Our second session today is about project scoping, and below are some documents you can refer to:
As per usual, these documents are licensed CC BY so they can be shared and reused as you all see fit!
@oct19-cohort ā following up from our session last week, and below is a list of all the links/resources shared in the chat. Let me know if thereās anything to add!
- History of Applied Science and Technology
- The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature
- Tim Robbins on the development of the Am Lit anthology Table of Contents
- User guide to create and edit project homepage
- Thread to report issues with project creation
- Introduction to Philosophy project homepage
- Why Perfection is the Enemy of Done (Forbes article)
And as discussed during the session, Iāve updated the Syllabus to reflect that weāll be taking Friday Nov. 29th off for the American Thanksgiving holiday. The sessions have been pushed forward by one week.
Please let me know if you have any issues with the sessions nearer the December holiday season:
- 20 December 2019
- 3 January 2020
If the majority of the group cannot make these sessions, we can also push them by a week.
Our next session is Friday, Nov. 8, and weāll chat all about Marketing and Communications. Please be sure to create your project homepage by this session, and if you havenāt already, read through our Memorandum Of Understanding and state your agreement.
Lastly, if anyone will be at OpenEd or OERizona this week, please let me, @zoe, or @hugh know! I know a few of you in the cohort will be there, and Iām excited to meet some of you in person. 
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Thanks, @apurva for the information and update. Re. the dates, I wonāt be able to attend the December 20 (and possibly the one before, Dec. 13). The other sessions work for me.
Thanks for letting me know, Walcir. Iāll keep an eye out to see what the others say, and let you know what we decide for those sessions.
@oct19-cohort ā some of you may have experienced issues when trying to create your project homepage, and I wanted to let you all know that we are working hard to troubleshoot and diagnose this issue! Iām sorry for not communicating this to you sooner. You can be assured that our team is testing away to find a solution, and Iāll post here once things are resolved.
What might help us diagnose the error is sharing all the information you entered in the fields during the creation workflow, especially the Project Title. So if you could share this with me, I can pass this along to our dev team, and hopefully be able to write back to you all soon with an update.
I appreciate your patience as we work on this error!
Thanks Joan! So far this is confirming my hunch that the bug is only affected projects with titles over 50 characters. I have @andrew working on a solution - stand by for an update.
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I can go smaller if you want me too.
joan
It wonāt be an issue in the long run, but if you would like to go ahead without waiting on our fix, yes you could shorten it, then change it again later. Up to you!
Hi Zoe, Apurva,
I shortened the book title and was able to create a project!! @mooredm
A few questions:
-
Can you tell us how to find the LINK for the project I just created?
Did I create the project in the right place? https://www1.rebus.community/#/project/98702615-f45b-402a-9e52-022a109e99fb -
Also, if we have a Call for Contributors almost ready, is there a way to manage potential contributors through the system? (It will be a closed call to participants who are going / have gone through the three-year grad student teaching program at VT.) It would also need to be limited to editorial view only as it would be potentially embarrassing for the editorial selection process to be publicly transparent. I assume that is not available, but if it is, would you let us know?
Thanks, Anita
Hi all! Good news - the bug is resolved and you can now create projects with titles over 50 characters, and if youāve made one in the meantime, you can edit the title as you wish.
@arwalz - to answer your other questions, yes, that is the link for the project, and no, right now we donāt have a system built in to manage contributors. Once you have them confirmed, they can be added to the team and given a role (e.g. author, reviewer etc.) but right now the main thing the platform supports is creating & sharing the CFP, with communications features attached so people can respond and ask questions etc. I think @apurva can probably help you more to find a process that works with what you need, so Iāll ask her to chime in here or make time to discuss on Friday. Thanks! (And great to see you last week).
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Hi Anita, great news about the project homepage. It is in the right place! Iāll be spending some time these next few days adding these links to the āAbout the Cohortā section, so others can easily access and learn about your projects via these pages.
As for your second question, Zoeās clarified the technical side of things. Youāre welcome to post a call in your project discussion space, and our Contributor Marketplace, following which weāll amplify it in our channels! Iād be happy to help you and Donna narrow in on workflows to review and respond to interested contributors. Most of the times, crafting the CFP well can ensure that the selection process is easy and straightforward. We can also try to think through efficient and organized ways for you and the team to do this, and also try to discuss ways to identify different ways for people to participate. Let me know what questions you have?
Iām also wondering if @alexisclifton has some strategies to share, as I know that she was recently involved in a project that had quite a good response to a CFP. She is probably one step ahead of you both when it comes to sending out calls and reviewing interest, so may have some good suggestions/considerations!
Hello Apurva,
Have it started but how do I get back to our group ā¦
Thanks Apurva, @Zoe,
Weād like review of our existing CFP. Iāll ask @alexisclifton if sheād be willing to review.
And, to clarify, we are not issuing a call outside of the people whoāve/who are participating in @mooredm 's course at VT, so no need to amplify the call. Weāre more concerned about the contents of the CFP, how to manage and evaluate large numbers of submissions, and establishing timelines that are reasonable.
Iāll likely set up a Google or Qualtrics Form for submission of abstracts.
Thanks! Anita
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Hi Apurva, I can attend the one on Dec 20, but not the one on Jan 3. Thank you.
Hi Joan, glad to hear youāve been able to get started. I love the video youāve added to your project homepage 
To get back to this group from your project homepage, you can:
- Click on the Rebus Community Logo in the top-left corner
- Click on āTextbook Success Programā
- Click on āOctober 2019 Cohortā
If you wanted to go to your projectās discussion space from the project homepage, you can scroll to the bottom of the homepage, and click on āSee Moreā from the Discussions box.
Let me know if you have any more questions. Iām looking forward to seeing you and the others slowly add more to your homepages!
Thanks for the clarification, Anita. Iād be happy to review the CFP too, so please feel free to pass that along to me or the rest of the group. The recruitment guide breaks down the different components of the CFP, if you havenāt looked at it already.
Managing and evaluating a large number of submissions is a good problem to have! When I review the CFP, I can see if there are things to build in to help you evaluate interested participants. In some projects, the leads asked for CVs, or write-ups of any relevant experience (teaching courses, writing on particular topics, etc.) in the CFP so it would be easier for them to decide who would be a good fit on different parts of the project. For timelines, while it varies from project to project, weāve seen that itās good to build in some buffer period. So if a task would take 1 week to complete, itās good to estimate 2 weeks, to factor in for delays, emergencies, etc. Once I take a closer look at the CFP, I could offer more examples of how long particular tasks have taken on previous/similar projects!
You can definitely embed a Google Form in the forum here, so at least can direct anyone in the VT course to the project page/discussion space to submit or enter their information. And processing the results would be exactly the same as always - you can generate a spreadsheet from the form, and use that to review, collect and track abstracts! I know @Stan_Yu and their team used Google Forms to collect responses (and maybe even abstracts) for their nursing project ā perhaps he can also offer some input/advice.
Hi Chloe, thanks for letting me know! So far it looks like 2 people cannot make the session on Jan. 3. If we get a few more this week, I can suggest postponing this one as well. Iāll give it a few more days for others to chime in.
Sorry to keep bothering you but how do I invite another editor. We also need to add another contributorā¦sorry if I missed this in the meeting? I donāt think I did. Thanks for all your helpā¦
Please donāt apologize, Joan ā questions are always welcome in this space and I am here to help.
To add contributors, you can click on the edit button in the team block. Then, search by name for new team members you want to add. Once their account displays, you can select āAdd Meā to add them to the team. You can continue to search for more users to add, or click on the āBackā button to edit roles on the team. Select from a variety of common project roles using the dropdown menu in the āTitleā column. To give someone admin roles, click on the medal icon (
) next to the personās name, in the āAdminā column. These changes will auto-save, so once youāre done, you can click on the X or Close button to exit the editing interface. The changes should be visible in the Team Block.
Note that users must have existing accounts on the Rebus Community platform in order for you to search for them and add them to your project team.
Take a look at the āTeam Blockā section of the user guide for reference.
And lastly, you havenāt missed a meeting! We skipped our session last week as many of us were travelling. Weāll be picking up again this Friday at 1pm ET, and Iāll be posting a reminder here very soon.