Final Paper Assignment for Core II
Your final work for Core 2 is to produce a project proposal that includes a basic proof of concept. Yes, we 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: the ITP Independent Study.
Your project proposal should be 12-15 pages in length. You are welcome to follow the guidelines for the NEH Digital Humanities grants, or another discipline specific set of requirements. This proposal will be the basis for 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
- an environmental scan of projects that operate in a similar technical, scholarly, or pedagogical space as yours
- a clear, relevant, and detailed work plan or project timeline
- proof that you have a strategy to complete the project within one semester
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 if relevant. We’ll share a grading rubric with you in class on April 30.
The proof that you can complete the project can incorporate 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 an online resource for images for use in teaching theatre courses, one person created a record for one image in Omeka.
- 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).
- When proposing a game, a student might present a draft of the game’s narrative, or present one element of its gameplay.
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 14 or 21. These will be 10 minute presentations, with 10 minutes for discussion/feedback. We will invite all ITP faculty to join us, though we don’t expect all will be able to make it for both of the days.
Here is the grading rubric.
The text will be due May 24th. Please upload it as a Word or PDF (or other text) file to the Files area of our course group. We will not give extensions.