Objectives:
Building on the work of the Research Group, the group culled lists of key events and people to build a student activism timeline. Events were organized based on the thematic categories — social, racial and gender equality,peace/anti-war activities, workers' rights, and campus reforms and community outreach — developed by the Research Group. Members were tasked with the making the decision on how best to visually represent the events, ultimately deciding on Timeline JS. The group made decisions about the features and appearance of timeline; as well as set up the back-end of the timeline using a Google spreadsheet. All project participants had access throughout to the timelines's development.
Organizing the work:
Once specific events, people and organizations, and activities were solidified, each group member took responsibility for a certain number of entries on the timeline. This responsibility included drafting text for the entries (individual slides on the timeline), creating pdfs, finding and manipulating images (we used GIMP), and working with Drupal (Duke's content managament software) and Google spreadsheets. The members of the group worked individually, reporting successes and obstacles back to the larger group. Regular group working sessions were also scheduled where members dropped in to have their questions answered and to work together on problems. Both approached worked well, as each team member had a chance to explore and learn the software at his/her own pace as well as opportunities to collaborate.
Group members:
Members of the group included Carson Holloway, Cheryl Thomas, Mark Thomas, Kelley Lawton, Danette Pachtner and Linda Daniel.