Basecamp

Basecamp is an online platform for project management. We use it in NCIL as our primary platform for communication. Basecamp has great online help but there's a quick summary below. You should use Basecamp for the following things:

• Communicating and collaborating with lab members, about lab work

• Sharing articles that other lab members might want to read

• Bringing problems in the lab to the attention of those who might be able to fix them, and those who might be affected (e.g., computers/hardware not working, running low on supplies, infrastructure list lights not working, etc)

• Assign tasks to other lab members (e.g., assign Aaron the task of reviewing a draft of your term paper).

• finding out when lab events are happening, and where (e.g., lab meetings)

You should not use Basecamp for these purposes:

• Storing or sharing documents conducting research projects (e.g., data, ethics protocols, stimuli; use the server for this purpose)

• Documenting lab procedures for the long term (that's what this handbook is for)

Basecamp is organized into Projects. These can be used for coordinating groups of people (for NCIL, we have NCIL Core - all staff, grad students, undergrad project students - and NCIL Volunteers), and for specific research projects in the lab (which are visible only to people working on that project). Note that for Projects, Basecamp should be used for communicating but the server should be used for storing files related to the project. The one exception to this is that Basecamp is a great way for sharing PDFs of articles (which are not typically part of the research project files anyway). Note however that Basecamp is not permanent storage. The server is permanent storage.