citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2006, July). Multimodal composition practices: Overviews and impacts on tenure & promotion. Virtual Reality & Real Life (VR@RL) Conference [Online].
abstract
In this online asynchronous session, I presented results and discussion from the CCCC Survey on multimodal practices, with particular emphasis on the section about tenure and promotion issues for scholars working in digital media.
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citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2005, October 21). Designing educational spaces for students & colleagues. Council on Programs in Technical & Scientific Communication, Lubbock, TX.
abstract
In this roundtable, I focused on issues of being a new faculty member in a department and how I created a research identity that was transparent, if a little “quirky,” so that colleagues could begin to recognize my research agenda.
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Tags: professional convention, roundtable, session
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2005, September 7). Trans-cultural multimedia production in an English classroom. Conference of Open Source Learning & Instructional Technology, Logan, UT.
abstract
In English studies, the past decade has seen a dramatic shift toward analysis and production of multimedia texts (c.f. Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Wysocki, Selfe, Johnson-Eilola, & Sirc, 2004). This shift is informed by the study of rhetoric, which we define as reading and composing texts with an understanding of a specific audience, purpose, and context. In Dr. Ball’s Perspectives on Writing and Rhetoric class, students analyze creative multimodal texts using multiple reading strategies, and then compose their own texts. Although this generation of students is typically well-informed about technology, most of them have never encountered a digital, multimodal text whose purpose is primarily aesthetic. Studying the rhetorical situation in what literary theorists such as Eco and Rosenblatt would call an “open,” readerdriven, adaptable text provides a rich learning experience for students.In this class, students read several examples of open texts including “Murmuring Insects” (Ankerson, 2001), which successfully uses Eastern and Western multimodal elements—including written, aural, visual, animated, and other modes of communication—to juxtapose calm with fear while honoring the events of September 11, 2001. In this presentation, we show this piece in contrast to student-produced multimodal texts that attempt to adopt cultural contexts of other writers, often unsuccessfully. We conclude by suggesting why some students’ attempts at adaptation in these creative and social media are hindered by localized contexts. In addition, we demonstrate how students who don’t attempt to adapt their creative work to other’s contexts often make stronger rhetorical choices in their multimodal texts while still meeting the needs of various audiences.
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Tags: session
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2005, March 19). Throwing teachers over the top rope: The status of new media pedagogy in composition studies. Conference on College Composition & Communication, San Francisco, CA.
abstract
Presenters in this session reported on the research questions, methodologies, and initial results from a CCCC Research Survey on multimodal composition.
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see also
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, January 7). The both/and of faculty, undergraduate digital scholarship. Conference for the Center of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Normal, IL.
abstract
This presentation tracks two ecologies: (1) an undergraduate multimodal composition class producing digital scholarship for a digital book collection, and (2) the teacher’s work on that digital collection alongside the production of her tenure e-portfolio. Both students and teacher have asked the following questions in and about their research: What can students teach teachers? What can teachers learn from students? What does digital scholarship look like for undergraduates and faculty? These are ubiquitous questions in our field, and I will show examples from both ecologies to discuss possible answers to these questions, from which larger questions arise: How can a multimodal composition class contribute to the sustainability of academic writing? How can the obstacles of low-access computing promote digital scholarship in which undergraduate students talk back to the scholars who are often talking *at*, not with, them? In answering these questions (in light of the class’s scholarly project and the teacher’s current work in digital scholarship), I argue that teaching, learning, and composing digital scholarship across student–teacher barriers provides sustainable ways for digital media scholars to connect their undergraduate curricula with their research lives.
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citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, March 12). B-Movie virgin sacrifice: Digital scholarship in a print-tenure world. Conference on College Composition & Communication, San Francisco, CA.
abstract
In this presentation, I respond to pressures that tenure and promotion evaluators do not know how to read digital scholarship (MLA “Evaluating Scholarship” Report, 2006) and do not value the peer-review system used to evaluate digital scholarship (Ball, 2008; Jenson & Olson, 2009). Such devaluation affects the choices that tenure-track scholars make regarding in what media they can and should produce their scholarship (Anderson et al, 2006), which leads to a cycle of non-production and continued non-evaluation of new media. To save hirself from the print-tenure volcano, Speaker 2 foregrounds production as an analytical method by screening a video tutorial composed to help evaluators read new media scholarship.
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citation
Ball, Cheryl E., with Matthew Wendling. (2009, June 20). ‘When we ask ourselves these questions, what will our answers be?’: Sustainable teaching and learning through co-directed undergraduate and faculty digital scholarship. Computers & Writing, University of California–Davis.
abstract
This presentation tracks two ecologies: (1) an undergraduate multimodal composition class producing digital scholarship for a digital book collection, and (2) the teacher’s work on that digital collection alongside the production of her tenure e-portfolio. Issues in digital scholarship transcend student–teacher barriers and provide sustainable ways for digital media scholars to connect their undergraduate curricula with their research lives. The presentation concludes with response-comments from an undergraduate student, Matthew Wendling, who worked on these issues with the instructor.
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Tags: professional convention, session
citation
Ball, Cheryl E, & Rickly, Becky. (2010, March 17). Mentoring electronically and from a distance. Coalition of Women Scholars. Conference on College Composition and Communication, Louisville, KY.
abstract
In roundtable style, Rickly and Ball will offer suggestions for how to distance-mentor (and be mentored) through use of information communication technologies.
accompanying materials
Tags: invited, professional convention, roundtable, session
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2008, April 4). Peer-review in new media: The process of evaluation as example for tenure and promotion committees. Conference on College Composition & Communication, New Orleans, LA.
abstract
The MLA Report on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion (2006) renews the legitimacy gap between refereed print articles and refereed electronic articles, indicating that, “print articles count […] in 97.9% of departments, as compared with 46.8% for articles in electronic form.” The report notes, however, that electronic forms often don’t take into consideration new media forms of scholarship, such as the “innovative webtexts” published by several online journals in composition and rhetoric, and which James English (2005) wrote in the Journal of Scholarship Publishing as being an inconsequential form of scholarship. As the MLA Report suggests, the value of peer-reviewed digital publications might be greater if tenure committees knew how to read them, a problem that is heightened by the unfamiliarity of new media scholarship. To help, I examine a webtext to show how authors, editors, and review boards value a new media publication so as to provide an example for understanding scholarly innovation, which T&P committees can follow.
accompanying materials
Tags: professional convention, session
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