2013–2014 Praxis Program Charter

See the original 2011-12 cohort charter.

See the 2012-13 cohort charter.

Goals

Developing Skills

We aim to learn skills relevant to producing products within the digital humanities field. By the end of the year, we hope to have a basic understanding of design, coding, and project management. In addition, we hope to gain a greater understanding of digital humanities as a field.

Product

Our goal is to create a tangible digital tool which will be flexible enough to adapt itself to a variety of scholarly agendas and which will be used by the scholarly community after its launch. We hope to launch this tool by the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year. As a part of our ethos of flexibility and adaptability, we also aim for our tool to support multidisciplinary and multimedia scholarship.

Outreach

Each member will commit to writing two blog posts on the Scholar’s Lab blog a month. Our goal is to publicize what we are doing on our project, as well as how we are doing it, thus educating while informing our audience. We all commit to personal outreach within our own networks, as well, whether by blogging, conferences, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Core Values

Flexibility

We all need to be flexible time-wise, understanding that we each will occasionally need to make sacrifices in order to be able to meet. We need to establish an environment of understanding, where we feel comfortable going to the group for help when we are unable to meet all individual objectives for the week.

Accountability

The success of the Praxis Program hinges on productive contributions from each team member. In addition, offering each team member equal credit presupposes equal contributions. For these reasons, each member is responsible for completing his or her assigned tasks for the week within that week. If these tasks take longer than ten hours per week, the team member must contact the group to figure out a solution.

Team Management

Communication within the team

We expect regular and consistent engagement with the modes of communication we establish. Apart from our one-hour meetings, we need to schedule time to meet together, in person or digitally. Communications should be made to the entire team and Scholars Lab staff.

Decision Making

Creating a digital tool will require us to make a variety of decisions, both as a group and individually. We agree that all major decisions must be approved by all members of the Praxis team. Smaller decisions may be made within groups and then confirmed by the rest of the team later.

Conflict Resolution

We recognize that as a team we may experience project-based disagreements and conflicts. When faced with these conflicts, we will always aim for flexibility and compromise within the team. If these conflicts prove impossible to resolve within the group, we agree to bring in a third-party mediator from the Scholars Lab.

If serious interpersonal conflicts arise within the team, we agree that those involved will resolve the conflicts outside of our meeting times with the help of a third-party mediator from the Scholars Lab.

Accreditation and Project Administration

Equal Credit

All members of the Praxis team deserve equal credit for our work. We understand that we all have a vested interest in the success of the program, and each according to his or her skills will be an active participant, contributing time and creative direction. Therefore, we should all receive credit as equal partners in the program. That said, we posit two types of credit: credit attached to the project as a whole and credit claimed for individual contributions. Our shared web site should always list general credit in alphabetical order to emphasize the non-hierarchical ethos of the program. Whenever a member of the Praxis Program references the work to the outside community, the project as a whole should be credited to all members. Individual contributions may also be claimed where appropriate.

Licensing

Our digital tool will be produced in the spirit of open source, and the particular open source software and Creative Commons licenses involved in Prism and related products of the Praxis Program will be selected in accordance with that spirit.

Documentation

We agree to document this process publically on the Scholar’s Lab blog, and privately through Collab and GitHub. We will also create appropriate documentation for the sustainability of the project.

Stewardship by the Scholars’ Lab

Scholars’ Lab faculty and staff are equal members of the Praxis Program team, taking an active role in decisions. They also act as teachers and coordinators.

The Scholars’ Lab will help to maintain our final project after the fellowship is over. The team as a whole will work together to realize the level of preservation that we want for our project.

Ratified September 18, 2013