Crises, Fast and Slow: A Contract-grading Response in Digital Humanities Pedagogy

In the midst of COVID-19, I adapted an upper-year-undergraduate digital editions class to a contract grading method. I struggled to find models that suited the needs of my class. My course demanded a single, core final assignment (a digital edition), but almost all models are for smaller, cumulative assignments with which students make up their contracted grade level. The intervention of this article is methodological: what might contract grading look like in a way that supports scaffolding to a single, larger assignment? And it is critical and theoretical: how does this particular case study interact with theories of improved learning and equity and accessibility in the classroom? Jordana Cox and Lauren Tilton’s theories of argument or rhetoric as ‘gift’ in the context of the digital public humanities provides a framework through which to consider the ways that contract grading and student DH projects together might imagine co-operative argumentation.