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Project Management and Ethical Collaboration for Humanists

Quinn Dombrowski, DLCL ATS

Winter 2024

Introduction

The last time this class was taught was winter 2020, and the last session -- and the all-important final dice rolls for the RPG component -- took place on Zoom. Where last time the class was framed as simply "project management and ethical collaboration", it is impossible to attempt the same now, without acknowledging the ongoing instability and uncertainty that shape a world in which we continue to do projects and collaborate, even though the rules, expectations, and needs around us keep changing in ways that have a meaningful impact on the people and even the materials we work with. From the COVID-19 pandemic and its regular aftershocks, to institutions navigating "return-to-office" policies and how that intersects with precarious labor conditions, to devastating wars that have upended lives on-site and in diasporas, to the anxiety and possibilities unleashed by AI, to cyberattacks that have destroyed key cultural heritage infrastructures, to the challenges of aligning work with ever-changing university priorities, doing a collaborative digital project is hard in ways that were less prominent before.

In this class, we will grapple with all the pieces of doing a collaborative, digital scholarship project that aren't technical (though we may touch on some technical bits as well). For the person running a project, these issues can easily take up most of their time working on the project. It's not what gets people excited about the project -- it's administration, not scholarship as such -- but it's important to approach it with thought and care in order to have a project that runs in a way that you can feel good about, regardless of the tangible outcome. To accomplish this, we will be learning about project management and ethical collaboration through readings and in-class discussion, but more importantly, we will actually be trying to put these concepts into practice. The major assignment of the class involves developing a project management plan for a project you care about (which may be framed as a grant proposal, a business pitch, or a handbook for executing a project, depending on your interests). The project can be imaginary (preparing a grant application for your dream project or product) or real (finishing a dissertation, applying for jobs, engaging in activism). Whether or not you carry out the plan in real life, the experience of going through the steps of project planning will make it less daunting to do the same if you ever find yourself in a position where lightweight project management skills are useful.

Finally, about half of most class sessions will be spent on the DH RPG, where you will play a character of your own creation who is involved in some capacity with a digital humanities project that the junior faculty character initiates. You will make decisions about how your character spends their time every month, roll dice to determine their success or failure at skilled actions, and navigate power and other interpersonal dynamics with characters played by your classmates and supplemental characters played by the instructor or visiting guests. Each character has their own goals in addition to the DH project (e.g. the junior faculty character rolls for tenure at the end of the game), and we will play the game over the span of about one year of game-world time. The DH RPG is a simulation, an exercise in empathy and imagination, and a collaborative act of narrative-building. There is no more "winning" the DH RPG than there is in real life. In the context of the game, characters are expected to act towards one another in good faith, acknowledging that this may sometimes result in choices that end up being detrimental to some or all of the characters. The DH RPG will provide ample opportunities to explore and experience how modern research universities work in practice, and we'll also discuss how some of these scenarios may play out differently in a corporate context.

Grading

This course will be offered for between 3-5 credits, and for either a grade or credit/no credit. Students who wish to take it as part of the DH Minor must choose 5 credits and must take it for a letter grade.

The course will use contract grading, where students choose what grade they wish to receive, and write a contract (within defined parameters) at the beginning of the quarter that lays out the requirements for receiving that grade. Individual assignments will receive extensive feedback but will be graded as accept / needs revision. Students will have one week to revise assignments that need revision to fulfill the terms of their contract. If a student is unable to fulfill the terms of their original contract, they will meet with the instructor and sign a new contract for a different grade. Parameters for different level grade contracts for each of the credit levels are included in an appendix to this syllabus.

COVID and related considerations

We are starting this quarter with the highest concentration of COVID in Palo Alto wastewater since Santa Clara County started monitoring it in late 2020. There's plenty of awful non-COVID things going around, too. It's unclear what our classroom situation will be like, particularly with regard to ventilation. For these reasons, please wear a mask during class -- I'll always have extras with me if you need one.

If you're not feeling well, please do not come to class-- just email me and I can arrange for a Zoom link if you're feeling up for joining remotely. If not, send me an email with some thoughts on the readings for that course session in order for it to not count as an absence.

The RPG is designed to be resilient even if one or more character(s) stop participating for a month or two of in-game time, but if you'd like to send guidance about what you want your character to be doing during a class session where you'll be absent, just send instructions (specific or general) to the instructor and someone will play your character for you and update the course DH RPG Google Doc with details.

Because everyone feels overwhelmed sometimes, all students get two no-questions-asked days that they can invoke when they haven't been able to do the readings in advance, or need to miss class (without making up the work for that session) for any reason.

Week 1: Welcome

This week we'll be laying the groundwork for the class: getting to know each other and our own goals for the class, talking about how the DH RPG works, setting up grading contracts, choosing a project for the DH RPG, and creating our characters.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024: Introductions

Who am I? Who are you? Why are you here, and what are the projects you're passionate about? We'll cover how the class is going to work, contract grading, and some ideas for potential projects for the DH RPG.

Thursday, January 11, 2024: Roles and Rolls

Assignment due: Grading contract

We'll talk in greater depth about the DH RPG, and how it models institutional roles. Students will pick their character types. We'll also get started together on character type customization.

Week 2: What are we doing, and why?

Tuesday, January 16, 2024: Project Management

Assignment due: Draft character sheet

We'll go over the draft character sheet you've created and make any necessary modifications before our game begins. We'll also talk about where your character was in 2020, and how the past few years have impacted them. We'll also talk about how to pick a project that's meaningful for you as the basis of some of your work for this class, as well as the big-picture "what", "why", and "how" of project management in a DH context.

Thursday, January 18, 2024: Collaboration in Theory and Practice

Assignment due: Finding Your Purpose workbook, exercise p. 11-12, assessment (p. 13-18), and goals (p. 19)

We'll talk about some of the reasons why people collaborate, the value of charters as a way of defining project boundaries and agreements. We'll also talk through how to adapt some of these more formal charters to projects with fewer collaborators, and when charters don't really make sense.

Week 3: The humanities and the world

Assignment due: Narrative for your project proposal

Tuesday, January 23, 2024: Our Relationship to Institutions

Institutions are complex organisms with their own needs, priorities, and histories. How people act in an organizational capacity can sometimes differ from their choices in a personal capacity. We'll draw on several examples to consider the interplay between "institutional hat" and "personal hat" for people in different university roles.

Thursday, January 25, 2024: How Does the University Work Anyways?

Assignment due: Lineage visualization (p. 24) in Finding Your Purpose workbook

We'll look at the organizational structure of Stanford and talk about different roles and responsibilities. What does a department chair do, vs. a dean, vs. the provost, vs. a president? How do people end up with those jobs? What traits make for a good leader in these different roles?

  • Henry Farrell, Who really runs the university (illustrated with muppets). (blog post, August 8, 2023)

  • David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele, University budgets are moral documents. (Modern Medieval, January 23, 2024)

  • John Lombardi, "Ch. 6: Research", "Ch. 7: Faculty" from How Universities Work, 2013.

  • Robert Scott, "Ch 5: Strategic Leadership" from How University Boards Work: A Guide for Trustees, Officers, and Leaders in Higher Education, 2018.

  • Brian Mitchell and W. Joseph King, "Ch. 1: Governance and Management", "Ch. 2: Finance" from How to Run a College: A Practical Guide for Trustees, Faculty, Administrators, and Policymakers, 2018.

Week 4: Visible and Invisible Labor

Tuesday, January 30, 2024: The Collaborators You See

Once you have collaborators, how do you acknowledge their work? How do they acknowledge yours? How do context and power affect these choices?

Thursday, February 1, 2024: Project management approaches and techniques

Assignment due: Work plan for your project

How you decide to manage your project will have an impact on both the day-to-day work and interactions with many different kinds of collaborators.

Procedia Computer Science. Vol. 181, 2021.

Week 4: Other ways of working

Tuesday, February 6, 2024: Imagine If This Worked

Assignment due: "Communities" activities (p. 29-31) from Finding Your Purpose workbook. 2021.

We'll discuss how to transform a charter into a set of project milestones and goals. We'll also talk about how coming up with a plan intersects with the reality of engaging in "Research Witchcraft", as well as the labor conditions of academia.

Thursday, February 8, 2024: What If This Worked Differently?

Assignment due: Data management plan for your project

We'll discuss the DH RPG project and consider what would change in a different set of circumstances. As a step towards doing this, we'll compare reflections on the tenure process from two DH scholars at very different institutions, as well as concrete steps graduate students can take to decide on the right next steps for them.

Week 6: Money

Tuesday, February 13, 2024: How Do We Pay for All This?

Assignment due: "Pleasures Story", p. 41 in Finding Your Purpose workbook.

We'll talk about how to come up with a budget for a project, and how budgets influence project plans (and vice versa). We'll play through September and October in the simulation.

Thursday, February 15, 2024: Another Perspective on DH Project Management

The Slavic AATSEEL conference, which Quinn and a couple students will be attending, takes place starting today. There'll be an optional coffee chat opportunity with Alix Keener, the Digital Scholarship Librarian / CESTA ATS in lieu of class.

Week 7: People

Tuesday, February 20, 2024: Managing People vs Managing Projects

Assignment due: Budget for your project + budget narrative

We'll talk about the differences between managing a project, and managing people (whose job may include doing projects), along with common working conditions in libraries and even tenure-track positions.

Thursday, February 22, 2024: Careers Change

We'll talk about public humanities, career changes, and how people pursue the big-picture work of "the humanities" outside tenure-track jobs.

Assignment due: "Values/Needs" (p. 45), "Affirmations" (p. 47), "Start/Stop/Continue" (p. 49) in Finding Your Purpose workbook.

Week 8: Digitization and Change

Tuesday, February 27, 2024: The Collaborators You May Not See

We'll get a tour of the digitization lab in Green Library and then have a virtual guest visit from Dinah Handel, Digitization Services Manager at Stanford Libraries, who will talk about the realities of digitization and labor. We'll talk about these issues in the context of all the infrastructure (broadly defined) underpinning DH projects, and some of the challenges that other "invisible" participants experience.

Thursday, February 29, 2024: Plans Change

We'll discuss what happens when the plan you've developed and budgeted for encounters major obstacles, including staff turnover, as well as what project management looks like over the whole life cycle of a project.

Week 9: Ending and Continuing

Tuesday, March 5, 2024: Projects End

Assignment due: Sustainability plan for your project

We'll talk about what goes into wrapping up a project successfully, and circumstances where you have to settle for a less ideal conclusion. We'll also cover data management plans as one component of that wrap-up.

Thursday, March 7, 2024: Carrying On

Assignment due: "Statement of purpose" (p. 58-60) in Finding Your Purpose workbook.

We'll talk about where we find ourselves now, approaching spring 2024. How is the current state of the world more broadly affecting higher education writ large? How is it affecting your own plans for the future? What steps can you take to build a support community for yourself?

Week 10: Wrap-up

Tuesday, March 12, 2024: Wrap-Up

It's always good project management to plan in some buffer time because things often take longer than we plan. This is that day, for catching up on anything we didn't get to in the discussion or simulation.

Thursday, March 14, 2024: Benediction

We'll talk about what we learned this quarter, and debrief the character outcomes from the simulation. We'll also cover next steps for how and where you might apply the material from this class in different contexts.

Friday, March 22, 2024

All remaining work due.

Assignments

  • Simulation reflections: Submit two one-paragraph reflections on where things are at in the DH RPG, from your character's perspective and from another character's. How do they feel about the DH project? What are they excited about? What are they worried about? (It is entirely possible that neither of these things is related to the project.) These simulation reflections are a practical exercise in empathy and imagination.

  • Finding Your Purpose workbook: This workbook offers a set of provocations for thinking about your academic work in the context of a university and beyond. Whether you are planning on a career in academia or not, the questions, prompts, and activities in the workbook give you a chance to connect the project management skills we are discussing in this class with the work that you actually care about. The answers to the questions can be rather personal, and you're not required to turn in your responses, but we'll be discussing the activities in class where you can share as much or as little as you're comfortable with.

  • Your own project proposal: Throughout the quarter, you'll be writing different components of a proposal (such as a grant proposal, business pitch, or another multi-faceted document that covers many of the major topics we're discussing around project planning), so that by the end of the quarter, you've gone through the whole process of proposal writing.

  • Simulation grant proposal: A grant proposal isn't something you need to spend weeks or months writing. To give you more practice writing grant proposals, you will write a DH grant proposal for the project used in the simulation. (If you have another personal idea for a DH project that you'd like to write a grant proposal for instead to make it more meaningful, that's also okay!)

Contract parameters

Students will write their own contracts for the grade they want to receive, using the parameters below. The contract allows students to set their own goals for how much they want to invest in this class, and hold themselves accountable for it. Because of the requirements of university degree programs, contracts have to map to grades, but that shouldn't get in the way of students' goals or learning. There is some overlap in the parameters for different grades at different credit levels; a student taking this course for 3 credits who wants to focus on this class may end up putting in as much work for their A as a student taking it for 5 credits who has other priorities this quarter. This is "a feature, not a bug", as is said about software: the 3-credit student will have a structure to hold themselves accountable for engaging with the class to the extent they want, and the 5-credit student will do enough work to get their desired grade given the university's expectations of how much work should go into that grade at that credit level.

With contract grading, individual assignments get feedback and comments, but aren't given a letter grade. Assignments are evaluated as either "accepted" or "needs revisions". (Don't stress about an assignment needing revisions -- in reality, most things do need revisions!) You'll have a week to revise the assignment and re-submit it; for the final assignment, you'll have as much time as there is left before grades are due.

A-grade contract parameters at different credit levels

Assignment 5 4 3
Missable classes 2 3 3
Short simulation reflections 6 4-5 3-4
Finding Your Purpose workbook All exercises All exercises All but one exercise
Your grant proposal Narrative, work plan, budget, sustainability plan, data management plan Narrative, work plan, budget, sustainability plan, data management plan Narrative, work plan, budget, sustainability plan, data management plan
Simulation grant proposal Work plan, budget, sustainability plan, data management plan Work plan, budget, sustainability plan Work plan, budget

B-grade contract parameters at different credit levels

Assignment 5 4 3
Missable classes 3 4 4
Short simulation reflections 4-5 3-4 2-3
Finding Your Purpose workbook Skip one exercise Skip two exercises Skip three exercises
Your grant proposal Narrative, work plan, budget, sustainability plan Narrative, work plan, budget, sustainability plan Narrative, work plan, budget
Simulation grant proposal Work plan, budget, sustainability plan Work plan, budget Budget

Note: Accept/revise decisions for simulation white paper / write-up and final grant proposal will be made taking into account the contract grade level (i.e. if you've done "B-quality" work, you won't be asked to make revisions to get it up to "A-quality".)