Roles & Responsibilities

COPLACDigital faculty are responsible for the following tasks: 

Site Development

The COPLACDigital Program Associate will create WordPress installations for the course, the project, and each student in each class. The students will be responsible for building/creating their own individual blog sites. The co-teachers are responsible for creating/building a course site and a project site in the COPLACDigital domain. In order to remain part of the COPLACDigital website, all project sites built by students and co-teachers must meet the standards of quality and academic rigor set out in the Handbook. If sites do not meet with the project’s standards, we reserve the right to remove the project from the COPLACDigital website.

1. The course site (http://course.coursetitle.coplacdigital.org/) will include:
   • General information on the class and the project.
   • Course syllabus.
   • Contributors section with links to each team project.
   • Blog page that incorporates the posts from student blogs.
   • A list of/links to course readings and sites.
   • A list of/links to relevant scholarly sources.
   • Project contracts for each student team.
   • Links to relevant technology how-to resources.
   • Tabs to other relevant information/sources for the course.
2. The project site (http://coursetitle.coplacdigital.org/) will include:
   • A “splash page,” or landing page, created by the co-teachers, that introduces visitors to the project and its objectives. Should have a link to the course page and links to each student team’s project page.
   • Other project site pages should include an “About” page, credits, and other resources such as a general timeline, map(s), or other features that are common to each project site.
   • The COPLAC and COPLACDigital logos and Mellon Foundation Logo, linked to their respective websites, along with the Project Site’s logo.

When planning and laying out your sites, keep in mind that the site will be accessible to the public on the internet. And, we need to consider accessibility from two different perspectives:

• Websites as scholarship accessible to the general public: These projects are “outward-facing,” therefore, make sure that the language and concepts within the site are accessible to the general public. The site should be logically organized, easy to navigate, and visually appealing. Pages should balance text and images so that they hold the website visitors’ attention and move the audience from one page to the next. The text should be well-written in terms of grammar, syntax, and style, and each page should demonstrate depth of research and analysis while using minimal discipline-specific “jargon.” Any unfamiliar vocabulary should be defined for the audience.

• Making the sites accessible to persons with disabilities: It is a best practice to make any public web content accessible to persons with disabilities. In order to make the content accessible to those who have vision and hearing loss, videos can be captioned and accompanied by text/audio descriptions, and visual information can be accompanied by text descriptions (known as alt text). Here are some helpful links for more information:
  • “Accessibility” section of the UNC Asheville Style Guide from Publications and Marketing
  • Accessibility guide from UNC Asheville’s Teaching and Learning with Technology Resources page
  • WordPress themes that are “accessibility-ready”
  • Accessibility tools for WordPress, including plug-ins

For more information on designing sites and attracting an audience, see Daniel J. Cohen & Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (2006). For more on digital projects and teaching, see the Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities entries on Blogging, Design, Interface, Open, Public.

Finally, remember that the sites should be designed to last—yet, they will also, most likely, become static after your students finish building them. Although students may intend to continue monitoring and adding to their sites after the semester is over, in reality, they move on. And so do faculty. Therefore, it is best to avoid interactive components, such as question/comment sections or other plug-ins/features that may require regular mediation.

Student Recruitment and Retention

This piece of the process can be challenging. First, the course itself should be attractive to students—we will talk about the “marketing” aspects in further detail, but as you select your topic, keep in mind that you and your co-teacher should think about topics that have proven to be popular on your campuses. Play with these topics to come up with one that is easily portable to other places/campuses. The objective of these courses is to allow students to conduct traditional research in archives/special collections or other repositories, and then to create websites that tell a story with their research, while ideally connecting local individuals, institutions, and events with global issues. However, instructors who teach even the most attractive courses can have problems recruiting and retaining students. After the COPLAC office issues the initial call for student nominees, co-teachers should follow these steps to ensure that faculty and students on COPLAC campuses know about the course and how to register for it:

1. Keep in touch with the COPLAC administrator and the Mellon co-Principal Investigators to monitor nominations.
2. As student teams are nominated, send an email congratulating them and checking to see if they have questions. You may even want to schedule a phone call or Google Hangout with each student/student team, so that they can connect a face and/or a voice with you. Remember that, just like you, this course requires students to venture into unknown territory, and at some point they might have second thoughts, or they may find that another course they wanted to take conflicts with this course’s time. The earlier you contact these students, the more invested they will feel.
3. Reach out by email to the instructors of record on each campus, in order to confirm the grade submission process and deadline dates.
4. Toward the end of the semester before your class begins—before the students scatter for winter or summer break—schedule a preliminary teleconference with all student team members.
   

   It is the co-teachers' responsibility to determine the date and time of this orientation, communicate with UNC Asheville's Distance Learning Services to schedule the session, and to inform students of the scheduled session. DLS will facilitate these sessions, but it is not their responsibility to determine the date and time or to inform students about the sessions.

   Introduce yourselves to one another, go over the general goals and expectations of the class, the syllabus, and any reading or other tasks that you will want the students to complete in the first weeks of the semester. This is also a good time to discuss the logistics of begin/end dates for each institution’s semesters, contact information for faculty of record on each campus, teleconference process and what to expect from the distance mentoring format, attendance, and other course policies that you would like students to know about before the semester begins.

5. And then again, during the break and/or just before the semester begins, contact them with pre-semester reminders about teleconference logins, first-class date/time, links to the course website, etc.

Working with Local Support Staff

Faculty/Instructional Technologist/Archivist teams at your institutions: Continue to cultivate the team on your own campus by sharing teaching, research, and technology information with one another, and take this opportunity to reach out to the team on the co-teacher’s campus as well. Schedule a Google Hangout or skype session to discuss the logistics of teaching and supporting the course and how you can help support one another, given team members’ skills, strengths, and weaknesses.

Support staff at your students’ institutions: COPLAC staff/the co-Principal Investigators will send contact information for the designated instructional technologist and archivist for each school with students participating in the class. Remember that not all technologists and archivists had the advantage of attending the COPLAC convening, AND not all institutions will have instructional technologists and archivists on their campuses. Jeff and Ellen can assist faculty in determining the appropriate contacts and in reaching out to the techs and archivists on those campuses, so that they are aware of the unique nature and goals of the class. Co-teachers will be responsible for making sure that the students are aware of who they should consult if they have trouble with the technology or archival research pieces of their projects. Here are a few tips for cultivating an effective relationship between students and their institutions’ support staff:

• Don’t assume that the students know who to go to for technology or archival questions.
• If appropriate, require that students set up meetings with the instructional technology and archival/library support staff on their campuses at the beginning of the semester, so that the students feel comfortable seeking out the support staff when they need help. Devote class sessions to the logistics and etiquette of archival research, permissions and copyright, and popular digital tools. Invite one of your own instructional technologists and archivists to lead these sessions.
• Set some boundaries/guidelines about how you want your students to handle problems as they come up—what steps toward a resolution do you want them to take on their own before they ask for help from campus support personnel or you?  [We want the students to develop a sense of self-reliance, so encourage them first to use Google or the WordPress codex or other resources to find a solution, then to ask their fellow students in the class, and only then to reach out to you or to the Instructional Technologists or Archivists.]

Let Them Go!

One of the most important responsibilities that you have toward your students is to let them go—allow them the time and the space to conduct their own research and to design and construct their own websites. Give your students clear and firm deadlines for completion of certain skill-building exercises and research/website components, but don’t let course content—readings or other small assignments—overwhelm your students’ chances to work independently. Give them the tools that they need to do the job, and then get out of their way! This tactic will mean that you do not meet twice a week, every week, for example. Starting about one-third of the way through the semester, cut the class meeting frequency to one day a week, so that students have time to meet with one another, conduct their research, and construct their websites. Use the weekly class meetings for students to update you and one another on their research and website construction. Students will also value the in-class opportunities to seek advice and support from one another, and these conversations will help students to build collaborative skills and to learn from one another.

Assessment

In these courses, we will be using both formative (“assessment for learning”) and summative (“assessment of learning”) assessment. Our assessment tools are designed not only for the report to the Mellon Foundation, but also for formative use, to help us improve distance mentoring and digital liberal arts courses.  Assessment of student learning will be based on the following learning outcomes/objectives: In these classes, students will:

• Develop a familiarity with diverse methods and processes of digital liberal arts and utilization of technological resources in research, data analysis, and presentation.
• Work together cooperatively and creatively.
• Conduct research in a variety of settings and media.
• Demonstrate application of critical analysis, written, and oral communication skills through the website and oral presentations.
• Gain an understanding of the course subject and content and to effectively communicate the content to the public using digital technology.

It is important that students understand the criteria by which they will be assessed. We have provided a general rubric in the Handbook Appendix. If you wish to add a few standards in order to tailor the rubric to your course, you are welcome to do so, keeping in mind that too many items can needlessly complicate course assessment. Students in each class will be given a survey at the beginning of the course and at the end of the course. Copies of the surveys are located in the Handbook Appendix. These surveys are mandatory for all students/classes.

COPLACDigital instructional technologists are responsible for the following tasks:

Assist COPLACDigital faculty on their campus with technology needs: Although the COPLACDigital instructors are responsible for building the “home” website for their courses, instructional technologists will assist faculty with troubleshooting problems. They can also advise faculty on available/appropriate digital tools and provide training for these tools. As appropriate, instructional technologists will also work with any students on their campuses who are enrolled in a COPLACDigital course. Again, students are responsible for building their course sites, but they may need help troubleshooting problems or learning new digital tools. In some instances, faculty may invite instructional technologists to lead presentations in their COPLACDigital classes on available digital tools and other relevant matters.

Assist students enrolled in COPLACDigital courses with technology needs: Make sure that the instructional technologists understand the boundaries/guidelines that you have set for your students on handling technology problems as they come up—they should participate in students’ development of a sense of self-reliance, so ensure that instructional technologists are also encouraging students to first use Google, the WordPress codex, or other online resources to find a solution, and then reaching out to their fellow students in the class—and using faculty or instructional technologists as their last resort for resolving problems.

COPLACDigital archivists and librarians are responsible for the following tasks:

Contribute to the compilation of resources at participating COPLAC campuses, and create a network of COPLAC archivists and librarians for ongoing collaborations: Archivists will help to compile an inventory of primary collections, both in campus libraries and in local and regional archives close to their campuses, that offer compelling opportunities for student researchers. They will collaborate in the planning and development of ways to share resources in a single online platform, share experiences of working with students doing digital liberal arts in their respective institutions, and discuss strategies for making primary resources available for digital liberal arts curricula. The group will also collaborate to develop best practices and standards for COPLAC digital liberal arts projects, develop a listserv or other platform for ongoing communication, and establish a formal COPLAC archivists group to collaborate on an ongoing basis.

Assist students enrolled in COPLACDigital courses with archival research needs: Archivists will discuss with faculty the boundaries/guidelines that faculty have set for their students on primary materials research, and archivists will provide advice on framing the discussion about archival research practices.  In some instances, faculty may invite archivists to lead presentations in their COPLACDigital classes on research strategies, archive etiquette, and other relevant matters. Archivists will also work with any students on their campuses who are enrolled in a COPLACDigital course. Students are responsible for conducting their own research, but they will need guidance with regard to effective research strategies, and they may need introductions to other local or regional archives.