We are happy to announce the 2014-15 Digital Humanities Praxis Innovation Award, sponsored by the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (an Intellectual Centre for Digital Humanities@UVic) and the Maker Lab in the Humanities at UVic. Details are below. Please note the deadline for projects built during the 2014-15 academic year is 11:59pm, 5 October 2015.

Students across the University of Victoria are invited to submit projects (emerging from their courses of study) that demonstrate innovation in how digital research, learning, and scholarly communication are designed, practiced, expressed, and imagined in the context of the Humanities. Project types and formats of all sorts, from all areas and degrees of expertise, are welcome, from the technical to the theoretical to the creative. Successful projects will combine critical approaches to a given problem with technological or computational methods, broadly understood.

Award

Per academic year, up to three awards consisting of an award certificate and a Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) registration will be issued (valued at up to $3750 annually). Past or future participation in the DHSI in no way influences the status of an application or the decisions of the review committee.

Eligibility

Undergraduate or graduate students who have taken a course anchored in digital research and scholarly communication with a Humanities focus (e.g., DHUM 150, 250, 350, or 450; English 507, 508, or 509; TS 200, 300, or 400; as well as a number of variable content courses across the institution) are eligible for this award. Individuals or teams (no more than three students), from any department, program, or minor at the University of Victoria, may apply. Projects corresponding with any stage of development (from modelling, prototyping, data-gathering, and designing to encoding, programming, implementation, and end-use) are eligible, as long as they meet the learning outcomes or expectations of the course in which they were made.

Format

Projects may assume a variety of formats and media types, including (but not limited to): video, audio, text, image, website, and physical object, or MOV, MPEG, JPG, PNG, TIFF, DOC(X), RTF, HTML, MP3, WAV, CSS, MD, XML, JSON, and OBJ. In the rare case that the review committee is unable to open or access a given format, they will contact the applicants, requesting either an alternative format or instructions for how to access the format in question. Of course, projects (such as websites) may blend media types and formats.

Criteria

Successful projects will, at a minimum, meet the following criteria:
* Completed within the course of study for an undergraduate or graduate class in any department at the University of Victoria;
* Meets the course’s stated learning outcomes or expectations (determined by the course’s instructor(s));
* Demonstrates an innovative use of digital technologies for research, teaching, learning, or communication; and
* Blends a critical approach to an identified problem or question with technological or computational methods.

Submission Procedure

All applications should be submitted via email to UVicDHAward@gmail.com and include the following:
* Names, departments, and email addresses for all applicants (no more than three students per application);
* Title of the project;
* A URL for the project or, if under 10 MB, the project in the form of an attachment;
* An abstract for the project (no more than 250 words);
* In the CC field, the email address of the faculty member who taught the course in which the project was made;
* The syllabus and/or website for the course in which the project was made; and
* This sentence: “This project met the learning expectations/outcomes for [Course Title, Number, and Semester], taught by [Instructor’s Name].”

In the case that a physical object is submitted, applicants should email UVicDHAward@gmail.com to make special arrangements for delivery. The review committee in no way assumes that digital research, learning, and scholarly communication can be expressed solely via a screen. Please note: 1) faculty members should NOT submit letters of support for any application, 2) projects do not need to be revised beyond their original state of submission (to the faculty member teaching the originating course at hand), and 3) applications can be submitted at any point during the academic year, especially if students plan to graduate prior to the application deadline.

Deadline (2014-15 Academic Year)

All projects for the 2014-15 academic year must be received, via email to UVicDHAward@gmail.com, by 11:59pm, 5 October 2015.

Questions?

Please email UVicDHAward@gmail.com with any questions or concerns you have, especially in the case where this call is not clear about any criteria or procedures.