Group Assignment

The Group Assignment is a group research assignment. You will be assigned to one of four topics. You will research the topic and present the results of your research on the class wiki, Nip-eScrawl.

There will be six people assigned to each topic. You are free to create, delete, and edit any pages that fall under your topic. You will be assigned an anonymous handle for the web site. As such, authorship is anonymous: you will not assign your name to anything you write as part of the group, though the wiki software will keep track of your anonymous handle and the instructor will be able to identify each student. You should feel free to edit, augment, and even remove material that others in your group have contributed (and they are free to do the same with your material). I recommend you do not get together with other members of your group to plan or even discuss the wiki project: I would prefer the whole project be conducted in this “virtual” environment. You are welcome to set up discussions on the wiki site itself with other members of your group.

It is recommended that you visit the wiki site at least a couple of times each week during the assignment. Because of a bug in the wiki software, you cannot receive notifications when pages are updated. There is a communication web site that you can use to send an email to the other members of your group. Use it to send an email when you have added something significant to the wiki that you would like the others to look at.

The wiki is divided into four namespaces, each representing one of the topics. (Note: the namespace name is the keyword name for the topic preceded by “2014_”.) Only members of a particular group can contribute material to the corresponding namespace. Everyone is welcome to view/read pages of any group/namespace. You can navigate through the namespaces using the menu box in the upper-right part of the screen. Please ask your instructor for help with using the wiki if you are having trouble.

AugReality	Augmented reality in Digital Humanities Examine the use of augmented reality in Digital Humanities. Define the term. Describe and categorize various projects that use augmented reality. List and describe several academic essays or books that describe implementations of augmented reality (in Digital Humanities research). Evaluate the usefulness of augmented reality in scholarly research.
LitMaps	Digital maps in literary studies Examine the use of digital maps in the academic study of literature. Describe and categorize various projects that use digital maps. List and describe several academic essays or books that describe implementations of digital maps in literary studies. Identify two or three important scholars who talk about the use of maps in literary studies. Evaluate the usefulness of digital maps in literary studies research.
EnviroGames	The environment in digital games Examine the various representations of the environment (both natural and artificial) in several digital games (such as Minecraft) where the environment is a significant component to the game: discuss its significance. List and describe several academic essays or books that study the representation and significance of the environment in digital games.
TwitterPed	Twitter use in pedagogy Examine the use of Twitter in high school and university classrooms and class-related activities. List and describe several academic essays or books that describe pedagogical implementations of Twitter. Categorize, describe, and evaluate the different types of uses.

For each of the above four areas, you are expected to research the topics, focussing on academic work in the area. A good strategy might be for each member of the group to be responsible for one academic essay or book related to the topic, in addition to the more general research and reporting work needed. You are not expected to produce an exhaustive list of academic projects and studies related to your topic, but you should have a good overview and and some more focussed details.

Feel free to include links to other web sites. As always, do not reproduce words or ideas from others without acknowledging the source (and placing words in quotation marks).

The instructor will assign user names and passwords: do not bother trying to create your own. You are welcome to change your password at any time. The password that you had for the Poe Stories web site will work here, but your login name is different. If you change your password on the wiki site, the change will not be reflected on other sites.

The assignment ends on the night of March 21st, at which point logins to the wiki will be disabled and evaluation will commence. A grade will be assigned to each group, and all members will share the grade. This grade, however, may be raised or lowered for individual students to reflect the inordinate value of the contributions by individuals within the group. There will also be penalties for students who do not do at least a minimal amount of work, according to the following schedule:

• A student who contributes nothing to his/her assigned namespace pages by the end of February 21st will receive a 5% penalty to his/her individual grade.
• A student who contributes nothing to his/her assigned namespace pages between February 22nd and the end of March 7th will receive a 10% penalty to his/her individual grade (in addition to the 5% penalty, if applicable).
• A student who contributes nothing to his/her assigned namespace pages between March 8th and the end of March 21st will receive a 10% penalty to his/her individual grade (in addition to any previous penalties, if applicable).
• A student who contributes nothing at all to his/her assigned namespace pages will receive a grade of zero for the assignment.

Note that contributions to discussions on the wiki site do not count as contributions to the assigned namespace pages.

Virtual-space research collaboration is the guiding principle of this assignment.