description
With this PFIG grant, I will complete the afterword and index to the first digital, multimodal book published by an academic press: The New Work of Composing, an edited collection that will be published in 2011. The index is an interactive database of keywords based on each chapter’s digital assets (i.e., web pages, images, videos, audio files, written text, etc.). The afterword is a multimedia essay based on sample keyword searches in the index-database, addressing how the intellectual work of the “book” changes when distributed in a multimedia environment. This book also has 14 multimodal chapters and an introduction, which has already been drafted for the prospectus. To complete the index and afterword, I will continue work started this past summer with the creators of the Dynamic Backend Generator (a database program) at the University of Southern California. The DBG designers helped me create a prototype of the database to be used for the book’s index, to which the afterword will be linked.

accompanying materials

• grant application
  

abstract
The New Work of Composing is the working title to the field of English Studies’ first digital, multimedia-rich “book” to be published in the field’s first fully online press: Computers and Composition Digital Press. This research grant will support the principle investigator, who is co-editor of The New Work of Composing, through a course release. During the release time, the PI will (1) provide initial feedback and editorial support for authors submitting to the collection, (2) edit the digital, multimedia submissions, which are due early in the spring of 2009, (3) study the process of editing scholarly, book-length, digital collections that contain multimedia elements, and (4) work toward the publication of a scholarly article about the process of authoring and editing large, digital multimedia collections to satisfy (in small part) the field’s increased interest in understanding and evaluating digital scholarship (especially digital books) for tenure and promotion purposes.

accompanying materials

• proposal

abstract
This grant proposal was intended to fund a series of surveys and workshops to assess how teachers across the curriculum at Illinois State University implemented student-based projects using multiple media.

accompanying materials

• proposal (pdf)

summary
This summer I will begin work on a year-long project to design my tenure portfolio materials for digital, multimedia distribution. One professional development outcome relevant to this fellowship application will be scholarly presentation(s) for ISU tenure and promotion stakeholders on evaluating digital work in tenure cases. I will also produce an article about the process of preparing digital tenure portfolios. This application is requesting summer salary to support my work on this project.

accompanying materials

• grant/fellowship proposal

abstract
A unique opportunity has arisen for the students in my English 239 (Multimodal Composition) class; they have been invited to the Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville this October, where they will collect research to complete their major class projects. The students will interview conference presenters, film and audio-record sessions, and, from that data collection, produce a digital, multimedia-based book chapter for submission to the first “born-digital” scholarly book in English studies, The New Work of Composing. This book is set to be published by the first all-digital, academic press in the humanities, Computers and Composition Digital Press.

outcomes
The students collected digital assets from the conference and produced 3 digital media texts for a chapter called “Talking Back: Undergraduates and Digital Media Research,” which has been editorially reviewed by the two other editors of The New Work of Composing and accepted for publication.

accompanying materials

• grant proposal (pdf)

see also

• The New Work of Composing (under Edited Volumes)
• “Talking Back: Undergraduates and Digital Media Research” (under Chapters)
• English 239: Multimodal Composition [Fall 2008] (under Teaching)