Class participation (10%)
I expect active participation from all students enrolled in the course, in the class, in the course chat and in the collective bibliography. This means participating in the attending class (whatever form it takes) and participating in discussions. This course will require experimentation with new digital environments and a willingness to try, and perhaps sometimes struggle, with new modes of working and studying. Participation can be boosted in excess of 10% through rich engagement in the chat and bibliography (Zotero).
Responses 20%
There will be 4 written responses in the research blog (they are graded on a 10 point scale, but make up 30% of your total grade). Unless noted, a typical response will be about 750 words plus several well chosen visuals. They will be either reflective pieces on a conceptual issue that has arisen in class or a lab report-style write-up and critique about a project or experiment carried out. The main point here is to learn to communicate ideas in an open forum and to develop a voice for public, web-based, media-rich writing. Students who are proficient in other blogging platforms or sustainable web development may opt for those. UPDATE end of November : You may do either response 3 or 4 and receive full credit. You may also submit both and I will take the highest grade.
Two assignments 30% (15% each)
These two assignments will be open ended, web-based applications of the work that we have done in the rest of the course. These are typically about 1500 words each.
Final assignment 40%
This final assignment is an exercise in which you will create a storymap using digitized cultural collections and spatial data about an Arab city. It will be done in groups of two students.