The course-wide rules for late work, extensions, academic integrity and getting help — including the ethics guidelines for oral-history contact.
Policies and support#
Oral history ethics guidelines#
These apply from week 7 onward, and they are not optional. Your dig site was made by people, some of whom are reachable, and a course assignment is not a reason to treat them as a data source.
If you contact a former contributor to your dig site:
- Introduce yourself. Name the course, the university, and your purpose.
- Ask permission. Participation is voluntary. A non-response is a no.
- Explain how their words will be used. Your dig report is a course assignment, not a publication, but treat their contribution with the same care.
- Respect withdrawal. A participant can withdraw at any time, and you will remove their contribution from your report.
- Do not contact someone who has explicitly archived or deleted their project with a statement explaining why. That statement is a boundary.
These guidelines apply to all contact: email, social media, issue trackers, and in-person conversation.
If you are unsure whether an approach is appropriate, ask Kai before you send anything. “I already sent it” is not a position anyone can help you from.
Choosing and changing your dig site#
Your dig site is chosen in week 1 and carried through to week 12. Changing it after week 4 means repeating four weeks of survey work in your own time, so choose carefully rather than quickly.
If your dig site turns out to be unworkable — the history was rebased flat, the licence prohibits forking, or it was not as dead as it looked — talk to Maren in week 2 or 3. A dig site that cannot support the semester is a legitimate reason to switch, and an early switch costs you very little.
Academic integrity#
The analysis must be yours. You may use any tool you like to produce your timelines, dependency reports, and visualisations — the graph is the artefact, the tool is not — but the reading of the evidence, the diagnosis, and the ethical position are what is marked, and they must be your own work.
Cite your dig site’s commits, files, and documentation the way you would cite any primary source. If you quote a former maintainer, quote them accurately and with their permission.
If you use a generative tool to help draft or structure your writing, say so and say where. Declaring it costs you nothing. Not declaring it is misconduct.
Late work and extensions#
Assessments are due at 12:00 on the date listed on each brief. Late submissions without an approved extension lose 5% of the available marks per day.
Extensions are granted for the reasons the university recognises — illness, carer responsibilities, and circumstances outside your control. Ask before the deadline where you can. An unreachable maintainer or a dig site that will not build is not grounds for an extension; both are findings, and both belong in your report.
Getting help#
Bring dig-site problems to the weekly session. Most of them are more interesting with an audience, and the class will have seen the same failure modes on their own sites.
For anything that cannot wait, Maren handles course-level questions and Kai handles dig-site advice and oral-history ethics. Contact details are on the People page.