Project Contracts: Each student/student team will create contracts with Dr. Wallace and Dr. Welch about their projects. The research proposals are due February 10 and the final research contracts are due February 21. Each contract will need to be approved by us and may need to be tweaked before approval. Each contract must include the following elements:
Mission Statement:
- Describe the overall goal of your project and its intended audience.
- This is where you also lay out the basic structure of your site (what topics do you need to cover? How are you going to organize and present information?) This part will need to be revisited again, but start thinking through these structural and presentation challenges now!
Tools You Plan to Use:
- Obviously, you must use WordPress! Get more specific here: what theme, plugins, or layout will you incorporate? How will you make the site your own, to the best of your ability?
- What other tools do you intend to use? Will you have a timeline? If so, what program(s) will you use? Maps? Again, what program are you going to use to help you? Will you include audio? Video? Think through what you want to have on your site to help tell your story, and what tools you are going to need to make that a reality.
Schedule of Milestones (when critical pieces are ready to present)
Your research plan, which will formalize your milestone schedule, is due September 24, but give it a first pass here. Start thinking about:
- When will key pieces of your project be ready? Be mindful that you have three milestones to set for yourself, and hard deadlines to meet on those milestones (March 7, March 21), and that a complete draft of your entire site is due on April 4. The final version is due April 25. Knowing that, how are you going to break up the project?
- Set reasonable, realistic goals. Some steps or parts of your project may take longer than you anticipate (setting up interviews, for instance, may be tricky if your schedules don’t match those of your interview participants). Build yourself some buffer room.
- Who will do what? If you’re part of a research team, start formally deciding which team member is responsible for which parts of the site.
Some sample contracts and the project contract template can be found here: http://course.centuryamerica.org/project-contracts/
See here for an example of a one-student proposal.
NOTE: These contracts may be revised as the semester goes on, though only with good reason and only after discussion with Dr. Wallace and Dr. Welch.