Tag: collaborative

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“Review of Writing Spaces, 2nd edition”

citation
Ilyasova, Ksenia, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2004). Review of Writing spaces, 2nd ed., by Jay David Bolter. Technical Communication Quarterly, 13, 135–138.

abstract
self-explanatory

accompanying materials

  • Not available; Closed-access publication.

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“Best Practices for Online Journal Editors”

citation
Council of Editors of Learned Journals. [Co-author on subcommittee for electronic journal guidelines]. (2008, May). Best Practices for Online Journal Editors. http://www.celj.org/downloads/CELJEjournalEditorsGuidelines.pdf

abstract
The Council of Editors of Learned Journals promotes electronic publishing as a legitimate method of disseminating creative and scholarly work in the humanities. The following compilation—representing the best current advice and practices of CELJ members—is intended to support editors of new and existing online journals in their efforts to produce publications whose value to the academy and to broader intellectual and artistic communities will be recognized. Online publication, for the purposes of these guidelines, includes serial journals and magazines that are specifically designed for digital access and that circulate on the World Wide Web, in library indexes, or in some other digital medium. Fundamentally, editors of online journals should uphold the highest standards of craft and/or scholarly thoroughness, accountability and fairness, as do editors of traditional print journals. However, there are additional dimensions to electronic publishing. The advice that follows takes into account concerns shared by all scholarly journals, regardless of medium, as well as concerns specific to online publication.

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“Who is the future employer?”

citation
Ball, Cheryl E.; Ferraro, Lora; Rossi, Rebecca; & Schulz, Christina; et al. (16 authors). (2008, August 22). Who is the future employer? New Leadership Board of the Economic Development Council, Bloomington-Normal, IL.

abstract
Since the start of the decade, Bloomington‐Normal has watched neighboring downstate communities, including Decatur and Galesburg, respond to de‐industrialization, unemployment, and heightened anxiety about long‐term employment and quality of life for residents. We have been impacted far less
than these neighbors. However, Bloomington‐Normal residents, employers, and employees—including
this New Leadership Board and the Economic Development Council—must keep an eye on the national
trends affecting our economy, as well as steward a customized plan that maintains existing employers
while also attracting new ones to our region. We’re glad to be part of what promises to be an ongoing conversation within the Bloomington‐Normal
community and offer the EDC this report comprised of the following sections:

  • Current Employers, with a focus on seven critical areas representing primary existing and newly emerging industries/professions.
  • Proposal for Developing Future Employers, with corresponding Advantages and Disadvantages to our proposal.
  • Summary

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“Who’s the Boss?: Management Structures”

citation
Johnson, Matt; Ball, Cheryl E.; et al. (13 authors). (2008, November 14). Who’s the boss? New Leadership Board of the Economic Development Council, Bloomington-Normal, IL.

abstract
In “Future of the Workplace,” The New Leadership Board uncovered the quintessence of younger generational workers and its effects on the workforce: what motivates employees, the future employer, and what the future workplace will be. By addressing the conceptual aspects of how and where these generations work, it opens the discussion for more concrete recommendations, specifically, what can be done, and under what structure would they best work. That which motivates or deters an employee will most certainly affect what management structure they perform best within. Therefore, it is imperative that we acknowledge those characteristics to determine the foundation of our recommendations. In Management Structures, we look first to examine the history and nature of current structures. We will propose our insight and opinions as to the most effective model, and present recommendations, both to the EDC, as well as the general business populace, as to what forms of management structure and what other measures will help guide our economy in the future to greater prosperity.

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“Designing Collaborative Learning Spaces”

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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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“Digital Scholarship and the New Work of the Book in Composition Studies”

citation
Journet, Debra; Ball, Cheryl E.; & Trauman, Ryan. (in progress). Digital scholarship and the new work of the book in composition studies. In Debra Journet, Cheryl E. Ball, & Ryan Trauman (Eds.) The new work of composing. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. http://ccdigitalpress.org

status

  • Update 07/09: Prospectus with introduction submitted to CCDP.
  • Update 10/09: Verbal confirmation from press editor that collection has been accepted.
  • Update 11/09: Email confirmation from press that collection should proceed.

abstract
This introductory chapter to the digital media collection, The New Work of Composing, asks what constitutes a “book” in age of digital scholarship? In a period of digital production, we are pushed to consider what a book is and what it does. How do modes and media change not only how knowledge is produced but also what kind of knowledge is made possible? Which assumptions about the print book—its scope or range, its intellectual possibilities, the kinds of interactions it fosters—are transferable to digital books and which are not? This project lays the groundwork for these questions. The New Work of Composing contains 14 multimodal chapters that are organized around five clusters of issues of related to digital composition. In the introduction, each chapter is described, and the book’s interface is also discussed (e.g., how to read this book).

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“(Multimodal, Multimedia, Multigenre) Composition”

citation
Ball, Cheryl E.; Fenn, Tyrell; & Scoffield, Tia. (in review). (Multimodal, multimedia, multigenre) Composition: Narratives on teaching and learning with new media. In Carl Whithaus & Tracey Bowen (Eds.) Multimodal literacies and emerging genres in student compositions.

status

  • Update 6/08: Collection received advanced contract from Utah State University Press.
  • Update 4/09: Utah State Univ Press downsized; asked to send mss elsewhere.
  • Update 10/09: Collection reviewed by Pittsburgh University Press; co-editors responding to reviews.
  • Update 11/28/09: Email notification by editors for new revision deadline of Feb. 1, 2010, to be reviewed again by Pittsburgh UP.

abstract
In this chapter, we overview an individual-classroom implementation (i.e., non-programmatic) of multimodal, multimedia, and multigenre composition, in which the distinctions between those terms will be discussed by the instructor–author. The second and third authors (who were students in the class) took on teacher-roles in class based on their histories of composing with multiple modes and media; they reflect on those histories and how prior experiences played a role in the designs of their final projects, which included a video documentary and several supplementary texts designed with different media and different rhetorical situations in mind. Our purpose in this chapter is threefold: (1) to outline and discuss problems with a new media composition syllabus with sequenced assignments that step students through composing in different modes, media, and genres; (2) provide narratives of students’ experiences composing texts in such a course, with a focus on their transferable critical literacies; and (3) offer lessons learned whereby teachers can help students produce more interesting, relevant, and powerful texts than the original syllabus inspires.

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“On the Rawness of Reading and Writing New Media”

citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Kalmbach, James. (forthcoming, 2009/10). On the rawness of reading and writing new media: Materialities, histories, and happenstance. In Cheryl E. Ball & James Kalmbach (Eds.) Reading and writing new media (pp. 1–14). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

abstractraw-intro
This chapter is the introduction to the edited collection, Reading and Writing New Media. It introduces the concept for the book: a happenstance of theory about new media in digital writing studies suited to the particular moments in time (mid- to late-2000s) in which the book is published.

status

  • see entry for edited collection (linked below)

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

title/status

  • Editor, 2008-present
  • Co-Editor, 2006-2008 (with Beth L. Hewett)
  • Section Co-Editor (CoverWeb, with Beth L. Hewett), 2001-2006

description
Kairos,
which began publishing online in 1996, is an internationally recognized, peer-reviewed journal in digital writing studies. It has a readership of over 45,000 readers a month from over 180 countries and an acceptance rate of 10 percent. The journal publishes three sections of full-length scholarship (Topoi, Praxis, Inventio) and three professional development sections (Reviews, Interviews, Disputatio), which are editorially reviewed by their respective section editors. Issues are openly available on the Web at http://kairos.technorhetoric.net, and are published twice a year, in August and January, with special sections occasionally occurring as a third issue in May. In December 2008, Kairos was recognized by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for its redesign (the journal’s third look in 13 years), which garnered the CELJ Best Design Award.

small-logoKairos has a longstanding reputation for theoretical and technological innovation, collaborative authorship, editorial mentoring and outreach, and collaborative review processes, all of which support the unique scope and practices of the journal: publishing digital media scholarship that incorporates web-based media to make meaning. The majority of the scholarship Kairos publishes cannot be printed because these web-based articles (i.e., “webtexts”) use interactivity, multiple media including video and audio, and other nonlinear elements to make their scholarly arguments.

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

“The New Work of Composing”

citation
Journet, Debra; Ball, Cheryl E.; & Trauman, Ryan. (Eds.). (in press). The new work of composing [Digital book]. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. http://ccdigitalpress.org

nwc-coverabstract
This “book-length” collection entitled The New Work of Composing examines the complex and semiotically rich challenges and opportunities posed by new modes of composing, new forms of rhetoric, new concepts of texts and textuality, and new ways of making meaning. In particular, this multimodal, digital book will explore how digital media are shaping our understanding of scholarly projects within composition studies. In so doing, it will address the need to re-think what constitutes the “book” in an era of “born digital” scholarship.

status

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Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

“Political Economy and Sustaining the Unstable”

citation
Moeller, Ryan; Cargile Cook, Kelli; & Ball, Cheryl. (2009). Political economy and sustaining the unstable: New faculty and research in English studies. In Danielle DeVoss, Heidi McKee, & Dickie Selfe (Eds.), Technological ecologies and sustainability: Methods, modes, and assessment. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press.  http://ccdigitalpress.org/tes/01_moeller_ball_cargile_cook.pdf

abstract
In this chapter, we present political economy analysis (PEA) as a methodology for understanding and working within the often-shifting techno-ecologies of an academic department. As a case study, we document the shift in an English department at a Carnegie Research University (High Research Activity) in the western United States brought about by the hiring of two junior faculty members with specializations in new media and technology. PEA methods allow us to focus on the material conditions that prompted the new hires (i.e., a new Ph.D. program in the Theory and Practice of Professional Communication) and those brought about by their arrival tes-toc(e.g., changes in new faculty startup packages, the necessity of funded research to the sustainability of the entire department, and renewed pedagogical and economic attention paid to the department’s computer labs). After we discuss PEA, we present a series of interwoven narratives that analyze and consider our experiences through the PEA lens. We conclude with a list of recommendations—for job candidates, hiring committees, faculty, and administrators—that will help departments, we hope, better anticipate, support, and sustain the work of new technology specialist hires.

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Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Special Issue: Manifestos!

citation
DeWitt, Scott Lloyd, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2008, May). Manifestos! [Special issue]. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 12(3).  http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.3/

abstract
Wrought with connotation, politically and emotionally charged, manifestos call us to action and demand change—in the streets, in the workplace, in our classrooms, in our minds, and in the virtual spaces we inhabit. Put the manifesto in a mediated space that typically features scholarly work, and it provokes different change-actions. The form of a manifesto seeks sizeable response and has the ability to move an argument quickly to the forefront of a conversation (and keep it there). The manifesto’s typical dense state and its sometimes confrontational approach make it easily susceptible to critique yet can quickly facilitate invention for new scholarly conversations and directions. If our scholarship seems too cutting-edge, too in-your-face, despite its having been deeply considered, then it is reserved for discussing around conference-hotel bars, on listservs and blogs, or over dinner and wine in the backyard patio. We don’t often make the leap to publishing it in scholarly journals. Why? Because these ideas often don’t take the shape of traditional scholarship—even with respect to the different traditions of scholarship in a journal like Kairos. The Manifesto Issue is our answer to these questions.

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Monday, March 17th, 2008

“Who needs YouTube?!”

citation
Ball, Cheryl E. [Producer/Director]. (2007, Dec. 11). Who needs YouTube?! Presented at The Normal Theater, Normal, IL.

description
I produced an end-of-semester showcase for students in my Multimedia Writing Workshop (English 289.22), which was held at the historic Normal Theater. The showcase included a selection of short digital videos in a variety of genres (video poems, music videos, documentaries, memoirs, motifs, etc.) that the students had produced, and a 3-minute introduction I created to contextualize the range of texts. The introduction video, produced using a Mission: Impossible theme, includes original and found (student) footage and was composed using Audacity, Quicktime Pro, iMovie HD, and Final Cut Pro.

accompanying materials

  • Video intro to “Who needs YouTube?!” [Quicktime movie; compressed version]
  • Full 1-hour compilation available upon request.

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Sunday, February 17th, 2008

“Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME”

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/

abstractconverging
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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Monday, December 24th, 2007

“Reinventing the Possibilities”

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

abstractfibreculture
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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