Tag: articles published
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
citation
Bemer, Amanda; Moeller, Ryan M.; & Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, September). Designing collaborative learning spaces: Where material culture meets mobile writing processes. Programmatic Perspectives: Journal of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, 1(2). http://www.cptsc.org/pp/vol1-2/bemer_moeller_ball1-2.pdf
abstract
In May 2007, the Department of English at Utah State University (USU) redesigned its computer lab to increase mobility and collaboration during writing projects. Our study shows that despite the Professional and Technical Communication (PTC) field’s efforts to promote writing as a socially active, collaborative practice, many students view computer labs as spaces for conducting isolated, single-authored work. In this article, we discuss how a combination of movable furniture and mobile technology, including wireless access and laptops, can enhance student collaboration in group-based writing assignments. The lab included both desktop and laptop seating areas, so the authors created a modified worksite analysis designed to evaluate team collaboration in this new layout. These material changes in the lab allow students to configure the space according to their needs, offering them some measure of control over three crucial elements of successful collaboration: formality, presence, and confidentiality.
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Tags: articles published, collaborative, graduate student, grant outcome, online, open-access, peer-reviewed, SoTL, teaching-improvement effort
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Sunday, February 17th, 2008
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (2008). Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or, How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies. Computers and Composition Online [Special issue: Media convergence]. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/convergence/
abstract
Authors of new media texts regularly draw on both scholarly and creative genres to construct their arguments. In so doing, they bridge disciplinary boundaries that have split English departments in the past. These boundaries are discussed in our text using the following binaries: high :: low, literature :: composition, and popular :: academic discourse. In this article, we examine, then complicate, the binary form :: content through a popular and academic YouTube video (Wesch, 2007). We then situate new media texts within the historical split between rhetoric and literature using Berlin’s social epistemic rhetoric as a bridge. Our argument concludes by showing that new media texts can provide a convergence between binaries in English studies, particularly the one found in tenure guidelines suggesting that research is either scholarly or creative. New media is both/and.
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Tags: articles published, collaborative, online, open-access, peer-reviewed, SoTL, webtext
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Monday, December 24th, 2007
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (2007). Reinventing the possibilities: Academic literacy and new media. Fibreculture Journal, 10. http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue10/ball_moeller/index.html
abstract
This webtext demonstrates the possibilities of using new media to teach students critical literacy skills applicable to the 21st century. It is a manifesto for what we think writing scholars should be teaching in general-education “writing” classes like first-year composition. In order to answer the question of what we should teach, we have to ask what kinds of academic literacy, if any, we value. We argue here that rhetorical theory is a productive way to theorize how meaning is made among new media texts, their designers, and their readers. We use the Ancient Greek concepts of topoi and commonplace to explain how designers and readers enter into a space of negotiated meaning-making when converging upon new media texts. That negotiated space offers a new-media space for learning critical literacies by means other than research papers. As examples, we discuss two student texts and the literacies they demonstrate.
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Tags: articles published, collaborative, multimedia, online, open-access, peer-reviewed, SoTL, teaching-improvement effort, webtext
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Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
citation
Arola, Kristin L., & Ball, Cheryl E. (2007, Spring). A conversation: From ‘They call me doctor?!’ to tenure. Computers and Composition Online. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/doctor
abstract
This webtext was invited by the editors of the Professional Development section of Computers and Composition Online, and it represents the professional and personal issues that often occur for new faculty members as they transition from being graduate students. The purpose of this webtext is to invite conversation, collaboration, and mentorship between the authors, the collaborators who contributed advice about this transitionary period in academics lives, and by readers of the text.
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award note
This webtext was the Finalist for the 2007 Kairos Best Webtext Award.
Tags: articles published, award, collaborative, invited, mentor, multimedia, online, open-access, webtext
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Friday, November 3rd, 2006
citation
Atkins, Anthony; Anderson, Daniel; Ball, Cheryl; Homicz Millar, Krista; Selfe, Cynthia; & Selfe, Richard. (2006). Integrating multimodality in composition curricula: Survey methodology and results from a CCCC Research Initiative grant. Composition Studies, 34(2), 59-84.
abstract
This article describes methodology and outcomes of a national survey conducted in 2005 to discover how instructors use multimodal composition practices in their writing classrooms and research. The authors describe the procedures they used to collect and analyze data from writing teachers about the production, distribution, interpretation, and consumption of multimodal composition. Supported by a research initiative of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the survey was designed to identify the instruction occurring at institutions with a nascent or established curriculum of multimodal pedagogy in which students and faculty members produce texts that combine words, images, and sound as composing resources. The aim of this project was to produce a snapshot of those programs working to define multimodal composition and to integrate these new semiotic forms into writing classes.
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Tags: articles published, closed-access, collaborative, data, grant outcome, online, peer-reviewed, print, SoTL, teaching-improvement effort
Posted in Peer-Reviewed Articles | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 1st, 2006
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2006, November). Designerly ≠ readerly: Re-assessing multimodal and new media rubrics for writing studies. Convergence: The International Journal for Research into New Media Technologies, 12, 393–412. Special issue on re-assessing new media.
abstract
In this article, I draw on Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication and Lev Manovich’s (2001) The Language of New Media, which have become prevalent texts in US writing studies fields—a place where multimodal and new media theories have made inroads in the last five years. I briefly describe each of the rubrics the authors used and show how they help readers determine the materialities of multimodal or new media texts. I also argue, however, that writing studies scholars should not rely solely on these rubrics because they function in descriptive ways rather than in interpretive ways for new media texts. In other words, I will show that while a reader could use these rubrics to describe some of the design elements in new media texts, readers cannot use the rubrics to interpret those design elements in ways that would allow them to form a reading of the text. I apply the rubrics to a new media text, “While Chopping Red Peppers” (Ankerson, 2000), to show their limited use and to suggest that while these multimodal and new media theories have a place in writing studies, we need better methods and/or reading heuristics in order to interpret (and teach) such works.
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Tags: articles published, closed-access, peer-reviewed, print
Posted in Peer-Reviewed Articles | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 16th, 2006
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Rice, Rich. (2006). Reading the text: Remediating the text. Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, 10(2). http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/10.2/binder2.html?coverweb/riceball
abstract
This webtext, presented as a DVD interface, discusses the situational contexts of teachers’ assessment practices in student-produced new media texts. Ball discusses a “rhetoric of wow” in approaching the reading of student texts from technorhetorical and poetic lenses while Rice discusses using that rhetorical knowledge to avoid “schmoozery” (i.e., being bamboozled by students’ flashy, but arhetorical, technological prowess). The central discussion of this text focuses on a student-produced video for one of Ball’s classes, with the authors’ arguments about this text (and its rhetorical and pedagogical situating in the field) presented as DVD “extras” in the interface.
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Tags: articles published, collaborative, multimedia, online, open-access, peer-reviewed, SoTL, webtext
Posted in Peer-Reviewed Articles | 2 Comments »
Friday, September 15th, 2006
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2004). Show, not tell: The value of new media scholarship. Computers & Composition, 21(4). 403–425.
abstract
In this article, I consider the changing nature of publications in relation to technology and tenure, presenting a taxonomy of scholarly publications: online scholarship, scholarship about new media, and new media scholarship. I offer a focused definition of new media texts as ones that juxtapose semiotic modes in new and aesthetically pleasing ways and, in doing so, break away from print traditions so that written text is not the primary rhetorical means. By applying this definition to scholarly online publications, readers can be better prepared to recognize and interpret the meaning-making potential of aesthetic modes used in new media scholarly texts. I conclude by offering an analysis of a scholarly new media text, “Digital Multiliteracies.”
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Tags: articles published, closed-access, peer-reviewed, print
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