Introduction to Scalar

Note for Teachers

This workshop was designed for an undergraduate course at the University of Texas at Austin. In the course, students are asked to build their own Scalar page oriented around a single primary source - an archival document, a painting, a music video. They are required to write an analysis of that document that brings in other media, including images and academic articles in the form of PDFs.

This workshop is designed to mimic that process over the course of one class period. New updates include the creation of a path that links a splash page to the content page.

Goal: Familiarize students with the Scalar interface
Skills: Creating a project; creating a home page; uploading different kinds of media; uploading media from different sources; using different kinds of media links; moving between the dashboard and the project; editing metadata
Additional skills: annotating media, adding comments and links; using different layouts
Time: The basic workshop takes about 30 minutes for computer-savvy students. With a 15-minute introduction and 5 minute debrief, this will fill a 50 minute class period. The extended workshop can easily fill a 75-minute class period. Note: the new materials (splash page and pathways) haven't been used in the classroom yet. I suspect they will add about 10 minutes.

Comments:
-- The workshop has students first upload media, and then create a home page. This is confusing without a brief discussion beforehand.
--This workshop is designed around creating a single page. It would need to be altered if the goal was to create a Scalar path.
--The workshop uses the "bibliographicCitation" metadata entry with MLA citations as the standard for metadata. 
--If you're interested in using this workshop in your class, the entire Scalar project can be imported into your own account. Then you can freely modify the workshop as necessary.

Attribution:
Workshop by Hannah Alpert-Abrams (Updated Spring 2016)
LLILAS Benson Studies and Collections
University of Texas at Austin