Transitioning Synchronous Workshops Into Asynchronous Digital Resources

Abstract

In 2013 and 2014, under the auspices of the Digital Humanities Winter Institute (now the Humanities Intensive Learning and Teaching Institute), we launched a course focusing on project management in the digital humanities. It explored the fundamentals of project planning and design including, but not limited to: formulating appropriate disciplinary questions for digital humanities research, investigating digital humanities tools and resources, structuring your first project, understanding roles and responsibilities, designing publicity and websites for your project, documenting your project work, writing your first grant proposal, and managing your budget. Offered synchronously, the course presented the opportunity to develop, offer, and record a series of lectures that provided capacity-building in project management. Yet, as we discovered, the needs of participants were not merely bounded by the limited duration workshop; rather, there was a clear and present demand for ongoing engagement with the conversations we’d had as well as slides, templates, and other materials. They also wanted sustained engagement with us as instructors. In this chapter, we explore how we transitioned course materials into an asynchronous digital resource. We highlight the technical and intellectual decision-making that led to the beta publication of the project. We also identify the challenges we faced related to sustainability and future development. Doing so allows us to consider the intended and unintended consequences of this unfunded “passion” project to suggest that asynchronous digital resources offer potential utility and audiences that would otherwise be excluded from synchronous workshops. Spotlighting the global reach of https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003301097/1b800997-d2a8-4351-9016-a81459eb9b2b/content/www.DevDH.org" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DevDH.org, we conclude by considering how the resource has been transformed by our users to address the continuing paucity of training in project management within digital humanities.