Tag Archives: assignments

Pamela’s Proposals (For the Midterm)

Proposal #1: Mapping for Humanists

Introductory Paragraph
One of the most attractive types of project for humanists interested in experimenting with digital tools is mapping. The software is readily available (the Graduate Center and other CUNY schools provide institutional access to ArcGIS and there are open source versions as well, in addition to accessible online tools) and the end product is has clear use as a research or teaching tool. There is a workshop in the CUNY system on ArcGIS but it assumes that the mapper will be working from existing data files, like census information. However, most humanists are working from information that does not already exist in appropriate file formats, if it available electronically at all. I propose to present a mapping workshop for graduate students in the humanities who have little or no experience with GIS software or online mapping tools. The workshop would cover how to identify the kind of information that is map-able, how to get that information into a format that can be used, and turning that information into a basic map.

Personas
1. Jill is a level one Art History student at the Graduate Center. She has no mapping experience and no special computer skills. She has no particular project in mind, but she has heard of digital mapping and is trying to get the lay of the land and see what kinds of research she might be interested in.
2. Alex is a level two student in English at the Graduate Center. He has no mapping experience and but is confident about his computer skills generally. While he doesn’t have a particular mapping project in mind, he has some ideas about research in his area of study that might be interesting to map out. He’s trying to get a sense of how much time and effort mapping would really take.
3. Beth is a level two student in Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center. She has been reading about digital mapping on her own, but has not yet made a serious attempt at mapping anything. She has a definite mapping project in mind and she wants to make sure that she is on the right track before getting started.
4. Kevin is a level three theatre student at the Graduate Center. He is in the process of writing his dissertation. He has no mapping experience but he has some programming experience and considers himself skilled with computers. He is less interested in starting a particular mapping project than in developing skills to that might help in his upcoming job search.

Use Case Scenario
Students attending this workshop would hear about it through the Graduate Center (by email and on flyers in student lounges) and would use it to develop a basic understanding of mapping tools.

Scope (Full-fledged)
In an ideal world, I would present a 2-part workshop in a computer lab at the Graduate Center. Each part would run 2 hours and they would occur on different days. The first part would focus on data preparation for ArcGIS and comparable open source GIS software. In addition to talking about the kind of information that might lend itself to mapping, we would cover creating tables that can be converted into vector files, and finding available maps with georeferencing. The second part of the workshop would take place 1-2 weeks after the first. In it, we would use ArcGIS to create a map from sample data provided by me. This would be a map relating to my own research in theatre, and thus model the mapping of a humanistic research project. Participants would also have the option of working from their own data.

Time Frame (full-fledged)
I anticipate that I could accomplish this project in 8-9 months. At this point I have only made two maps using ArcGIS, both practice projects using data already in the appropriate format. I would need some time to learn how to convert tables into vector files, and some practice building maps from my own data. I would also need to familiarize myself with at least one open source GIS option, probably Quantum GIS. Because of my current obligations I don’t think that I could realistically give skill acquisition enough attention to become an effective teacher until the spring semester is over.

Scope (small-scale)
A smaller scale version of this idea would involve a single workshop on mapping, running 2-2 ½ hours. We would cover the kind of research that best lends itself to mapping projects, and talk about how to gather data. Then we would put together a map from sample data provided by me using Google Maps and Google Fusion Tables. We would wrap up by discussing more complex mapping tools and where to get help learning them.

Time Frame (small-scale)
I believe that I could put a workshop like this together in 5-6 months. I have not yet used Google Fusion Tables to create a map but I have been through the tutorial on the University of Virginia Library’s page and my experience with other Google products suggests that it wouldn’t be a struggle to achieve sufficient skill to teach. The more time I had to work, of course, the more mastery I could gain. In this case I would like to have completed 4-5 maps as examples, one of which we could use as the workshop example.

Proposal #2: Improving the CUNY Graduate Center Theatre Project

Introductory Paragraph
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, in association with the Theatre Department at the Graduate Center, maintains a database of around 10,000 image of theatre for educational use. The database is a great resource for theatre students but even within the department not everyone knows about it, and few actively use it. The site was recently changed over to Omeka, making it a lot more functional, which provides a good opportunity to revisit what it can do and be for GC theatre students. My proposal is to survey use of the database, and also investigate what the Segal Center and the professor overseeing the collection would optimally like to see from it. This would lead to one or more strategies to increase student use and/or improve usability that I could then implement.

Personas (users of the database)
1. Stephanie is level one theatre student at the Graduate Center. She is looking for images of actress Sarah Bernhardt as part of her research for a seminar paper. She plans to attach these images to her paper when she turns it in.
2. Joe is a level two theatre student at the Graduate Center. He is noodling around in the image collection looking for inspiration as he tries to come up with a topic to go with an interesting call for papers for a conference in his area of specialty.
3. Allison is an alumna of the theatre program at the Graduate Center. She is looking for images of Japanese Noh masks to add to a PowerPoint for the Introduction to Theatre class she is teaching.
4. Dr. C is a professor of Theatre at the Graduate Center. He is pulling images for PowerPoint presentations for a class that he teaches on scenic design. He is searching for specific images from a variety of places and periods and they need to be high enough resolution to maintain good detail when projected in class.

Use Case Scenario
Use of the image collection is restricted to current PhD students in theatre and alumni, as well as faculty. Students, alumni, and faculty use the database to find images for research and teaching purposes.

4. Scope (full-fledged)
A fully realized version of this project would have two parts. First would be the usability study. With the permission of the relevant people at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and the professor overseeing the image collection, I would send a questionnaire to current theatre students, alumni (last 8 years), and theatre faculty asking if and how they use it, how they would like to use it, and what improvements they would make to the site. After gathering the data I would choose, in consultation with the Segal Center, one large or two smaller changes to the site to improve usability and execute them.

5. Time Frame (full-fledged)
The major task for this project would be to learn Omeka. I have no experience with it, but from what I’ve read it is fairly intuitive. I have solid HTML and am improving my CSS, so I would guess that in 3-4 months I could learn Omeka pretty thoroughly and in 5-6 months I could get a handle on basic customization. I would also want to research usability studies. I know what kind of information that I am looking for but I don’t have formal experience designing surveys so I would want to make sure that I am asking the right questions in the best possible format. This, plus actually doing the survey, could be done at the same time as learning Omeka. If I chose improvements that would take 2-3 months to execute I anticipate that I could complete this in 9-10 months.

6. Scope (small scale)
The smaller scale version of the project would be very similar, but with more modest ambitions. I would start with a survey of current students, alumni (last 5 years), and theatre faculty. To do this simply, I could use Survey Monkey and email a link to the questionnaire. From the results, I would choose one straightforward change/improvement that I could make to the image collection to improve usability.

7. Time Frame (small scale)
The time frame for the smaller scale project can’t be shortened too much, because I still need to learn Omeka. With a simpler survey, and choosing a simpler project to execute I could likely finish the project in 7-8 months.

Navigation Tweaks

To Kelly’s point in her last post, we’re witnessing taxonomy vs. folksonomy in action on our course site as we all strive to pick the most appropriate categories and tags for our posts. I think we should keep on as we have been, though I do have one change to propose. In order to keep the details (that is, instructions) for your assignments easily findable, I created a new category named Assignment Details that Michael and I will use for your assignment instructions only. How does that sound?

(And in order to keep the top navigation bar to one line in a desktop browser, I moved the Course Group link to the right sidebar, just in case you’re looking for it.)

blindfulness

why is it I keep losing track of the posts?

It took me a few minutes to find the exact description for this week’s assignment… and then I have an extra ten minutes looking for MIchael’s post on personas, including the search window on the top right and nothing…

I know that if you know how to look for things within the site they are all there, but at the same time, they aren’t, or I am still unsure of how to look for things.

have a lovely day

 

K.

Kelly’s 1-paragraph project ideas

pardon the tardiness… orals has hijacked my brain.

Kelly’s 1 – paragraph Project ideas

 

  1.     Erotic niche Create an erotic database from feeds. It will be a user-generated database where people go to in order to find “good erotic literary material”. The way it would work since it will be UGC is that whenever someone wants to ‘add’ a certain text and comment it, they get a certification, or star system (a bit like vine), or an approval after several ‘let’s see’ posts just to clarify that they are good critic-readers-reviewers (and don’t think ‘Fifty Shades’ is it!). The website would be subsidized by websites which sell the said books. It would not be restricted by languages.
  2.   Wiki-Spanish Tap into the wiki community in Mexico and promote real time projects with higher education institutions in order to put Spanish Wiki up to speed with the English one. Promote workshops in order to teach teachers how to edit so they can teach students how to do it as well.
  3.    Literature for all  My goal in teaching world-literature-requirement classes for non English majors is to make them fall in love with literature. I use not very traditional tech based methods which seem to work. I would create an app for teachers who want to tap into non traditional pedagogical methodology. It would be an exchange system so that teachers who upload assignments don’t feel they are being ripped off. So you give one, you take one. The assignments would be starred and it would create an ‘honor system’ in which you give credit to whom credit is due.

 

Christina’s Three Project Ideas

Supporting the Transition to College: Implementation of a Summer Workshop Series for Students with Autism
Students with autism often experience significant stress when transitioning from a supportive high school setting to the more independent college setting. While stress and anxiety have been identified as factors associated with the high student drop-out rate, no colleges have created evidence-based intervention programming to support students with autism during this transition. The proposed research will design, implement, and evaluate a summer training focused on classroom readiness, social skills, self-advocacy skills, and computer-mediated communication skills that is designed to support students with autism as they transition into college. Twenty students will be recruited to participate in this four-week workshop. A five-phase, quasi-experimental pre/post-test design employing focus groups, behavioral assessments, and standardized measures will be used to examine the program’s impact on classroom behaviors, computer-mediated communication skills, self-advocacy skills, anxiety, social support, loneliness, self-esteem, depression, and student adaptation to college life. This study will instruct future programming targeting students with autism as they meet the challenges of an increasingly complex online and offline college social environment.

Creation of a “Teaching Hub” for Graduate Student Instructors in Psychology
Doctoral students enrolled in the CUNY campuses often teach one or more undergraduate classes in the CUNY system. However, preparing to teach a new class for the first time can be a daunting task and there are few teaching of psychology websites with open-access availability for students. The Graduate Center was given the opportunity to host the Graduate Student Teaching Association (GSTA) for the next few years. This responsibility comes with an out-dated GSTA website, half-created social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook), and few in-person resources such as teaching activity guides and sample textbooks. The proposed project will take full advantage of the GSTA’s potential by transforming the nature of the online website or by creating a new website that houses teaching resources such as activities, textbook reviews, and syllabi. This website will be accessible through the CUNY system initially, but may later expand to open access of these resources.

There’s an App for That! Bringing the Experimental Psychology Lab to your Mobile Device
Similar to other introductory classes, undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology classes often struggle to fully understand many of the historical experiments used consistently in psychological research. In these introductory classes, students are expected to learn a multitude of researchers and theorists, in addition to memorizing the experiments the researchers conducted from within a framework of their research questions and chosen methodology. Class time is limited and students may be required to look up an experiment mentioned in class after formal class hours, or students may want to learn more about recent expansions/modifications made to the original experiment. The proposed project will design and pilot-test a mobile app that searches through YouTube videos for illustrations of appropriate psychology experiments. This app will be based on the number of “hits” received on the YouTube page illustrating a given experiment, since higher quality videos tends to receive more hits.