of assessment
Here are descriptions of the main forms of assessment in this course.
Contents
Blogs
Most weeks you will be expected to write a blog entry on your reading and/or research for the course, interesting examples of digital technology used in the context of humanities or arts research, teaching, or practice, and the like. See also my more general page, About blogs
Blogs are graded on a pass/fail basis. If you write an acceptable blog each week, you will receive the full 20%.
You may also earn a Distinction/Great Distinction badge for your blogs:
- Distinction: An average of 1.5 acceptable blogs per week with no more than 3 in any one week.
- Great Distinction: An average of 2 acceptable blogs each week with no more than 3 in any one week.
“Extra” blogs used to earn badges will be held to a higher standard of relevance and content than your regular weekly blog.
Seminar leadership
Working in small groups, students will be expected to lead discussion in one seminar in the semester. These seminars will follow the guest lectures and will be based on the guest lecturer’s topic. As part of this leadership, students will be responsible for preparing and circulating a reading list of relevant blogs, articles, projects, etc. in advance of the seminar and proposing topics and examples for discussion as required.
Seminar leadership is graded on an Appropriate/Inappropriate/Fail basis. A Great distinction badge is available for truly exceptional work.
Lab assignment
The lab assignment has two parts (to be discussed further in class):
- Working by hand (i.e. using Notepad or similar), construct a small HTML-based web page and control its appearance using CSS.
- Choose an interesting (short) textual object and digitise it using the techniques and approaches discussed in class. Publish this digitisation to your class webspace.
Lab assignments are graded on a pass/fail basis. A Great Distinction badge is available for truly exceptional work.
Research Prospectus
Write a brief (1000-2000 words) proposal describing the research project you intend to finish by the end of the course. Place your research proposal in context by citing projects that treat a similar topic or use similar technology and/or any relevant secondary literature. Describe how your project will build on and differentiate itself from this contextual material.
Your proposal will be evaluated on the basis of its feasibility, relevance, and the quality and thoroughness of your contextual discussion. The prospectus is graded on a pass/fail basis. A Great Distinction badge is available for truly exceptional work.
Final project poster and presentation
Prepare a single slide and 1 minute description of your research project for discussion in class. Students will present on their projects and then some time will be set aside for discussion.
The posters and presentation is graded on a pass/fail basis. A Great Distinction badge is available for truly exceptional work.
Final project
Prepare a substantial project of relevance to the course on a topic and in a form of your choosing. “Substantial” in this case means an essay of approximately 20 pages or a piece of work of equivalent scope and effort: work other than an essay is quite normal in this course and welcome. Possible projects might include a social media experiment or analysis, a digital edition or text of some kind, lesson plans or similar work. Please feel free to discuss your ideas with me before hand.
Seminar leadership is graded on an Appropriate/Inappropriate/Fail basis. Badges for Distinction and Great Distinction are available for work that excels.
