Interested in working on one of these projects? Apply now!Applications close on September 6, 2014, at 11:59 PM.
Note: an asterisk indicates that the time is flexible and may change due to a team’s desires.
1. Open access:
Even though Harvard's open-access policies are widely supported by the community, implementation depends on the cooperation of authors who tend to be overstretched and preoccupied. This team will work towards designing a system of defaults which ‘nudge’ and encourage faculty to deposit their new scholarly articles in DASH, Harvard's open-access repository.
Mentors: Peter Suber & Colin Lukens, Office of Scholarly Communication
Time: Thursdays @ 3pm
2. A digital humanities repository for all:
Students and faculty working in the digital humanities at Harvard create and organize a lot of data relating to their work. At present, although each individual can store this data in their own storage space, there isn’t a good way to consolidate all of these datasets and allow for others to view and work with them as well. Can a repository for this kind of multimedia work be created and implemented?
Mentor: Ann Whiteside (Graduate School of Design: Frances Loeb Library)
Time: TBD*
3. Developing big data analysis tools 2.0:
Building upon the work of a 2013-2014 DPSI team, this team will continue to explore the intersections between big data and privacy, particularly when it comes to data generated by HarvardX courses. Although anonymity is often conflated with privacy, de-identifying data can compromise the integrity of the data set - are there other ways to protect the privacy of the users?
Mentors: Jim Waldo (Chief Technical Officer, Harvard University)
Time: Fridays @ 1pm
4. Multimedia at HLS: in the classroom and in the Library:
The HLS library is interested in re-branding and creating better communications and experiences for its users, from helping students navigate the library’s offerings to aiding faculty with the integration of multimedia in their teaching practices. Through designing and implementing various multimedia elements for HLS faculty and the library, members of this team will explore and learn to use Wordpress, Adobe CS6 and other screencasting, video editing, and multimedia software.
Mentors: Suzanne Wones, Kim Dulin, and Lisa Brem (Harvard Law School Library)
Time: Wednesdays @ 11am
5. A self-sustaining farmer’s market:
How can technology and design thinking be used to help the Harvard Farmers’ Market become more self-sustainable? This team will think about the ways in which digital tools can be leveraged for complex questions of long-term sustainability,communications, and outreach.
Mentor: Margiana Petersen-Rockney (Food Literacy Project)
Time: Tuesdays @ 4pm*
6. Accessibility in online education:
How can online education be more accessible for people with disabilities? In coordination with the CopyrightX team, this DPSI team will explore and create innovative ways to improve accessibility in online education.
Mentor: Chris Bavitz (Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Cyberlaw Clinic)
Time: Thursdays @ 1pm
7. There’s an app for that…:
There’s so much going on at Harvard - how do we keep track of it all?! For things such as the bike share program, library crowding, the shuttle services, and all of the campus events, students report a need for an app which consolidates a lot of this information.
Mentor: Sue Kriegsman (Berkman Center for Internet & Society)
Time: Thursdays @ 11am
8. #womenintech:
This team will use social media to identify, promote, and create communities and collaborations among women at Harvard, perhaps through the use of tagged selfies. Team will coordinate outreach to the Harvard Community to collect images and create a curation platform for exhibition in Cabot Library, using new interactive display technologies to promote #womenintech.
Mentors: Susan Berstler (Cabot Science Library) and Chris Erdmann (Center for Astrophysics)
Time: Thursdays @ 4pm
9. Interactive documentary workshop:
To help us think through challenges in making and understanding interactive media, metaLAB will host and mentor a team of students devoted to exploring the interactive documentary through making, viewing, and evaluating a variety of projects. Students can bring their own designs and proposals to the team and/or stage critical interventions in the work of others.
Mentors: Matthew Battles, Cris Magliozzi, and Jessica Yurkofsky (metaLAB)
Time: Wednesdays at 3 pm*
10. Data visualization and exploratory tools applied to real-world research data
In the last decade, the Data Science team at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, IQSS, has developed the Dataverse, an open-source web application that enables sharing, preservation, citation, reusability and analysis for research data. Currently the Dataverse hosted at Harvard (http://thedata.harvard.edu) is the largest research data repository in the world, with a vibrant community of users and developers at Harvard and beyond. This team will build data visualization and exploratory tools and integrate them with Dataverse using the Data and metadata API, thus being able to directly apply these tools to real-world scientific data shared with the research community. Examples of these tools might include: visualization of network/graph data, visualization of time-series data (e.g. using d3.js), and tools to describe the data and associated analysis (e.g., using ipython Notebook).
Mentor: Mercè Crosas (Director of Data Science, IQSS)
Time: Thursdays @ 10am*
11. Sexual assault on campus:
This team will work towards making data on sexual assault accessible and easily leveraged by the Harvard community, possibly in a visualized manner. Taking an intersectional approach to survivor advocacy, this group will work with existing student groups, incorporating the voiced concerns of over 30 student groups.
Mentors: Diane Rosenfeld and Anisha Gopi (Harvard Law School)
Time: Thursdays @ 4pm