Meg's Road to PhD

Journey into the land of.... high schoolers!

2012-01-18T20:54:00.000-05:00

This year, CRDM’s Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Student Chapter is undertaking a variety of outreach projects to increase awareness of rhetoric in our community. As a part of this project, this week, Ashley R. Kelly and I volunteered at a local high school, Broughton, to speak to International Baccalaureate (IB) program twelfth grade students in a Theory of Knowledge class. The class was just finishing up their semester, so now was the perfect time for us to come in to introduce another way of looking at knowledge (and perhaps to encourage them to think about studying rhetoric as they set off for college in the fall!). We taught two separate classes, one each day, and let me tell you – teaching high school is exhausting! Each class had 40 students, and we were outside in a portable, a fairly small space for that number of students. For both of us, this was our first experience in a U.S. high school, though overall, it wasn’t that much different from our experience in Canada.

We covered basic concepts of rhetoric (what is it? where does it come from? how do we talk about it?) before moving on to a topic that they had covered in the semester: science. They had covered concepts of knowledge in science, so by bringing in the perspective of rhetoric of science, we connected to some ideas they had covered but also challenged them to think about science in new ways. We talked about expert and inexpert audiences, adapting arguments based on the different audiences, and the importance of science for the general public and for themselves as individuals. We based a lot of the discussion on our research into nuclear energy in both a local setting (with the Duke-Progress merger) and on a global scale (with the accident at Fukushima last March and Germany’s reaction to the disaster). The students were bright, talkative, and engaged – and sure knew way more about nuclear energy than I did in high school!

All in all, filling a 100 minute class to engage 40 adolescents the whole time was a challenging experience. But we left encouraged that the students were so engaged, and their teacher indicated that afterword, they expressed interest in the work we are doing and the CRDM program – they thought it was all pretty cool. Taking on this outreach opportunity was a really great experience, and we can’t wait to hear what other CRDMers are doing for it, too!

5 Things

2012-01-16T16:03:00.000-05:00

A short little post: Five things that make my day easier, make it more enjoyable, and/or are just great.

Evernote

I've downloaded Evernote on my Mac, my Android phone, and my husband's iPad and iPhone - all synced to my account, of course - and man does it make a lot of my tasks both for school but also around home a lot easier. I can add items to my grocery list from pretty much anywhere I am (and so can my husband) and have a method for taking notes on my essentially at all times. I use it mostly for simply things like lists and brainstorming ideas, but it can also be multimodal with the ability to record voice or insert images and graphics. I'm loving Evernote!

Yoga

Working on your PhD can be stressful at (the best of) times, and much of my first year was spent being too strung out about a lot of things. This year my goal has been to keep the work in perspective and remind myself that being an academic is only one component of my identity. Doing yoga has been a great way to have some personal time while also staying fit. While practicing yoga, I don't think about anything academic - I clear my mind and enjoy the fact that I have an able body and space to practice it, more than what some folks in the world do. I'm appreciative of that - yoga has brought me more peace this year.

Bolthouse Farms Juice

Of course, life can't always be peaceful, so when I'm crunched for time and need to eat something really quickly, I turn to this company's line of juices. Sometimes that's all I have for breakfast all week. But they are nutritious, delicious, and fresh -- all things we all need more of in our diet. My fave varieties are the Mango and Green Goodness, although they're pretty much all delish.

Mendeley

I've talked before about how much I love Mendeley, but I'll say it again - it's a great tool for taking notes on PDFs if you don't have Adobe Pro (which I do, but I still use Mendeley). And if you're an academic, then it's also a great tool for managing your citations - something I'm sure we all could use some help with. Spend thirty seconds each time you upload a new file, and I'm sure you'll save hours of time down the road when importing into a bibliography (or working on your diss!).

And last but not least . . .

My puppy

There's nothing like a little puppy love to make your day complete. Chesney is also a really good listener and target audience for practicing explaining a complex rhetorical concept to test how well I know the topic. On top of that, when he snuggles up beside me, he encourages me to stay in place and keep reading (and not go off elsewhere in the house and get distracted) - so he's a work motivator, too!

I got the idea of doing a "Five things" post from several other bloggers out there and thought it might be a good kind of post to try every once and a while not only to share new finds (apps, software, goods, etc.), but also to think about the things that are important to me and remind myself of what makes me happy. What about you? What five things are you thankful for this week?

Taking on a new year

2012-01-08T22:53:00.001-05:00

I hope you all enjoyed some nice time over a holiday break. Personally, my favorite time over the school break (and one of my favorite weeks of the whole year) is the first week of January, when the business of holiday get-togethers has subsided, and I have one week of blissful quiet in which I can start the year off right by taking care of myself, taking time to think, read fiction, and organize the house for the coming year. I love the first week for all of the promise it holds for the coming year and the bit of time I have to enjoy some nice and quiet time.

But as it always must, that will end tomorrow with the beginning of the semester. Back to the routine, resuming my posts as Assistant Director of the First Year Writing Program and the Campus Writing and Speaking Program. I'm working on a new website for the CWSP, a project that I'm excited about and that will keep me busy this spring. The CWSP team is also continuing our research project, which we have found out that we will be presenting in a workshop format at Computers and Writing in Raleigh this coming May! Come and check out our workshop, titled, "Screencap Your Feedback: Using Screen Capture Technology to Provide Audio-Visual Feedback to Writers."

Course-wise, this spring is all about preparing for the final legs of my degree: exam and dissertation preparation. I'm taking my final class (I thought the day would never come!) along with directed readings and research. One of my exam lists is in solid draft form, but I must get moving more seriously on the other two. With my goal of taking exams in early October, there's no time to waste.

Travel-related happenings this spring semester:

Attending the Carolina Rhetoric Conference at Clemson University with Ashley to present our latest research on the Duke Energy-Progress Energy merger. Hope to see you in Clemson in February!
Attending CCCC in March with a crew from CRDM and presenting on a panel with fellow CRDMers about establishing a sense of community in hybrid writing courses. With the bit of chatter that is re-emerging on listservs about hybrid courses, I hope our panel will be a timely topic. I also hope to see you in St. Louis this spring!

Before I turn in, I must get back to reading 1Q84, the latest novel from Haruki Murakami, which I started over break. Each year, I *try* to read just one of the top ten novels of the year, and this is the book I chose for 2011. (Though I'm wondering why I chose the nearly 1,000 page one to read on Kindle... it takes forever!) It is a strange but compelling book. I'm enjoying reading fiction, the one time per year that I do read fiction.

Happy New Year to all, and best wishes to those heading back to school tomorrow!

A Wordle post: My rhetorically-based research on open access in science

2011-12-06T17:23:00.000-05:00

Title: "Open access and arguments: An exploration of shifting reporting and publishing practices in science"

Live blog: Managing your online identity professional development workshop

2011-11-09T14:49:00.001-05:00

I’m live-blogging the second professional development workshop of the fall semester for CRDM, “Maintaining Your Online Identity.” Special thanks to CRDM faculty member David Rieder and CRDM-affiliated faculty member Brad Mehlenbacher for sharing their insights and websites with us today.

David starts by indicating he has a static website for a reason: that maintaining a dynamic site requiring constant updating can be quite time consuming. Message: use your time wisely.

Brad features a new page he created his website about online identity management for academics. He offers that the website has come to serve as his vita and/or portfolio. It’s a fairly comprehensive record of his work as an academic.

Dave shows his website and offers several ideas: 1) He maintains a simple, static site to keep it manageable; 2) He used an open-source template; 3) He codes by hand (hey, another old schooler like me!). He emphasizes that for those in the humanities, “flashy” isn’t a standard, and that sites should be usable on a variety of platforms and possibly printable. He also recommends using a hit tracker to identify your audience (he has used Reinvigorate; Brad, ClustrMap) and to better tailor your materials based on where your hits are and the heat map information that is generated.

Brad emphasizes not having a personal section on a website when you’re on the job market – and Dave heartily agrees – to avoid inviting unwanted biases about you as a candidate. Post-job market, Dave offers that the amount of personal information you include on a website depends on how comfortable you are with doing so, but that it’s certainly not necessary.

Brad also uses his site as a resource for teaching, giving talks, etc. He aggregates information as he comes across it and can easily use for his own preparation or to give to students.

Dave remarks that our websites should be a key marketing tool for us on the job market, and we should see it as an opportunity to self-market and become more visible. Search committee members may not all be on Twitter or Academia.edu, but they will certainly Google you – so control the material that appears when they find your site.

Wendi asks a question: “To what extent should your website replicate your CV?” Dave warns: the more information you put out there, the more you offer yourself to be critiqued on, so select the information you put online carefully. Put out enough to support the ethos you present for yourself in your job applications.

Dave and Brad both recommend including brief descriptions of the teaching experience you’ve had: titles of courses, semester taught, and a brief blurb (potentially the catalog description, if it’s not too clunky).

We end with a discussion of really putting yourself out there vs. displaying limited information about yourself, such as only your most recent work. Some academics have earned great recognition based on their open web presence (Cheryl Ball, for instance) and that this is something that each of us will have to negotiate individually as we decide what kinds of jobs we’ll be applying for.

Of course, the workshop was further reaching and with more of the nitty-gritty details than I’ve offered here. We had a great time with lively discussion – if you're in CRDM, be sure to come to the next workshops in the spring to be a part of the conversation!

Why I teach digital literacy

2011-11-01T09:55:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, I gave a presentation with Susan Miller-Cochran at the Southeast Missouri State University blended learning conference on critically adopting technology in a hybrid writing classroom. The presentation was well-received and I've even gotten some follow-up correspondence based on our discussion. But what I want to talk about here, though, is an idea that came up in a conversation I had after our presentation with some of the those in attendance.

One of the comments made raised the issue of, "Yes, technology is there, but - why should I be teaching it in my course? A student getting an education at a university should be capable of using those tools of his/her own accord, not through me teaching it." There are a few assumptions here: that course time should be solely focused on course content, not skill development; that if a faculty member learned on his/her own time, the student should be capable of doing so too; and that students these days are "digital natives" and probably know a lot of this anyway. I think the first two could be easily countered, so I'd like to focus on the last, and more complex idea - the one of "digital natives" in the university system.

Many educators question the assertion that students now are "digital natives," that they grew up with this technology and thus are well-versed in it and can use it in ways that educators and/or older generations cannot. A recent post on Digital Media and Learning Central debunks four key myths in the "digital native" discussion: that digital natives are always young, that they were "born digital," that they live digital lives (and thus have a hard time living/communicating without a screen or device) and that being connected = being digital. The best point made is that being a digital native means being more than having access - it means being able to critique, evaluate, produce, amplify, respond, and so much more. And this is what educators are not seeing students do with their access.

Case in point: a critical component of digital literacy is sifting through an evaluating the content that is produced on a daily basis and can potentially be used in research and writing. There's much out there on the web that is a wolf in sheep's clothing. A good example of a lack of critique came in a debate about technology in education in my PhD class a few weeks ago. In playing an anti-technology role, a student cited from The John William Pope Foundation's website. The point made drew immediate laughter and dismissal, with a quick reference made to the real mission of the organization and its founder. However, that brief comment also raised a more important issue. Much content on the web is disguised as something it is not, and without having students participate in analysis and critique of sites, we miss an important opportunity to teach them that not everything on the web is genuine, truthful, worthwhile, or credible for citing. (And this Pope Foundation example may be as good as any).

Using word processors is another simple example from my own experience. After teaching students how to use our LMS (Moodle), a word processor is the next tool that I focus on in the class, showing them how to use rulers, change styles, create a hanging indent, save as a different file type, and insert comments. I generally have one or two students every semester who know how to insert a comment, but for every other student, it's magic, and all of them need time to get the hang of using the rulers and styles. Another critical literacy for word processors? Naming files. That's more of a rhetorical literacy for technology - how do you name a file so that your instructor knows it's yours amongst the 22 others in the queue? How do you name it so that you know which project it is when you go back to revise? We need to teach students not only to use the tools adeptly, but also to think critically and rhetorically about how and why they are using them (and this isn't a new idea; it comes from Stuart Selber several years ago).

Being native in a language means having fluency, and we'd all agree that simply having access to a language everyday does not equal having fluency - so why do we conflate this idea when it comes to technology? We must for now call our students something other than digital natives. Digitally naive (while catchy) doesn't seem all that appropriate. Must we call them anything? My parents' and grandparents' generations were literacy natives, but I don't think anybody called them that. If we don't label them as digital anything, then we may be more apt to think of them simply as students we have to teach and prepare for the world that awaits them, and all of the skill sets that they need to do well when they get there.

Fall semester happenings

2011-10-22T21:43:00.000-04:00

I've gotten pretty behind on updating the blog this month, so I thought I'd do a post with "quick hits" on the the things I've been up to and what's on my radar in the coming weeks. I need to focus on writing more - both scholarly and non (including the blog!) - so here goes!

I'll start with some good news: I've finalized my dissertation committee! My chair will be Carolyn R. Miller, SAS Institute Distinguished Professor here at NCSU. The other three members of my committee are Bill Kinsella (Communication), Nancy Penrose (English) and David Rieder (English). They are all members of the CRDM program here at NCSU, and I'm so excited to have a great team behind me. The next step now is finalizing my exam reading lists, which I'll do between now and the new year, so that I can begin reading for exams in January. My exam areas are (approximately; subject to more specific language as I construct the lists): rhetorical genre theory, rhetoric of science and environment, and digital media theory.

I think I've settled in to my administrative jobs with both the Campus Writing and Speaking Program and the First Year Writing Program. I've hosted a few successful workshops thus far and have a few more planned for the year with the CWSP team. One of my major projects for the FYWP will be coordinating assessment of our recently-implemented hybrid writing classes in conjunction with our large program-wide assessment in the spring. These admin roles are a welcome change of pace from teaching, and I think the jobs really agree with me - but, to get used to all the meetings!

Next week I'm traveling with Susan Miller-Cochran to give an invited talk on hybrid writing classrooms for a group of instructors in the mid-West. I've written before about teaching hybrid classrooms both on this blog and my WPA Hybrid Guide site, and I'm really looking forward to working with instructors at other institutions. I definitely plan to write more after the trip and will hopefully share some Tweets as we travel, too.

In two weeks I'm heading to Cleveland for the annual conference for the Society for the Social Studies of Science. I'll be presenting my research (done with Ashley R. Kelly) on discourse about nuclear energy in the Carolinas post-Fukushima. CRDM students just heard this week that we'll receive some funding for conference travel this year - that great news arrives just in time for this conference! I'm so glad to be in a program that can support our professional development activities and has administrators that will go to bat for us to get us the much-needed funding.

I've taken on a few service-oriented tasks this fall as well - conference proposal reviewing, textbook reviewing for a publisher, throwing my name in the ring for a professional organization's board - and am glad to start (net)working with professionals in the field beyond NCSU. I know it's important for my development as a scholar, but I'm also keenly tuned to the discourse I hear for/from graduating CRDMers and the job market. My biggest struggle as I do my PhD is not the work itself, but what kind of work I take on. There is so much work associated with being a scholar, educator, and administrator that the real issue seems to be what work is most beneficial for my professional growth and - let's be honest here - getting a job. Balance is a word that I hear frequently. Too much service and committees might think a candidate can't get research done. Too much research (if there is such a thing) and committees won't think a candidate is a team player who will make a good departmental colleague. Or is it just that when you're a PhD student, you just need to make your CV as long as possible? As the accomplishments of newly-minted PhDs get better and better every year, the idea behind getting a tenure-track job seems to be doing as much as humanly possible.

Back to reading!

My Techno-Teaching Philosophy

2011-09-27T10:44:00.000-04:00

This week, for my CRD 704 core class, Technology and Pedagogy in Communication Arts, I created a techno-teaching philosophy to present to the class. Our guidelines were basically to create a teaching philosophy using some kind of technology. I ended up using several different software programs, online freeware, and hyperlinks in my finished product: Adobe Indesign, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat, Glogster, Wordpress, and Apple's Pages to create my techno-teaching philosophy infographic.

I'll include a small image of the file here, with a link to my online portfolio where the infographic is actually posted. I encourage you to check out the full-size view, complete with all of the embedded links that help to explain many of the graphics. What follows is the brief written description of the infographic that I've included as an accompaniment to the visual representation of my teaching philosophy. I welcome any feedback that you have. Hope you enjoy!

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For a full size view, click here.

Teaching is a major part of my identity as a scholar; indeed, it is a major part of the reason why I have chosen this profession. The same commitment that I have to the scholarship of rhetoric propels my teaching. This infographic represents key points of my teaching in the academy.

Medium

I have chosen to present my techno-teaching philosophy in an infographic format to reflect some key components of my scholarly and teaching identity: to feature my interests in new media, design, and visual rhetoric; to visually represent myself as a cheerful, upbeat person; and to demonstrate that I stay informed of current trends (one of which is currently the use of an infographic to represent data and other information). Infographics feature carefully selected research and data, presented in a highly-organized but visually-pleasing format, in order for the audience to draw a larger conclusion about the featured topic. My argument with this presentation is that it echoes my teaching style: thoughtfully constructed lesson plans, presented in a way that is provoking and fun for students by relating to their interests, which allow them to draw larger conclusions about the topic as a whole that we are discussing.

Content

My teaching philosophy infographic is divided into three main sections: who and what I teach, my scholarly grounding in teaching, and evidence of teaching excellence. This presentation shows a trajectory of planning, implementation, and results, a reflection of how I approach assessment of my teaching.

I begin with the audience for my instruction, “digital natives,” who while they may have grown up using a computer cannot be assumed to understand technology as those in my graduate program understand it. Here I can bring to my students a level of critical thinking and technological competence that will benefit their own use in years to come. I also use technology, social media, and digital media as a konoi topoi, or common topic, to spark discussion or use as an example.

Knowing my audience also means recognizing not only what they want to learn, but how they want to learn. I teach both face-to-face and hybrid classes, knowing the growing trend in higher education of students take at least one of their courses in blended format. I’ve also linked this statistic to my web resource, The WPA’s Guide to the Hybrid Writing Classroom, to demonstrate my work in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The central portion of my infographic represents my scholarly grounding for teaching. As a rhetorically-trained scholar, I build my courses around principles of rhetoric that will most benefit students both while in school and once they begin their careers. I emphasize the rhetorical canons - invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery - and the rhetorical triangle, incorporating related topics of genre and the rhetorical appeals as we explore a wide range of texts, including written, visual, oral, digital, and multi-modal. This approach demonstrates a valuing of the foundational scholarship in the field while at the same time letting students realize that these key concepts can still be applied to the work and the technology they have today.

I end with a demonstration of my teaching excellence. While in graduate school, I have endeavored to acquire many skills and listen to many excellent teachers to improve my own instruction. I’ve completed the Certificate of Accomplishment in Teaching, and next fall, will be doing the Preparing the Professoriate program. My commitment to teaching is recognized by both my students and my department, as evidenced by my evaluations and TA of the Year award.

Conclusion

From this infographic, it should be clear that my teaching is dynamic, disciplinarily cutting edge, and demanding, all while being grounded in scholarship and principles of effective pedagogy. This multi-modal infographic has allowed me to expand my understanding of what a teaching philosophy can be and to better represent my personal approach to teaching.

Latest academic adventure: Guest editor for Enculturation

2011-09-25T14:10:00.002-04:00

I am very excited to announce today that my fellow CRDM student Ashley R. Kelly and I will be guest editors for an upcoming special issue of Enculturation, based on the Computers and Writing Conference that will be held at NCSU next May!

Here's the official call for manuscripts. Please share widely. Computers and Writing 2012 will be a great conference, and this special issue will highlight the best work!

Call for Papers: Special Computers and Writing Special Issue of Enculturation

ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces

Guest Editors

Meagan Kittle Autry, North Carolina State University

Ashley R. Kelly, North Carolina State University

We welcome manuscript submissions for a special issue of Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. For this issue, we invite papers originating from presentations given at Computers and Writing 2012, “ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces.” Under this theme, conference organizers encourage submitters to consider issues, challenges, and benefits specifically related to the production of digital texts. Additionally, submissions are encouraged to consider questions that both address “archiTEXTure” in the classroom and as part of a scholarly agenda. If your presentation is accepted for the C&W conference, we encourage you to submit your manuscript for publication in this special issue.

The goal of this conference is to move beyond traditional, print-based examinations of new media objects as texts. Thus, we are interested in how digital spaces and new media objects interact with and influence the ways that we compose ourselves, our classrooms and our scholarly work. The archiTEXTure of new media can be the media object itself, but can also be the the contexts, spaces, bodies, materials, ideas, and histories of media. The TEXTure of the media could be the screen, but it could also be the differing surfaces and materials of media. In the space between the competing materialities of classroom and text, we can ask questions about construction, process, movement, and change.

Media & Genres

We welcome a mix of media and genres to reflect the various presentation types featured at Computers and Writing 2012: individual presentations, interactive installations, CREATE! sessions, or ConstrucTEXT presentations. Traditional essays, hypertexts, videos, and multimedia projects are all suitable for publication in Enculturation.

Schedule

Inquiries from authors to guest editors begin: September 25, 2011 (Not all submissions must be queried first, but authors are welcome to correspond about their ideas)

Conference proposals due by: October 22, 2011

Notifications to presenters sent: December 15, 2011

Manuscript submissions due by: Final day of C&W conference, May 20, 2012

Notifications to authors sent: July 15, 2012

Revised manuscripts due by: September 1, 2012

Publication date: October 1, 2012

Submission Guidelines

Please send queries and submissions to guest editors at cwspecialissue[at]gmail[dot]com.

Email should include author name(s), email address(es), and title of submission within the body. Please ensure no identifying information is contained within your file submission. Submissions should be attached as .doc or .rtf formats. If you are submitting a non-print text, please email the guest editors to inquire regarding appropriate formats for your submission.

A wild time at Wildacres: Carolina WPA Conference recap

2011-09-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

For two and a half days this week, I got to escape my tethered technological lifestyle and escape to the mountains of North Carolina to Wildacres, a conference center and retreat in Little Switzerland, NC. There, I attended the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators' fall conference with fellow administrators at North Carolina State. It was my first year attending the conference, and I am glad for the opportunity to meet other WPAs from institutions around the Carolinas - it was an excellent networking opportunity.

The entrance to Wildacres. Source: Wildacres.org

We arrived late Monday afternoon, weaving up the top of a mountain. The conference center is a quaint assemblage of wooden cabins and larger buildings, some residential, some with open conference space, and one large mess hall. Yes, a mess hall - we were commanded to each meal by the ringing of a bell. (I didn't know anyone still did that!) The mission of Wildacres is to provide a retreat and conference space for non-profit organizations, particularly in the arts, and to give attendees a chance to reconnect with nature. There are no TVs in the rooms at Wildacres, nor phones nor clocks, and our group quickly ate up the limited wifi bandwidth available - and crashed it for the remaining time that we were there!

This year's conference theme was grant writing and funding, an increasingly important component of a WPA job. Our own Susan Miller-Cochran spoke the first evening about national WPA council grants that are available, providing insight from her years of experience on the council. Tuesday was a full day of workshops, including discussion from Tim Peeples at Elon, who spoke from his experience as an Associate Provost about how to apply for and win internal grant funding. Meg Morgan at UNC-Charlotte talked about finding national funding sources, and Michelle Eble from East Carolina University gave an overview of researching and writing grant proposals. The sessions combined informative discussion and writing (hey, we are WPAs, after all) that left us all feeling a little more confident about applying for grant money for our own programs.

Our two day mini-retreat was not all work, though - there was plenty of time for socializing, games, and and bonfire. While I certainly learned a lot about grants, the best part for me was the social time, talking to other WPAs from the Carolinas and making important connections for when I'm on the job market in two years (still such a long ways away!). Groups members are clearly close friends, and were open and welcoming to newbies/grad students in attendance. On the first night, we had an informal ping pong (table tennis for all the serious players out there) tournament, which yours truly is proud to say she is the champion of. Guess I'll have to go next year to defend my title! Our final night, the staff at Wildacres held a bonfire for us, and we enjoyed more socialization, roasting marshmallows, and some banjo and guitar entertainment provided by a couple of members. We awoke Wednesday morning to a dreary, rainy day at the top of the mountain, and after a quick breakfast and "beat you in ping pong next year!" we were on the road back to Raleigh.

The rocking chairs were a popular spot for socializing. Source: Wildacres.org.

It was truly a good time had by all, and I got the sense that the writing program administrators' community is not just a professional group, but a community in the true sense of the word, where members look out for one another and are working together to achieve their goals and to improve writing programs at all institutions. This was also a good time for me to get to know my fellow NCSU administrators better, too. Special thanks to the First Year Writing Program at NCSU and director Susan Miller-Cochran for the opportunity to participate!

What it means to be a graduate student

2011-09-05T22:26:00.000-04:00

A multi-modal reflection on my current role as a PhD student, in the ever-relevant shape of a coffee mug. (Courtesy Tagxedo.com.)

One year of blogging

2011-08-18T15:48:00.000-04:00

I've been blogging "Meg's Road to PhD" for a year now (well, a little over a year - my first post was August 11, 2010), and I thought it would be interesting to review some of the highlights. I have really enjoyed blogging and have found it to be a great way to find my writing voice and strengthen my "writing muscles," if you will.

In my first 365 days of blogging -

40 posts (Hmm, 40 posts in 365 days seems pretty weak - must work on this!)
66 tags (Gotta maximize that SEO!)
Most used tags: PhD and CRDM
5,355 hits (Wow! I find this incredible!)
Most popular post: "Using Mendeley to Manage Readings and Citations" from October 2010 (nearly 700 individual hits!)
Most popular recent post: "Why all grad students should do collaborative research" (about 100 hits in just one month!)
Country with the most views: United States (nearly half of my total hits) and Canada
Most common search term: my blog URL, megsroadtophd.blogspot.com (I find this odd, that people still Google URLs?) and "PhD organize my readings on my computer" (Which explains the popularity of the Mendeley post!)
Strangest search term: "Is a PhD student a professional?" (Yes, yes we are!)
Most referred site: Google (no surprise there!) followed by Facebook and Twitter (good to know that my shameless self-promotion is working)

It has been neat to look back at what I've written and shared about my experience pursuing my PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. Some of my ideas have changed since I started, and some of my goals have been reinforced through the process. I'm looking forward to writing more about my second year. (And perhaps getting to 10,000 hits!) Anything in particular you want to hear about? Have you been blogging about your PhD experiences? Please share!

Back the grind

2011-08-17T15:02:00.000-04:00

And so it begins - year two of my PhD, year eight of my post-secondary career. What's slated for this fall? Here's what I'm up to:

I'm taking four classes this semester: one core CRDM course, Technology and Pedagogy in Communication Arts; two electives, Rhetoric of Science & Technology and Environmental Communication; and one professional development class, CRDM Colloquium.

For the first time in my graduate career, I'm not teaching this semester. Instead, I'm serving two administrative roles, with my time split between them each semester. This fall, I'm the primary Graduate Assistant Director of NCSU's Campus Writing and Speaking Program, directed by Chris Anson and Deanna Dannels, and in the spring, I'll be the primary Graduate Assistant Director of the First Year Writing Program, directed by Susan Miller-Cochran. I'll be assisting each program during both semesters, but taking on a larger role for one each semester (with another graduate student filling in for each).

I've got to tackle several important milestones toward earning my PhD, including deciding on my doctoral exam areas, beginning to form (or completely forming) a dissertation committee, starting to create reading lists for my doctoral exams, and figuring out my Plan of Work for the Graduate School. It would be great if I could finalize a dissertation topic, too.

I'll also be presenting some research on discussions of nuclear technology post-Fukushiima at the 4S (Society for the Social Studies of Science) conference in Cleveland, November 2-5.

What are your plans for the semester? Will I be seeing you at 4S? Or missing out on your presentation at NCA? Let me know!

How an academic can have an epic summer

2011-08-16T23:34:00.001-04:00

Summer is winding down (not scientifically, but according to the university calendar, which at NCSU begins tomorrow!). This brings a combination of dread and groans from scholars who again feel they didn't accomplish as much as they wanted to. I'd like to think of myself as a positive person (even though my last post used the word frustration no less than four times), so I'm going to buck this trend and explain why I had an epic summer, because remember all that was great about it will surely keep me in a cheerful mood past Labor Day.

How to have an epic summer

Do some work - but prioritize: Your list of things to accomplish that are academic-related might include 10 different things. Be realistic. It's the summer; that will never get totally completed. Pick the three most important things and focus, focus, focus. When you've accomplished them, you'll feel great. I narrowed my priorities to the most important professional development for a PhD student: getting published. I'm happy to say that an article I've written with Ashley R. Kelly will be published in the SIGDOC Proceedings from this year's conference, and I should be able to discuss another publication soon, too. Achieving those two things made my summer feel enormously productive and successful. I also completed a research assistantship with Carolyn R. Miller, which expanded my knowledge of genre theory and gave me a well-rounded list of things to do.

Go away. As in, take a vacation that is truly a vacation, in which you "unplug" and don't read anything remotely academic or try to keep up with Twitter. I was lucky enough to get to do this several times this summer, including trips to Canada and Aspen, and multiple long weekends at the beach. The trick is to have done some of my first point - productive, prioritized work - and then you can really enjoy getting away. I used to feel guilty about taking a day or an afternoon off, but realized that was not a healthy or good way to think about a much-needed break. Focusing and working diligently to achieve my main goals allowed me to soak up the time off, enjoy the Rocky Mountains for the first time, and come back re-energized and ready to tackle a new project/school year.

Hiking to American Lake in White River National Forest, Aspen, Colorado with my dear friend Julia

Read for fun. Yes, being an academic requires a lot of reading, so you wouldn't think that reading when you're not working would necessarily be a first choice, but I find it's important to keep using your "reading muscles" outside of the school year. I say "reading muscle" after a discussion with a faculty member who suggested that, particularly for doctoral exams, that you need to train your "reading muscles" by starting out with small reading goals, and gradually building up to being able to read greater amounts of text each day/week. And if you stop using your reading muscles, they atrophy. Thus, reading during the summer is important, so that you do not start off the semester with a weak reading muscle. I find I was able to keep up by reading books that are unrelated to my research but are important topics for other parts of my life: healthy lifestyle, vegetarianism, and local food movements. Some of the books I read: Eating Animals by Jonathon Safran Foer; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and Peas and Thank You by Sarah Matheny.

Nothing I've said here is necessarily ground-breaking or novel, but it's so easy to be so wrapped up in our work that we don't enjoy the summer as much as we could. It's the best season of the year, after all, and while it still requires work - which many non-academics don't understand - the potential for flexibility in our schedule is there, and we shouldn't forget to use that. Enjoy life!!

The difficulty in being a digital media scholar

2011-08-01T12:10:00.000-04:00

Like many people, I love the Internet and all things related to digital media, spend a lot of time on the internet and with technology, and as my husband would argue, am (borderline) addicted to it all. Unlike many people, however, it is my job to study/research/analyze digital media and the Internet, as a part of my research for my PhD program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NC State. This means, at the very least, I have a good excuse for being addicted to it (unless you are my husband, in which case, it only means that I way too frequently bring my work home with me and work wayyy too much. Which is basically the life of an academic. I guess I have some explaining to do...). But my relationship with the Internet and other technology is not so simple.

It is fun and fascinating to study this broad field, but it can also be very frustrating, difficult to make productive, and hard to keep up with. Don't get me wrong - I'm very happy with my graduate program, and I do love what I study - but it comes with some built-in difficulties that you have to learn to manage if you're going to make a go at it with any real consequence. Here are some of my thoughts on the field (which is probably not even the best way to put it) after my first year of PhD work:

Studying the "field" of digital media/technology/the Internet (and yes, I know these terms are not interchangeable) is frustrating because the field is so large and unwieldy, grows bigger all the time, and transcends pretty much every other field in academia. At NCSU, we study rhetoric and digital media, but that is just one angle of digital media research. It's being done by nursing programs, who analyze use of tablet computers for improving patient care, and political science, to examine the influence of social media campaigns on elections. And those are exactly the studies that we could undertake in our program as well. So how do we distinguish ourselves in the humanities? Or should we at all? Should we market our research outside of these select fields of Communication and English?

It can also be frustrating to study rhetoric and digital media from a humanities perspective because we have no clear methodological sense for how to effectively analyze these artifacts and all of the data they can produce. To borrow a term from Steven Krause, researching the internet in particular is akin to searching in "a haystack full of needles" - there is too much information out there, and it can be challenging to sort through all of it to find some kind of meaning/finding/publishable anything. Those in the humanities have yet to articulate any meaningful considerations for methodological study of digital media thus far, though my colleague Ashley R. Kelly and I will have a paper published in this year's ACM SIGDOC Proceedings that begins to tackle this issue.

It can also be difficult to make research into digital media/technology/the Internet productive, and by productive, I'm referring to producing work that adds to the general body of knowledge in the way that academics aim to do (generally through publishing). A key challenge here is deciding what is meaningful and what is not, and this is directly related to the dearth of methodological literature. If we cannot conceive of the important considerations for digital media study, how can we know what artifacts and data are meaningful? Or when we do know what's meaningful, has it taken so long that the information is no longer timely and relevant to academics and the general public?

This leads me to my third frustration with studying rhetoric and digital media: it is so difficult to produce work that is relevant and timely with the way that academic publishing works. Sure, in my seminar one semester, I was right on point with my analysis of a new technology or use of social media. But by the time I can revise a draft for a journal, send it out, revise a manuscript, and have it published - it's no longer so timely and relevant. Obviously, this issue is not unique to digital media scholars, nor is it a new one, but it's exaggerated by the fast pace of technology and digital media advancements. But as an ongoing issue, I strongly feel that we need to address it and find ways to make our research more available in a more timely way to the public - after all, we aren't trying to only speak to each other with our work. Or at least, we shouldn't be. The University of South Alabama has recently established a new journal that sets out to work on this issue, The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric. Let's support these new ventures so that we can find ways to keep our work timely and relevant as well as rigorous.

So, to recap: studying rhetoric (or insert any academic field, really) and digital media is challenging to say the least. But it is also exciting for all of the potential that is there. We just need to find ways to study it meaningfully - not just any old website or new gadget - and rigorously, as well as to make the information available when it is most relevant and not a year and a half or two years after it made news.

What do you find to be the most challenging part of studying digital media/technology/the Internet/whatever you like to call it? How do you deal with the issues I've mentioned here?

Collaborative writing with Google docs

2011-07-18T16:44:00.001-04:00

In my last post, I discussed the benefits of doing collaborative research in grad school. With the brilliance that is Google docs, team writing is a smoother process than ever. I know that some have been using Google docs for years, for both collaborative writing and their own personal work, whereas there are many who have yet to try out the feature. (If you fit in the former category, some of what I'll review here is pretty basic, but I encourage you to read through and comment to add any functions or perks that I've missed here.)

How I use Google docs & my favorite features:

Writing text: Obviously, a main function of Google docs is that you can write within a window just the same way you could within a word processor. You can change the text style, size, color, and more similarly to a word processor. It has less features - fewer font options and no text boxes, for example - but offers many of the basic functions you need. I use the word count tool a lot!
Exporting: When you need to finish something off in Word (or put it in a .doc format to send off somewhere) you can easily export the document as a Word file, or even a PDF or RTF file.
Collaborative writing: The main advantage Google docs has over a word processor is the facilitation of collaborative writing. As you type, others who are viewing the document (or "in the document) can see what you are writing in real time, and vice versa. I can immediately edit a word someone else has written, we can cut and paste each other's writing - it's all real time. Which is connected to the awesome feature for group projects of -
Everyone is immediately updated: When you open the document, everyone who has permissions to it all have the same, most up-to-date version. No more sending around docs and keeping track by having "GrantAppVersion02Edit34." Work on it in Google docs until everyone is done and then download it in whichever file format you need.
Chat function: Within the document, if another writer is also viewing at the same time, you can chat with your collaborator about the project (or anything else, for that matter). It's helpful for discussing the plan of attack, setting a schedule, etc. all while you are working on it. It also helps save valuable in-person meeting time. (Edited to add this item post-publication - I forgot in my haste to get this posted!)
Flexibility: With a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentations, you can create a doc for pretty much anything you need. I've got docs for essays, group projects, as well as lecture notes, reading exam lists, and Christmas present budget for last year.

Clearly, I'm enamored by Google docs, but I don't think it's perfect. I find the "filing" system a bit clunky - like Gmail, you can tag things, but creation and maintenance of the folders is not so easy. The apps for your smart phone aren't perfect and make it difficult to edit a doc on the go (if you think that's what you will mainly use it for. That's not a primary need of mine, so this isn't a big problem for me, but others tend to prefer something like the Evernote app over the Google doc app). Finally, when you download a doc as a Word file, the formatting does not export as cleanly as I'd like - I tend to spend 15 minutes tidying up the spacing, adjusting the rules, and formatting the font to make it the professional document I need it to be.

Regardless, Google docs is still a great new(ish) tool for PhD students. How do you use Google docs? Any cool ways to use them that I haven't mentioned, or additional concerns I haven't thought of?

Why all grad students should do collaborative research

2011-06-24T08:15:00.001-04:00

This spring, I undertook two collaborative research projects with a colleague of mine in the CRDM program, Ashley R. Kelly. It was the first time I had ever done a seminar paper collaboratively (other projects, certainly, but never the largest one for the course). While at first I was not quite sure how we would manage it, once we got started things really took off and I never once wondered about project management. Overall, I have to say that I really enjoyed the two collaborative projects that we did and would absolutely recommend doing that for at least one of your courses if you are pursuing your PhD.

First, why I loved it: it may be that my research partner was fabulously on the ball, but we were both highly motivated to do well and to both hold up our end of the deal to contribute as much as we could to the project. Having a research partner held me accountable to all of the progress (and occasionally, lack of progress) that I was making. It made me think about the projects more often; gave me frequent deadlines throughout the semester to meet, and alleviated the last-minute crunch that everyone faces at the end of the semester. We toiled diligently through February and March, making the end of April much more pleasant than normal. Of course, you've got to choose a collaborator wisely: don't pick the student who consistently procrastinates! You don't want to resent your partner for not completing tasks in a timely manner. We also had an unofficial "open-door" policy for talking about our projects: we did not hesitate to speak up, disagree, or call each other on something we didn't like/see as valuable for the project. These conversations were professional - not personal judgments of our own ability - so they were productive and did not create any resentment between us. I think this is extremely important for teamwork!

Now, why I think all PhD students should do this at least once while in school: collaborative writing is more and more prominent in academia and better mimics some of the group tasks you'll have to do once you are faculty member. It seems now that any time I get an alert from a journal I'm following, six out of the seven articles in a new issue are co-authored pieces. Web projects are also highly collaborative; case in point, the project I'm working as a research assistant for this summer. It's great professional training in a lower-stakes setting that also allows you to develop connections with those whose research interests align with yours; I know many faculty who still co-write articles or books with those they wrote with in grad school, even though they are now at different institutions. It could also allow you to supplement any of your own weaknesses and learn something new from someone who has perhaps more experience with a certain methodology or theoretical background, helping fill in scholarly gaps you might have.

Overall, collaborative research was a great experience for me this spring, and Ashley and I are continuing on some projects collaboratively, some of which I hope to share with you in the coming months. Next up: how Google docs (and spreadsheets, and presentations) can make your joint research and writing project a success.

Have you ever completed a collaborative project? What advice can you add to the ideas I've got here?

A tardy semester wrap-up

2011-05-28T08:45:00.002-04:00

Like in the fall, I completely fell off the blogging bandwagon at the end of the semester. I guess that's just the nature of the beast - writing so much for your courses that there's not much desire (or anything interesting to talk about) to blog. What I was up to (scholastically) this April & May:

Attending CCCC (which I posted about here and here)
Presenting at the 2nd annual CRDM Research Symposium, "Environments, Risks, and Digital Media"
Completing research for my three graduate seminars (which I will talk about in a separate post) -

"Big Power, Big Controversy: Duke-Progress Energy Merger and Environmental Controversy in the Carolinas": An analysis of discourse about an upcoming local utilities merger completed with Ashley R. Kelly for a course about communication in a networked society
A methods theory paper about studying social media in the humanities, also completed with Ashley R. Kelly, for a course in communication and social change
The WPA's Guide to the Hybrid Writing Classroom, a website designed for writing program administrators to help them think through the process of adopting hybrid writing courses in their first year composition program, for a class on being a WPA

Grading three course projects for my ENG 101 class and holding their final research presentations
Submitting research presentation proposals to next year's CCCC and this fall's SIGDOC (in Italy!)
Starting my research assistantship with Carolyn R. Miller
Completely re-designing my online portfolio

I'm going to blog more specifically about a couple of these things - particularly about doing collaborative research, which you can see I did for two of my projects this semester. It was a highly rewarding experience and worth sharing (or at least, I think so). I enjoyed the end of this semester in terms of teaching. I had some really bright students this spring, and they tackled some great final projects (for which their task was to identify a problem within a social issue and propose a solution). Many students discussed environmental issues in some aspects, whether it was clean energy, greenhouse gases, preserving marine life, etc. I am very pleased at how much environmental issues seem to be on the radar of freshman students this year (in both classes I taught).

Finally, the first "summer" project that I tackled was redesigning my online portfolio. I had initially completed the portfolio last spring for a course in online information design. When I got my new Macbook Pro last Christmas, complete with the whole Adobe Suite, my plan was to completely redo the look. Redesign accomplished! (Though I still have to update some of the information.) But overall, I'm quite pleased with the look - fresh, simple, easy to navigate. To me, minimal still rules in site design, and I wanted my portfolio to reflect that.

My revamped online portfolio

Hopefully I will be back before long talking about my web project (the WPA guide) and my collaborative research. What was the end of the semester like for you?

CCCC Brilliance: "We are 113!"

2011-04-09T10:55:00.002-04:00

The featured session Friday from 12:30 - 1:45 was a curiously titled one: "We are 113!" The program abstract indicated that "The purpose of this panel is to embrace the call of cluster 113 by breaking traditional boundaries." Submitted to the #113 category, newly created this year by Malea Powell to encourage outside-the-box thinking, this panel wowed the crowd and might just be the best panel of the conference. The format: 10 speakers, 5 minutes each, 20 slides per person. Rapid fire delivery. Boundary-breaking topics. Each speaker detailed parts of his or her personal life to connect to how they have transcended boundaries and not conformed to traditional rules of the discipline.

Shelley Rodrigo opened the panel with an introduction to the concept: Rhet/comp, as a field, has rules. We are placed into categories based on our research interests, admin duties, and aspirations. But we need to break these rules and transcend boundaries to be truly successful. We should embrace collaboration, or as she and Susan Miller-Cochran call it, be partners in academic crime. We are more than we study, and it is time we embrace blurring boundaries. This panel - We are 113! - is a call to do so.

Next up: Paul Kei Matsuda, who discussed how his scholarship in second language studies and writing has transcended boundaries and created new boundaries, the field of second language writing. The field also encompasses/considers many others: technical writing, global professional writing, rhetoric, basic writing, and writing program administration. His takeaway: at this point, we have enthusiasm and experience with the field, but now we need expertise that can truly transcend boundaries. And that we are 113!

Cynthia Selfe held the crowd captive with her discussion of identity and how we relate to each other. She says we can only know ourselves through relating to others, and that discourse is a central way in which we do so. We need to be open to transcending boundaries to relate to people in news ways and new people in new ways. By doing so, we are 113!

Greg Glau, known for his work in basic writing, brought in his previous work in sales to talk about how teachers are really in the business of selling, and that teachers make good salespeople. We sell our students how much our class is going to benefit their studies and life. His work traces across all three public universities in Arizona, and he has now come full circle with both his sales and teaching work, saying that he is now in the business of helping his teachers learn how to sell what they are teaching. We need to transcend the boundary of teaching and see it in new ways. If we do this, we are 113!

Jay Dolmage presented a science fiction of sorts, asking us to imagine what the 4Cs would look like in 2020. He began by offering several possible - yet scary - scenarios: at the Palin Presidential Conference Center in Alaska, on a cruise ship in Hawaii, the SS CCCC, hosted by Pearson-MacMillan-Bedford-Cengage-McGraw-Hill-et al. publishing company, with a conference so large and disparate that many could neither afford to go nor get accepted. A place for the select few. These scary scenarios contrast with what Dolmage says we can do instead: have an inclusive, increasingly affordable, and infinitely accessible conference for all involved. As our discipline grows, we have the opportunity to make this a truly great professional conference by emphasizing access. We can do this by putting more and more content online, choosing affordable locations for the conference, and encouraging more contact and interaction, not less. His vision for CCCC 2020 is one that we can achieve - and we can all be 113!

Kathy Yancey followed with a discussion of her path to rhet/comp scholarship. As a young girl, she wanted to be an actress, then an architect, and went to school and became a teacher. She reckons that if she had attended school at another time, she would have studied weather, fascinated by use of patterns and the unpredictability of it. Instead, she's now in the business of big ideas and always trying to come up with the next great one. This has led to many projects over the years, too many for her presentation or me to list here, but most recently the Center for Everyday Writing, a new initiative at Florida State. By tackling academic projects and thinking of big ideas, we are 113!

Chris Anson brought down the house by telling the narrative of his childhood, a mix of identities: a nature and animal lover, a writer, a wannabe veterinarian, an English child living in France and then the United States. His identity broke boundaries and he struggled to transcend them in school, resisting his American teachers' desire for conformity to American spelling. In moments of brilliant openness and hilarity, he showed us how we all have mixed identity that transcends boundaries - that we are all 113.

Lamiyah Bahrainwala also told a narrative of the experiences that led her to study at Michigan State University. Born in India, she migrated to Dubai as a child, going to an all-girl's private Catholic school until she went to the American University in the Middle East. It was there that some of her friends, whose L1 was Arabic, but who wrote predominantly in English, created a new language in order to reconcile their desire to write in Arabic but having to conform to English coding/writing online. Fascinated by the language, she now studies it at MSU, asking questions about how people are reclaiming their language while also contesting boundaries. They are 113!

Finally, Kati Fargo and Kevin Brock, both of NCSU's CRDM program, introduced how their work and our program contests boundaries every day. Interdisciplinary in nature, CRDM brings together communication and rhetoric scholarship while asking questions through the lens of digital media and technology. We are fostering collaboration across topics and fields. They are writing program administrators, grant writers, graduate students, teachers, and friends. Our program blurs and transcends boundaries. WE ARE 113!

The panel ended with smart questions exploring how we can apply 113 to our work. The panelists are making a call for us to break, blur, transcend, and collaborate across boundaries to improve their field and make our scholarship even better. The panelists report struggling with the concept of first, unsure of how exactly to break boundaries and call for change. Their message was clear: we are 113!

Live at the 4C's

2011-04-08T14:22:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's road trip to CCCC in Atlanta was a bit of an adventure, but we eventually got here! It' very exciting to be at this conference - the place is abuzz with scholars from across the country.

The only panel I had time to catch yesterday was one of the last panels of the day by two of CRDM's very own, Matt Morain and Jason Kalin, both third years in our program. They each presented on preliminary research for their dissertation topics. Matt studies rhetoric and Internet culture, and yesterday talked about the kairos of Internet memes. Kairos, very generally, refers to the opportune moment for speech. He gave his usually energetic and informative talk, discussing in particular the biggest meme of the month, Rebecca Black's Youtube video "Friday." His research asks questions about how we can assess the kairos of Internet culture and how exigence can be co-constructed by both creators of memes and the audience receiving memes. His research also has implications for research methodology, exploring how we can know what's worth studying and what memes will disappear into the abyss of the web. His work is definitely worth watching - for an upbeat presentation with smart questions some people are afraid to ask.

Jason's research focuses on rhetoric and public memory, specifically with respect to how digital and social media are changing the way we consider the issue. He's asking - how does public memory circulate online? How do digital networks come into play? How has public memory become living and archival through social media? For this presentation, he spoke in particular about the Flickr group "Looking into the Past," a photography group that superimposes images of old landmarks/places into a picture of how the location looks currently. Kalin argues this creates a new modality of memory, in which the past and present appear simultaneously, layered and seamless at once: it's "then in now." It creates a public for memory. He calls this "hauntography," a play on hauntology, which is a play on ontology. Hauntology is re-photography, with spirit in the photography where the memories live. His dissertation work has implications for the forgotten canon of rhetoric, memory, and how we should be considering it anew with the rise of digital and social media.

Next up: Friday's session blogging! I am so excited about the featured session that I attended and it has so many people buzzing with excitement. They were truly breaking the boundaries - stay tuned!

A-conferencing we will go

2011-04-06T16:58:00.000-04:00

This week is a major conference within our field, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, in Atlanta. I'm getting ready to head down there to enjoy scholarship and fellowship with a few thousand colleagues. I'm not presenting this year, but I'm looking forward to listening for a while, particularly because there will be so many panels that can help me with teaching. I've only seen one panel on the program thus far about hybrid (blended) writing classes, which is disappointing, but I'm hoping to ask around when I get there and maybe find out about a few that are somewhat related.

I'm hoping to blog about my days while I'm down there - give a recap of my day - including the panels that I attended, people I talked to, and social events that were hosted. What a better way to share all of the great panels than blog to the world? I'd love to live Tweet, but I'm not sure how reliable the wi-fi access is at the conference location. If you're on Twitter, you can follow Tweets from others by searching for the hashtag #cccc11 or #4c11 (I've seen both circulating). And if you're at CCCC's, I'd love to meet you!

A moment to top all teaching moments

2011-03-23T23:28:00.000-04:00

Today, the most bizarre thing happened to me in class that I think has ever happened since I began teaching. Which granted is not that long, compared to my colleagues and my own instructors, but still a milestone that I'd like to discuss... mostly for its weirdness.

Right before class officially started today, one of my students (who is openly gay) began inviting his fellow classmates to NC State's next LGBTQ events, a drag parade at the nightclub Flex here in Raleigh. After canvassing the class on an individual basis, he turned to me and yelled, "Ms. Kittle Autry! You have to come to the drag parade at Flex. YOU inspired MY costume!" . . . Awkward. So was the silence in our class. He quickly filled in with, "In the way that, you know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." The laughter in the classroom was uncomfortable, as was I, and I quickly said, "Well, I think I'll take that as a compliment," and launched into taking attendance. I did not - and still do not - take offense to the student's comment. I'm flattered that he has considered me in trying to find a fun costume for an event that he is passionate about.

I hope now that I did not come across as "blowing off" the student's interest. Although I've never had a student ask before, if one of them invited me to attend a sporting event, theater production, drag parade, whatever - I would seriously consider going to support the student and show my genuine interest as his or her teacher. And quite honestly, I'm more than mildly curious about this student's interpretation of me (as a teacher) for various reasons. At this point I'm undecided: after looking at Flex's website, the show doesn't start until 12:30 Thursday night (aka Friday morning)! What party starts that late? I'm feeling older and older than my students all the time. But what matters is that I would like to support this student, who is actively pursuing his interests on campus.

My reflections on this incident have me thinking that - no matter how much TA training and faculty development workshops you attend, how many books you read, or how many other teachers you talk to - you will always encounter situations that you are utterly unprepared to deal with. People are vibrant, unpredictable, and full of new things you don't know. That's what makes life fascinating but also what makes teaching a roller-coaster ride. In one sense, it's the challenge that draws you to teaching - no semester is ever the same! - but it's the challenge that causes us to snark on Twitter or on other Internet fora. Maybe the more I teach, the faster I'll be on my feet to think of what to say in that kind of situation.

So now I'm curious - what situations have you had teaching that render you helpless/speechless/unsure of how to deal? (You know, so in case it ever happens to me... I'll have some knowledge upon which to draw!) Do share. And if I go to Flex tomorrow night - I'll be sure to update you on that as well.

A highly productive week

2011-03-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

This week is "Spring Break" at NCSU. Being in my mid-twenties, I'm not so keen anymore on announcing to people, "I'm on Spring Break!!" Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful for a week-long hiatus from class. It's just that the concept of Spring Break is misleading for people when you're a PhD student. So, from now on, I'm calling it my "highly productive week." Because contrary to popular belief, I'm not spending the week laying on the beach - I'm whipping up some work and spending just as much time, if not more, doing all the things that just don't get done when I'm in class, teaching, and generally prepping for my weekly deadlines.

The first task I tackled this week was data collection for a joint project that I'm doing with a colleague of mine, Ashley R. Kelly. We are examining rhetorical markers of controversy in public discourse surrounding the Duke Energy-Progress Energy merger that's happening here in North Carolina. The new mega-power company will be the largest energy provider in the United States (in terms of customers). Complicating matters is the company's desire to change North Carolina law in order to bypass public hearings about the proposed construction of nuclear reactors. We've just completed the data collection stage, so I'll post more information once we're further into the project.

I've also had the opportunity this week to develop my submissions for NCA 2011. I've submitted a revised seminar paper that I wrote last semester and am also finalizing a paper session proposal that Ashley and I will do together along with a PhD student from UGA who is also looking at rhetoric of science and nuclear energy issues. Hopefully, I'll have to slots in the program for NCA 2011 and will be able to enjoy four great days in New Orleans this November!

Also on the agenda this week is reading Sherry Turkle's newest book, Alone Together. I haven't finished it yet, so I won't post a full review until later, but in the meantime, I have a few ideas as I've been reading. It's a little unsettling to read about how technology impacts our human relationships while at the same time, I'm taking notes on my Macbook, texting my husband, and checking Twitter. So automatically, I see the need for her research to better understand how this impacts our interactions with each other and our increased use of and reliance upon technology for everyday activities, including socializing.

Finally, I'm also working on my latest web project - a final project for my course in Writing Program Administration. It is a labor of love that I am really enjoying working on, but it will be a little while before it will go live and I will be able to share it with you. My goal right now is just to meet the deadline for the last day of class!

I realize I've falling a bit off of the blogging bandwagon and will hopefully get back on track now to my regular one post per week - so long as I have something important to say!

Links worth sharing

2011-02-17T10:41:00.004-05:00

There are days where I feel like I have a lot to say, but at the same time nothing to say - that is, there's a lot going on, but it's not necessarily all blog-worthy.

But what I can offer are some insights from others around the interwebs that have got me thinking about bigger and better things than the extraneous situations you inevitably deal with while working on your PhD.

I'm really digging Dave Parry's (from UT-D) web project, Profound Heterogeneity. He researches text beyond the print age, and if you read the description of the site, he includes some fascinating references to those who say we need to "burn the boat/book" and quit defending a dead industry (print books) and focus on make digital endeavors better than ever.

Miriam Posner's post for Prof Hacker on the Chronicle online, "Creating Your Web Presence: A Primer for Academics," is a must-read if you are a young academic looking to establish your online presence or want to better control your online image. Her tips are introductory, and you may have heard of some of them before, but I'm betting there's a least one suggestion that will help you anew.

It's actually her post that led me to find the site Amplicate - which I will not link to because I do not want to support the site - that I think everyone needs to know about. It's a beta site that takes information you post publicly - ie. on a blog or Twitter - and amalgamates the information into product reviews. It all has to do with posts that include some kind of sentiment that could be construed into an endorsement or complaint, ie. if you use the word "love" or "hate" in your Tweet, and happen to also mention Overstock, the site will take your Tweet and put it on their site under "Overstock love" or "Overstock hate." My Twitter name had its own page on the site (!) with several Tweets I'd posted about various products/situations. I've since deleted those Tweets on my profile and will be much more careful about what I say in the future - I want to control my image and not have my words misconstrued on a site by some dude who wants to make a million bucks in the social media/tech bubble. (Case in point: I originally titled this post "Link l*ve," but have since changed it so I can tweet the title of my post without it being appropriated inappropriately.)

And for a frivolous link, I've just discovered Honey and Fitz, a home decor blog written by a local woman in Raleigh. She has great taste and super organization skills. Her creative and smart posts are just what I need in the morning to gear up for another long day of reading, 'riting, and running to class.

Encouraging feedback

2011-02-10T12:42:00.000-05:00

This week has been quite a busy one with school and my husband being in California for work! One of my obligations this week was a meeting with one of my professors last semester to discuss the project that I completed for the course, History of Communication Theory. While early February is a quite a long ways past when I submitted the project at the beginning of December, I still felt it was important to hear what he had to say about my research and the topic's potential.

Overall, the meeting was highly encouraging. Not because the project was so amazing that it's ready for publication, but that he felt the topic had really great potential to become my dissertation topic (!!). I was already planning on submitting the paper to NCA to present this fall, and his enthusiasm for the topic gave me some new energy to pursue it further in a course this semester. The topic is still huge and essentially untouched in the field of rhetoric and communication, so it will take some time for me to work through some ideas to figure out how I can approach it for my dissertation. The great news is that I still have a lot of time to explore the topic (another year's worth of classes) and I can be well on my way to designing my three concentration areas and reading lists with this topic in mind.

So, despite the somewhat discouraging nature of academia right now, I'm running on a high of having a general topic to pursue for the next 3-10 years and helping my prospects of finishing on time because I've got a topic figured out. Now to determine what my concentration areas will be, based on how I want to frame my research, and form a committee of faculty that can work with me on the project. Next step: a talk with my unofficial advisor to get the ball rolling. And I've already got that on the agenda for next week!

P.S. I love that I can tag this post "PhD" and "happy." How often does that happen?!

Writing Program Administration

2011-02-01T10:03:00.000-05:00

This semester, I'm balancing two theory-heavy courses with a more practical course: Writing Program Administration! And yes, I'm really enjoying the class such that I'll tag an exclamation mark at the end of that sentence. Taught by two of the field's best, Dr. Chris Anson and Dr. Susan-Miller-Cochran, the course focuses on both theoretical and practical issues of WPA. Our work combines readings, class discussion, listening to Drs. Anson & Miller-Cochran's experiences, and the best part, an in-depth study of a writing program. For the study, we work closely with a WPA from another school, sending a weekly question set based on that week's topics and readings. We then write weekly reports about the program based on what our WPA tells us, what we can get from the school's website, and our readings, reflecting about how that all comes together.

For my WPA study, I'm looking at a small, private, liberal arts school without an official "writing program" structure. It's a great juxtaposition for NC State, a large state school with an immense first-year writing program within the English department. My WPA has been great to correspond with, and we've got a great system going for communicating with one another. Immediately after our class for the week (on Tuesdays), I start on next week's readings and review what I already have on that topic before sending questions that will allow me to write a report for the next week's topic. I send the questions by Thursday, which gives the WPA the chance to both reflect on and answer the questions on her own time. I usually get my responses by Monday morning, leaving me plenty of time to read, reflect, and write a report by Tuesday.

At first, I was really nervous about contacting a faculty member that I've never spoken with, met in person, or will likely ever have contact with again after this semester. However, the WPA put me at ease and has shown such genuine kindness in answering my questions - generally two parts each, and I try to keep it to only four q's per email - with short essays! I'm very encouraged by the WPA's generosity with his/her time: as a graduate student, it seems that faculty are always so busy with their work and that email is not a high priority. Obviously, there are faculty who value collaborating with graduate students and want to help them develop projects that they are mutually interested in.

I also hope that my weekly reports will help the WPA; at the end of the semester, I will amalgamate my weekly reports into a final program report, perhaps with a few friendly suggestions, that I will send to the WPA (hence why I am not going to name the school that I am profiling; this information is private to the school and I am privileged to be given it). The school is currently undergoing re-accreditation and the WPA is conducting an internal assessment of the writing initiative, so the time spent reflecting on the questions I send also has some value for the WPA in the assessment process.

Overall, I see great value in this kind of class for graduate students. Part of being a professional in the field - a faculty member - is administration. No one ever just teaches and researches; whether it be committee work, taking the role of assistant director of a program, or even greater responsibility within a department or the university, every one does administrative work as a part of their career. Graduate students are always primed to research (through coursework) and teach (through workshops and actual teaching assignments), so why wouldn't we want to be educated in the other main part of our professional responsibilities, too? Some may argue that giving grad students administrative responsibilities is exploitative, or that exposing them to the inner workings of the school (and thus politics, budget issues, etc.) isn't right. However, I disagree: we've got to learn about all the parts of our future professional responsibilities if we are going to be competitive candidates in an increasingly dire (desperate?) market for PhDs. Anyone disagree with me? Have an unfortunate experience with administrative responsibilities while doing their PhD? I'd be glad to hear from you.

Twitter according to McLuhan

2011-01-25T15:52:00.000-05:00

This week in my "Communication as Social Change" course, we read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media. Our brief assignment in response was to write a critique of an emerging technology in McLuhanesque fashion. Here's my take on Twitter, a la McLuhan:

Twitter: Our Lives as an Electronic Process

The latest form of electric communication demolishes the spatial dimension: Twitter. Twitter, as electric information, decentralizes: you can receive news from all over the world in an instant, a digital telegraph in 140 characters. As such, the Internet and its media extensions - including Twitter - have become the ultimate implosion of information and technology into the global village. Twitter users are a part of a single consciousness in which technology is a determining factor for social change.

You may think that Twitter is a cold medium: participation is key, with users creating a Twitter feed by typing in information that they want to share with the world, whether it be just textual information, a hyperlink, or a link to a photo they wish to share. In this sense, it takes some people to share information with others, making it a cold medium. On the contrary - Twitter is in fact a hot medium. The majority of tweets are generated from a small community of users, just as television shows have to be created by a small community of actors and producers, while other Twitter users merely follow people and soak up the information provided, passively intaking what’s been given to them, just as the majority of people interacting with television are sitting in their living room watching what’s already been produced. Through Twitter, one website can get its users all the news they need, world news, economy news, celebrity news, along with sales at their favorite stores and the latest pictures of your friend and her cat. Twitter has ended a person’s need to search multiple sites for disparate kinds of information and bundled it into one extremely hot medium.

Twitter is exactly what I was talking about when I said, “Our private and corporate lives have become information processes just because we have put our central nervous systems outside us in electric technology” (76). Just as electricity ended the distinction between day and night, microblogging in media such as Twitter has ended the distinction between one’s public and one’s private life. It has become the ultimate extension of man - not of a physical limb, but as a verbal and visual extension of one’s self. If the computer is an extension of the mind, then Twitter is an extension of the voice. But what are we hearing with it?

Coleridge penned in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.” We encounter millions of words on Twitter - but where is the actual information? Such a small percentage - some estimate merely 8% - of tweets contain anything with pass-along value. In this way it alters our consciousness and we learn to skim information and not take in every piece of visual and verbal information fully. We are also inundated with messages through the media that Twitter is constructed of. In becoming an electric and highly informative medium, Twitter is the ultimate medium within many other media: photographs, hyperlinks, and alphanumeric text on a microblogging platform on the Internet, within the computer, written in binary code, using alphanumeric symbols. But not everything is important and worth the world knowing.

Works Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Literature Network. 2010. Web. Jan. 22, 2011.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, critical edition. Ed. W. Terrence Gordon. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko, 2003.

Professional development as a PhD student

2011-01-21T13:44:00.000-05:00

This week I applied for a position in my department as the Graduate Assistant Director of the First Year Writing Program. It's a great opportunity to pursue my interests in higher education administration, to get some practical experience on the job, and to work with one of the most respected directors in the country. I was so excited when I got the call for applications in my email and started working on it right away.

The call asked for a "letter of interest." Sitting down to write it, I realized - I've never heard of a "letter of interest" before. I've certainly never written one. I've never attended a workshop on writing them or heard a word about them in any professional development work I've done. I've heard and seen a lot of information on writing a cover letter and a CV, reading a job call, etc. Because it was an internal call - only PhD students who teach in the program are eligible to apply for the position - I'm assuming that's why only a letter of interest, and not a complete job application, was necessary. However, if this is a common practice for applying for internal jobs, as a graduate student, I'd certainly welcome some guidance in writing for those.

I worked on some ideas, drafted what I thought I would include to demonstrate my interest in the position, and did what any smart student does - sent it out for peer review! With the help of someone in my cohort, I think I've produced a strong letter that demonstrates exactly why I'm not only interested in the job but also highly qualified to take the position.

However, it leaves me wondering if my letter of interest fits the genre. What goes into an internal letter of interest? How common of a practice is that in higher education? For instance, if you're an associate professor applying to be the director of graduate programs, do you write a letter of interest? Do you complete an application? Or is this the only time in my life I'll see a job opening that will require (and only require) a letter of interest?

I'm also helping facilitate a series of professional development workshops for PhD students in our program. This reminds me that I need to "think outside of the box" for workshops and ask around for important information that's not necessarily the standard PD workshop material. Inevitably, there's always something you haven't heard of before that you have to work on for your job application that I want to see if we can cover if at all possible. Which reminds me - I'd better start on the first workshop! January has nearly passed us by.

Cheers!

Uncertainty about the academy

2011-01-05T21:43:00.001-05:00

A concise, poignant post the other day sparked a snowballing conversation across the Internet about life as an academic, specifically in the humanities. An excerpt:

Because I am being limited personally, financially, professionally, and creatively...
Because I want to continue to love it...
Because sometimes I consider how my light is spent...
Because there are other places where that training and preparation will be rewarded, respected, and used...
Because I am capable of more than I can do here...
Because leaving the system is a reclamation of the dignity and agency it has attempted to take from me…
I am leaving the academy.

The "doom and gloom" articles about job prospects in the humanities abound (so do the satirical videos about graduate school, too), and now, we're hearing from someone (albeit anonymously) that she is quitting (yes, I'll call it that).

Today, a response to the post piqued my interest: "We Ain't Got Nothin' to Lose, Motherf*cker."

The reason “because” had to be written is, well, …
because we have colleagues who would rather beg for scraps than be ethical
because T Th classes are more important to us than pointing out flawed curricula. Because if we do point that out, we might have to teach on Fridays.
because no matter how much we bemoan the loss of tenure, we do so out of self-interest. Because we believe we are owed something for years of grad school and poverty. Because we are entitled.
because we are afraid of rocking boats when others are begging for our jobs.

Quite frankly, this dialogue is downright frightening for a current PhD student. What am I getting into? What kind of job future/security am I going to have? It's very romantic to think that I'm going to learn for the rest of my life, help others learn, and make the world a better place, but I've got to be practical too - I need to make a living. (Allan has a great job, but - I was not raised to rely on men for my living!) So how can "my generation" of academics (ie. those up and coming/just starting out) approach these issues? Should we get used to the idea of tenure falling by the wayside and participate in conversations to develop a new system for promotion/job security that rewards us for hard work and benefits the university at the same time? Can I really live with having "a job" because others do not, even if the conditions are far less than ideal?

At a more personal level, this also has me wondering how to position myself as a scholar in an interdisciplinary PhD program. If more traditional English scholars (literature, composition) have a hard time finding jobs and working within the system of their department, where does this leave an interdisciplinary scholar? In terms of identity: Am I a rhetorical scholar with the ability to also teach communication courses? Am I an English/Communication interdisciplinary scholar? Am I a media scholar that specializes in rhetoric? What will allow me to be more marketable and/or find the right fit of an institution for my career? This is a struggle I see for some of us in this new, up-and-coming CRDM program. I love it - what's not to love about learning more than one discipline? - but at the same time, I am concerned about the "working conditions" and job potential that lie ahead.

Goals for 2011

2011-01-04T16:43:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! This is my first post from my new laptop - the Macbook Pro that I'd asked for for Christmas - and to follow the theme that the blogs in my Reader have done this week, I'm writing a "kick-off" post for the new year. I am not one who makes resolutions: instead of constantly trying to do something better, I identify goals that I am working toward. I've also read other bloggers who say that a public proclamation of goals motivates them to accomplish what they've set out to do.

Without further ado, here's what I'd like to do academically in 2011 (and how I might do it):

Join the conversation more. Starting to blog and activating a Twitter account were two ways in 2010 that I entered the conversation as an academic, but thus far I don't think I've used either very effectively to dialogue with others in the field. My conversations have been pretty one-sided, so my goal is to begin legitimate conversations with other digital rhetoric and environmental communication scholars online. To start, I will not only continue with my blog, but I will more actively seek out those of others, read, and comment when I have a question or something to say. I'll keep "listening" on Twitter, but will plan to jump in when I have a question or something to say. In short, I'll converse less in my corner and more out in the open with others. I'll need a bit of help with this: the best way to find great blogs, I think, is through others. Please feel free to share your blog or someone else's that you follow so that I can, too.
Go to more conferences. I've stuck mostly to regional conferences thus far, quite honestly due to a lack of confidence. I need to get over this and start branching out! So, I'm going to seriously consider the conference calls that come my way and send in abstracts to the larger, national conferences. This is the status quo for academia, so I really need to step it up here if I'm going to cut it in the field (or, that's at least how graduate school makes it seems. Feel free to correct me here).
Submit an article or two for publication. Originally my goal was to get something published, but that timeline might be too tight. So I'm setting the bar low (ha!) and going with just submission. Is it better to accomplish a lesser feat, but actually cross it off the list, than to aim high and not get there? I guess I'll see.
Continue to get involved in the CRDM department. I realize that service is an important part of any vitae, but I join committees, help with workshops, and offer leadership for a greater reason: I actually want to be an admin one day. Every aspect of the department and field that I can learn about, I think, can help me in the future as I begin to reach for leadership positions in a departments. I hope this isn't too much of "putting the cart before the horse" (ie. planning to be a dean before I even get a teaching job!), but I hope that by making connections, I'll be better prepared to jump into a position that fewer and fewer professors/academics are interested in pursuing.

I really should also include a goal for my teaching, but since I've talked about improving my role in the classroom previously, I've kept the focus here on my role as a student/academic.

What do you hope to do in 2011?

Blog roundup: Recent interesting links

2010-12-02T11:02:00.002-05:00

I'm currently focusing on finishing the end of the semester, as evidenced by my relative silence on this blog in the last couple of weeks. I'm finishing three seminar research projects and teaching, including grading two essays/student and final exam presentations. In lieu of writing a lame post about how busy I am, I though I'd point you to some interesting posts I've come across. I haven't had time to really write or think about them, but here is some food for thought:

What does it mean to be a digital scholar? Or to teach digital literacy? A survey of the field and where we should be looking next, via Literacy in the Digital University blog.

Hints for job seekers from Dean Dad, a blogger for Inside Higher Education.

A bright light in the ecoblog world, Worldchanging, is closing its doors.

Steven D. Krause gets honest about a confrontation by a student about his grade.

And, just for fun - or in case you've been living under a rock for the last couple of works doing research, like me - Anne Peterson wonders why Americans are so enamored with the Royal family and the newest princess-to-be, Kate Middleton.

What posts have I missed recently? Share with me some of your faves here or on Twitter - @makautry.

What I'll do better next semester

2010-11-23T09:26:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of the semester, I talked about how I wanted to do a better job of encouraging my students to engage critically with ideas and to work with social issues that they are passionate about, inspired by Friedman's discussion of creativity and ingenuity in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Last week I had my teaching observation, which led me to reflect on what we've accomplished thus far and what still remains. Overall, I feel as if I haven't lived up to the expectations I set for myself in teaching the students critical thinking about real world situations. Sure, they learned to think critically about a speech, a couple of journal articles, some sample student papers, but - I didn't bring opportunities to them to discuss much that's happening outside of our classroom. And that disappoints me. I think I got so wrapped up in trying to make the hybrid class experience as effective as possible that I forgot about my other goals.

Now that I've gotten the first semester of hybrid teaching (nearly) under my belt, I've got plans to revamp the material. I'm teaching the same type of section in the spring, still the 100-minute class time, and I plan to use the first ten minutes of each class to talk to students about something that's happening at that time in the news or at NCSU and have them engage in critical thinking about these issues every class. I know this isn't a new or novel idea and that many other instructors incorporate something like this in their curriculum already. I was inspired last week after re-reading some of Victor Villanueva's Bootstraps to tackle something along these lines. I thought going in to the reading that I was doing what he advocates for, but after finishing, I felt as if I fell short.

So, over break, I'll re-work some of the syllabus to accommodate more time for class discussion about current issues and maybe come up with a system for having the students bring in articles and ideas that they want to discuss. If I start "exercising" that component of my students' brains early on, I have a hunch that it might improve my students' ability to think critically about the texts they analyze for homework or for their unit projects. I also hope it will teach them a little maturity, too, by exposing them to ideas that they are uncomfortable with initially or showing them alternative ideologies that they may not have considered before. Another benefit that might come out of these discussions is a greater connection to the students. This semester has been difficult for me, only seeing students one day per week. I don't know the students as well, and overall, the vibe is just different from other semester (where I would teach them four days a week!).

Do any of you do some kind of critical thinking activity/discussion in your classes before you begin the lesson for the day? How do you introduce outside topics to the class for discussion? I'd love to hear suggestions about what works and what doesn't.

Colbert's take on my last post

2010-11-09T14:02:00.001-05:00

It happens fairly often that after I post something, I stumble upon an article or video touching on the same topic. After I posted "Why I love grad school," I was reminded of this video that Jeff sent to me a while back. Colbert does such a great job at summing up the importance of challenging each other's ideas and coming in contact with ideas that make you uncomfortable that I thought I'd let you hear it for yourself. (Apologies, but the code for embedding the video into the post is broken on the show's site. Linking to The Colbert Report instead!)

The Word: Heated Debate

Of course, my favorite line - and that which has become a driving force for a research project this semester - "Sure, there's a vast consensus on global warming science, but doesn't the opposing 5% deserve 50% of the time?"

What I love about grad school

2010-11-05T23:23:00.000-04:00

Don't read the title of the post and get the wrong idea. Earning your PhD is a long, complicated, difficult process. As a beloved professor told me when I was first applying, "No one ever went to graduate school and said it was the most fun they ever had." But amidst all of the grumbling and complaining that we collectively do about the hoops we're jumping through and the struggle to find sources, there's something that gets me excited and confirms for me that I'm in the right profession.

I love the exchange of ideas that we engage in every day, how we challenge each other's thoughts and constantly re-negotiate our knowledge. I love hearing from scholars outside of NCSU; when they come to visit and present their arguments, they challenge my current thinking on the topic and force me to reconsider my stance. In essence, I love when people make me uncomfortable with ideas. I love when I come away from a talk or reading questioning my current stance and trying to reconcile the new with the old. I'm inspired to talk about the concepts, synthesize, and share what I've learned. And I particularly like being uncomfortable with new ideas so that I don't take for granted the knowledge that I do have. When asked why I believe something, I never want to answer, "Just because," or "because of x theory," or, "so and so said so." I feel that polemical views are hard to support and even harder to engage others with, so I'm constantly trying to balance - and that's a never ending process.

It's an every day reminder that no one can ever know everything, but together, we can share ideas and make sure that we never settle with what we know. We should always strive to learn more. And that's exactly why I'm in grad school.

Halfway through the Hybrid (or Blended) Class

2010-11-05T09:26:00.001-04:00

An article published earlier this week by the Chronicle, "Tomorrow's College," prompted me to think more about how I am teaching my hybrid academic writing class this semester and the impact that the format has on students. Until now, I've really only been thinking about how my teaching has to change and how I'm trying to take advantage of technology to teach a blended course successfully. My thoughts are that the students in my hybrid classroom are learning new and different skills from the students in the traditional ENG 101 classroom

I'm confident that my students are learning to use different technologies, software platforms, and website tools to accomplish tasks in our hybrid class. In August, they had no idea that you could use Google for more than searching or email, and now they are adept at using Google docs and sites for classroom purposes. I've introduced them to Mendeley for organizing their files for the literature review, though I didn't make it required for them to get it (more on this soon, with an update on grading with Mendeley). Obviously, they've mastered Moodle, the learning management system that our school uses. Next semester, I'd like to show the students even more ways to use technology to help them accomplish their school work. Some possibilities: blogs (either reading or writing them, or both), Twitter, and Reddit or Diigo. Any other suggestions of useful technologies/software/websites that I should consider for the spring?

This is not to say that students in the traditional classroom don't use these tools (because I know that they do), but that the tools are embedded into the format of the course. I'd like to think that this benefits them - they are learning that the Internet is useful for things other than Facebook. I think that's a win!

I'd also really like to think that being in a hybrid class for their first semester of college encourages them to develop the self-motivation necessary to succeed in future courses. Again, that's not to say that traditional class formats don't - but a hybrid class forces it on the students from the get-go. If they don't do the work online and turn it in, twice a week for every week of the semester, they're "absent" and would eventually fail (due to the First Year Writing program's attendance policy, which holds all students equally accountable for attendance). It's painfully obvious when students leave work to the last minute, but I've noticed that many of the students turn in the work up to a full day before it's due. Those assignments are less likely to be rushed and are unequivocally stronger responses than those that are posted the minute before the deadline. I'm not a social scientist, but that's correlation, people.

So, is hybrid (or blended) format the future of college teaching? I don't know. But, it's here, and I've been asked to continue teaching in that format for the spring, so I'm going to embrace it and use the opportunity not only to diversify my teaching portfolio and technology repertoire, but also to show my students how to use technology and Internet tools to help them succeed while they're here.

Another reason I love Mendeley: Grading student projects!

2010-10-28T11:04:00.001-04:00

Ya'll, I'm totally on the Mendeley bandwagon. In an earlier post, I talked about how great it is for organizing my course readings and for taking notes on the readings to have them all in one place. But I've branched out to experiment with another potential use for Mendeley - grading student projects. So far, I think it works pretty well.

For the second unit of ENG 101, we explore the differences between academic writing (through looking at journal articles) and public writing (by analyzing magazine articles). Their unit project is to adapt a journal article for a popular audience by creating a magazine spread that reports on the information and targets their audience effectively. I let the students get creative and go all out with the layout and design, whether with just MS Word or with Adobe Creative Suite. Because of this, I ask them to submit their projects in PDF format instead of as a Word document or RTF (which is how they normally submit projects; I grade everything electronically in Word using "Insert Comment" and "Track Changes"). Before using Mendeley, though, I had no way to grade ON a PDF; instead, I would create a Word document and just record my comments in there. As you can imagine, that's not the most efficient way to do so. (I know, I should just buy Adobe Pro, and then I'd be set, but - I'm holding out until I get my new computer.)

So, since I've discovered Mendeley, I've been thinking that it would be a possible solution to my grading PDF conundrum. And it is! I just download a folder with all of my students' projects in them. I start grading by highlighting where there are spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors, just like I used to in Word. Then, I'm able to insert comments directly at the point where I'm commenting on. When I'm done, I export the PDF and am able to email the file with annotations back to the students. Genius!

I've really only one complaint about the process: when I export the PDF, I lose the little comment graphic that shows students where I've commented in their file. I don't know if that's only because of my computer at this point, or if that's how it works for everyone. So, I've come up with a solution by highlighting just the final word of a sentence where I'm commenting and then inserting the comment over top of the little highlighted part. In my emails to students, I tell them to hover their cursor over the small highlights, and they will see my comments for that part. (Dear Mendeley: Is it just because my computer is older? Or if the graphics do not export, can you try to make that happen for future versions? Thank you!!).

Overall, though, if you like working with free software and grade PDFs, this is totally a great idea. Even better if your students use Mendeley, as I'm sure the graphics would show up if they imported the graded file into their own Mendeley desktop. If I ever move to a no-textbook and only online readings course, I might just make them all download the software...

**Edited to add: Also, once I've exported all of the PDFs to save them on my computer in my teaching files and emailed them back to students, I plan to delete them from my Mendeley desktop & web account so that those files don't contribute to my free space limit. **

Book Review: The Future of the Internet

2010-10-26T10:22:00.002-04:00

Zittrain, J. (2008). The future of the internet – and how to stop it. New Haven, CT: Yale. Paperback. 328 + x pages. $17.00. ISBN: 978-0-300-15124-4.

In The Future of the Internet, Jonathan Zittrain explores the development of personal computers (PCs) as generative devices that allowed for the Internet to explode in popularity in the way that it has in the last ten years. He argues that while open networks were the only way for PCs and the Internet to be runaway successes initially, it is now time to reassess the generative PC and put security of our networks first. Without doing so, we stand to lose the greatest asset of our networked society: innovation. The author presents his message in a thought-provoking manner, alerting readers to the danger of continuing on the current path and prompting users to be more savvy “netizens” who help to make the Internet a safer communication platform for everyone. His argument for a solution – the development of a “community ethos” online – has implications for the general public whom he is writing to, as well as for rhetoricians, to consider.

Zittrain organizes his argument into three parts: a history of the explosion of PCs and the Internet, a discussion of generativity and its implications for networked society, and finally, a presentation of solutions for moving past the current state of generativity to a more secure and sustainable networked society. The first section, “The Rise and Fall of the Generative Net,” gives a selective history of networked computers and introduces readers to the initial struggle between centralized proprietary networks, such as early AOL and CompuServe offerings, and the Internet, examining the features that led to the demise of the former and success of the latter. The Internet, Zittrain writes, began with few rules and expectations, growing exponentially to the point that it is at now, connecting people all across the world. PCs, furthermore, developed in much the same way: with hardly any regulations and instead an open platform that allowed anyone who wanted to tweak and improve both hardware and software. Zittrain posits that the openness of the system led to significant vulnerability and the inevitable development of viruses, worms, malware, and spam that proliferate on the Net today. Internet threats are spiraling out of control: highly communicable and available almost instantaneously around the globe to networked computers, programmers and Internet security companies cannot keep up with the volume. The remainder of the book is developed on the premise that the current “status quo” of cybersecurity (or lack thereof) is not sustainable and requires intervention – though not primarily on the part of technology companies or software developers, but on the part of individual users around the globe. (More after the jump break...)

The second section, “After the Stall,” identifies more precisely how PCs and the Internet are generative, illuminating the benefits and drawbacks to such an open system. By examining the different layers of the Internet – physical, application, social, content, and protocol –, Zittrain explains how generativity works within and across these layers. He defines generativity as “a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences” (p. 70, emphasis in original). This principle assigns users to the role of active participants in the development of the Internet instead of merely being passive consumers. Zittrain credits generativity for all of the innovation we have seen with PC technology and the Internet, saying that it encourages people to pitch in and help with the development of new and better ways to connect and interact with each other online. With the benefit of generativity, however, comes potential disruption, which we have seen increase exponentially over the last decade. Zittrain warns that technology companies are overreacting to the all of the harm that exists on the Net by creating “tethered appliances” (p. 102). Products like iPhones, Blackberries, DVRs, and Kindles are “tethered” because even after being purchased by a consumer, they are directly connected to their vendors and are easily reconfigured by vendors from afar. Zittrain also calls them “appliances” because unlike generative PCs, they are not easily reconfigured by any consumer who wants to tinker with them. While tethered appliances may be safer in the short run (less susceptible to viruses and malware due to tight control by vendors), the author claims that they are detrimental to creativity and innovation in the long run.

Instead, Zittrain argues that we need solutions that foster creativity as well as internal security. He uses Wikipedia as an example of a content-layer community that self-regulates to preserve the integrity of the system. It began with no rules or governing body – just like the Internet itself – and as the system evolved, so did a legislative group and acceptable terms of use. The regulations came from people who cared about the community and wanted to see it succeed, and Zittrain suggests that the same principle can be applied to Internet security and generativity.

In the final section of the book, “Solutions,” Zittrain presents his ideas for moving forward to “the future of the Internet.” The obvious solution to the technology companies, he says, is to produce more tethered appliances to “clamp down” on malintentioned users in cyberspace. Instead, he argues, in order to preserve technological innovation, we need to foster generativity at both the technical and content layers of the Internet and promote a community defense, such as the one used to maintain Wikipedia. He likely loses some readers at this point with his call to “figure out how to inspire people to act humanely in digital environments that today do not facilitate the appreciative smiles and ‘thank yous’ present in the physical world” (p. 195). After thoroughly discussing the development of all the harmful things found on the Internet today, this solution in particular is anti-climactic and hardly seems feasible. If all Internet users desired to “act humanely in digital environments,” Zittrain would not have had to write the book that he has here. He indicates that solving generativity issues at this layer, the social one, might also work to solve problems found in other layers, such as the content and technical ones, but never explicitly states how the transference of solutions could happen. Overall, this solution comes across as preachy instead of pragmatic, the opposite of the first two sections of his exposition.

In this final part, Zittrain also considers many of the legal aspects of privacy and network security and the implications if we do not pursue better enforcement in the future. A professor of law at Harvard, he adeptly adapts the legal discussion for his lay audience for maximum understanding. Much the of the network security discussion, however, is directed toward an informed audience with previous knowledge of code, network design, and other technical language and may leave many less-informed readers in search of the Wikipedia entries for offending terms. Further, his solutions for a more secure network also assume that most Internet users have this basic knowledge of code, malware, website security certificates, and other network issues in order to be viable. Perhaps in his Harvard University Berkman Center, a significant number of his peers possess this knowledge, but a majority of the general public would certainly not have the technical know-how to set his plan in motion. If they did have knowledge of these issues, as he concedes a couple of times in the final section, network security would not be an issue for us to solve in the first place.

Overall, the greatest benefit of Zittrain’s book for rhetoricians lies in his explanation of generativity and the key role it has played in the development of the PC and the Internet. As scholars, we see great benefits in the peer production of Web 2.0, but as Zittrain points out, we must also be aware of the security and privacy dangers associated with such an open network. One of his solutions, a community ethos, is worth exploring from a rhetorical perspective. In what way can Web 2.0 build a community ethos from the ground up? His prime example of this is the development of Wikipedia and its key community of frequent users who developed and still maintain standards for all users, claiming, “Wikipedia, as a tool of group generativity, reflects the character of thousands of people” (p. 198). What constitutes character in a group-governed online encyclopedia? How does community ethos work in an online setting? Rhetorical scholars might also investigate which features of peer production are most salient for discussions of community ethos. Zittrain claims that community ethos is made possible by generativity, and he attempts to show this in his explanations of copyright issues on the Internet, the procrastination principle of networks (which assumes problems can be solved later and by others), and the replicability of ethos from one layer of the Internet to another. Rhetorical scholars are also beginning to look at issues of rhetoric and intellectual property (Reyman, 2010), and Zittrain’s work begins to explain the importance of clear copyright regulation and the consequences of not establishing feasible expectations for intellectual property governance. Using his ideas, rhetorical scholars should continue to explore the rhetoric of copyright in the digital age. Overall, this book provides a solid foundation for the principle of generativity and a prompt to study community ethos in greater depth and its implications for the future of the Internet.

Managing Your Identity Online

2010-10-19T22:24:00.000-04:00

We all know why we should be conscientious about what kind of material about us is out there on the Internet - you've heard the "horror stories" of that poor woman who didn't get a job because there were pictures of her half-naked sloppy drunk on Facebook - but how exactly do you do this?

I was prompted to think about this by a radio commercial I heard on the way home from class tonight. The commercial was for a company that claimed that they would "clean up your online image" - for only $99! Obviously, I'm skeptical. I grew more suspicious as the commercial continued: they would either "take down the offensive material" or they would "bury it so far down in the search engine results that no one would ever find it."

Is this possible?! As an individual, can you outsource your image management? (Well, I guess celebrities do, but - is this something that you or I could do?) Are these claims legitimate? How could a company - who doesn't have control over the content for Facebook, or a blog - claim to be able to actually remove something off of the Internet? Further, we sort of know how SEO works (Google's not exactly forthcoming about the process, but we have some idea of the criteria), and it seems that a lot of it relies on the content of pages - again, not something one company can just go and change in the code of another company's website.

Ultimately, I think, it comes down to owning your "image," owning your name online and you being the person who generates the content about yourself. Don't let other people define you online. When you Google yourself, your content should be the first few results that appear. People are more likely to click on the first few results, so make sure those results are your choice of words, your choice of photographs, your choice of videos.

Some ways to do this are obvious - having a blog with your name attached, Twitter account using your real name, and/or website your own domain name - but it's also easy to overlook things that pop up on a search that you might not want to be readily available. For instance, if you comment on a blog using an account login - your name is permanently attached to the comment you post, as well as the original post and other comments. Obviously, you don't want to get in a heated exchange about the reason why Lindsay Lohan is right to blame her dad for all her issues with your name plastered on all your comments.

What are ways that you manage your online identity? Do you think that this company has a legitimate claim for its services that I'm not aware of? This is an emerging issue for students, job seekers, etc. that we all need to be thinking about.

Genres & digital media

2010-10-17T17:54:00.000-04:00

Genres are an ever-moving target; “dynamic [and] evolutionary in nature” (Miller & Shepherd, 2004), they are subject of an immense body of research into which I barely dipped a toe this week when reading for my course "Rhetoric & Digital Media." The readings demonstrate the close relationship of form, genre, and narrative. I’ll attempt here to explore briefly some of the major issues discussed in our readings and take a stance on what genres are, what emerging issues for genre accompany the developments in digital media, and how we, as budding digital media scholars, can examine them.

To begin, Burke’s Counter-Statement (1968) takes form as a central tenet, and the selections we read reflect his initial exploration of form (“Psychology and Form”) and the subsequent addenda to and corrections of his ideas (“Lexicon Rhetoricae”) In the former, Burke demonstrates Perelman’s (1982) “dissociation of ideas” to distinguish between form and psychology. To Burke, rhetorical form is the creation and fulfilling of desires of the audience, their psychology. It is dynamic: the reader anticipates, the writer delivers, and the text satisfies, creating a profoundly social and rhetorical view of form, as opposed to the traditional aesthetic view used within literature at that time.

Burke’s early ideas of form and human action lead us directly to Miller’s (1984) discussion of genre as social action. She explains that form, combined with the substance of discourse, permits “that symbolic structures take on pragmatic force and become interpretable actions” (p. 160). She makes clear, however, that form does not mean genre, instead suggesting a definition of genre that has become the discipline-standard for scholars: “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (p. 159). Thus, genre is not a property of a text, but a function. Genre organizes constraints on textual production and meaning-making. In outlining this new way of understanding genre, Miller responds to the exigence that hardly any scholars discussed genre similarly at that time, seeing a need for a more stable way to define and analyze genre within the field. In developing what she calls a “rhetorically sound definition of genre” (p. 151), Miller places emphasis on the pragmatic component of texts (as opposed to syntactic or semantic) and gives rhetorical critics a new standard for evaluating genre.

Miller & Shepherd (2004), in “Blogging as Social Action,” use methods that we can consider for genre analysis. Using the semiotic terms from Miller’s (1984) “Genre as Social Action,” they examine at the generic semantic content, the formal features of the genre, and the pragmatic value of blogs as social action, deducing that the blog as genre “addresses a timeless rhetorical exigence in ways that are specific to its time.” This study demonstrates the work that we may do for this course or for our dissertations. We see through the blog example that digital media engender new genres. The Internet was able to accommodate the cultural exigence, and thus the genre emerged. So, as digital media scholars, how can we explore emerging or evolving genres? It seems that many of the rhetorical concepts we are covering this semester are useful for this type of study: determining the kairotic moment for genre emergence, looking at the form (formal features) of text, and the exigence out of which the genre develops, just to name a few. Miller & Shepherd identify a key problem that we may encounter in our studies: they identify blogs as “a rapidly moving target,” reflecting on the constant evolution and adaptation of digital media and genres. How can we identify generic features if they are constantly changing?

Upon re-evaluation a few years after their original study, however, Miller & Shepherd (2009), conclude that blogs are not genres, but a medium, hypothesizing, “when they were new, the medium was the genre; but adoption and experimentation led to differentiation and the multiplication of genres anchored in the same medium” (283-4). Now, the blog medium, with all of the tools that a person needs to create and maintain their own blog, carries blog genres: political blogs, photography blogs, academic blogs, family blogs, and many more, each of which can serve as a subject for genre analysis in their own right. Miller & Shepherd show that while media can carry genres, they are not genres in and of themselves. Genre and medium seem to have a symbiotic relationship, but it is important to distinguish between the two concepts to determine where a medium simply provides affordances for a genre, and where the true social action through discourse takes place. Placing a genre in a new medium – for example, taking a novel and making it available online – would not necessarily create a new genre, as the exigence and social action of the genre has not changed. Are there instances where this does happen? How does the Internet create new kairotic moments or alter social action? Can a person create or “design” a genre? This last question would assume, perhaps, that a person can also create a rhetorical exigence for a new genre.

It may seem that genre criticism is a difficult or futile exercise if genres consistently change and adapt, but as Frow (2006) argues, genre is important to the reading of every text. Genres are real classifications that we use to organize our culture. We rely on genres to establish constraints on how we produce and interpret meaning in texts. Shifting and emerging genres raise important questions of social, technological, and economic change that we as rhetorical critics have the privilege to address. So, if we are going to analyze digital genres, we must think critically about how we can effectively do so. Can we ask the same questions for digital genres as we have about print genres? I don’t think we can. Certainly, print genres may be the antecedents for some digital genres and some similarities may exist between them, but we also have new issues to consider with digital texts. As we’ve established in previous class discussions, we have new exigences to respond to, new ways of constituting audiences, and an overall highly complex rhetorical situation.

References

Burke, K. (1968). Lexicon rhetoricae. Counter-statement. Berkley, CA: U of CA. Original edition, 1931. 123-183.
Burke, K. (1968). On psychology and form. Counter-statement. Berkley, CA: U of CA. Original edition, 1931. 29-44.
Frow, J. (2006). Genre. The new critical idiom series. Ed. J. Drakakis. London: Routledge.
Jasinski, J. (2001). Narrative. Sourcebook on rhetoric. Rhetoric and society, ed. H. Simons. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 389-404.
Miller, C.R. (1984). “Genre as social action” Quarterly journal of speech 70, 151-76. Accessed Jan. 24, 2010, via Communication & mass media complete.
Miller, C.R. & Shepherd, D. (2004). Blogging as social action: A genre analysis of weblogs. Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. In L.J. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. Retrieved Jan. 21, 2010, via http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action_pf.html.
Miller, C.R. & Shepherd, D. (2009). Questions for genre theory from the blogosphere. Theories for genre and their application to Internet communication. Eds. J. Giltrow and D. Stein. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Perelman, C. (1982). The realm of rhetoric. Trans. W. Kluback. Notre Dame, IN: U of ND. Original edition, 1977.

All I Want for Christmas

2010-10-11T23:14:00.000-04:00

This may be a tad bit premature (we're still waiting on Halloween, after all), but I'm definitely the type of woman who plans ahead. That being said -

All I want for Christmas... is a Macbook Pro.

Photo by Laura Simson Photography

I promise, honey, I'll act really surprised.

Web portfolio updated!

2010-10-11T16:53:00.000-04:00

After realizing that my CV was out of date (read: still listed my Master's degree "in progress"), I spent some time today updating my web portfolio. It now includes a section on my newest research focus, environmental communication (though I've haven't posted any research products, yet).

Take a peek!

Using Mendeley to Manage Readings and Citations

2010-10-03T17:52:00.000-04:00

It seems that half of the battle in a PhD program is not doing the work, but knowing how to accomplish it. Sure, I can read through five journal article PDFs for a class, but what's the best way of going about reading/annotating/synthesizing and coming up with discussion points for class? I found myself asking this question early on in the semester and was quickly pointed to Mendeley by a couple of my fellow CRDMers. And how quickly I've come to appreciate this cool platform for how well it manages my readings! I thought I would share how I use Mendeley, because if there are other graduate students out there like me, sometimes you just don't know these programs are out there to use, and they sure make your life a lot easier once you find them. I know that I'm also not using Mendeley to its fullest advantage, so if there's another neat function that I don't mention, please point me to it.

I use Mendeley to read journal article PDFs, to annotate readings for class, and to organize all of the files and notes that I accumulate throughout the semester. I've downloaded the desktop software application, which serves as a database for all of the files. When I have a new reading for a week, I save the PDF on my computer and then upload it into Mendeley. When I open the file in Mendeley, I can highlight lines in the reading, insert notes in the margins that look like Post-It notes, and search the text for key terms. My favorite features is probably the Post-Its: the graphic for it is really cool, and they appear both in the side bar with my notes and in a little bubble in the PDF to show me where I've inserted them.

Sample file in Mendeley desktop with Post-It notes

I can also use Mendeley to manage my research sources as I continue to work on my seminar projects. It will generate a bibliography for me from the bibliographic information of the PDFs, saving me much time down the road. (Although, I must admit, that I like doing my bib by manually entering the citations, as inefficient as that is!)

Something I wish I could change about Mendeley is the default opening screen: it opens to an "All Documents" folder, which lists all of my PDFs. To me, seeing all these files is overwhelming; I'd like to archive them in files like you can with your Inbox so that only my current readings are displayed. You can currently label PDFs so that they appear in a certain folder, but they continue to appear in "All Documents." Anyone know if this is possible to change? Or am I stuck with it like this?

The Mendeley website also has capabilities for sharing sources with others who are researching similar topics or who want to swap readings. I also found out via a Twitter user that I can use the website to upload PDFs of my students' essays that I've graded by inserting Post-It comments and share them with their respective authors - something I'm definitely open to trying. Ideally, I'd be able to export the file from the Mendeley desktop and email it back to them, but I've been told that is not yet possible. (Note to the Mendeley people: can you make this happen? Signed, an Appreciative Instructor.) There's also a social component to the Mendeley site where you can search other Mendeley users to see what other people are reading and researching. Overall, this is a must-have tool for graduate students and academics.

So - what am I missing? How else can I use this software to expedite my research process? Tell me more!

Blogs I follow

2010-10-03T15:40:00.001-04:00

Blogs can be such a great resource for me, often leading me to find new books or researchers interested in the same topics that I am. They've become critical for me to connect with ideas and current happenings in academia. I have quite a few that I'm following now, but I am definitely open to new suggestions! If you follow someone's blog and would like to share, please do.

Here are some of the blogs in my Google Reader now:

Environmental Issues
Treehugger
Sustainablog
No Impact Man
Pew Climate Blog
Cool Green Science (from The Nature Conservancy)
Mediacology

Academics - Interesting or related to my research
CRDM (shameless plug of my program!)
Indications (blog for Environmental Communication journal)
Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style (what my blog could be some day! AHP is phenomenal)
Just TV by Jason Mittell
Steven D. Krause
To Do: Dissertation

Foodie
(Note: I've decided to officially call myself vegetarian, so I follow these blogs for culinary inspiration. Also because some of the bloggers feature their adorable children.)
Peas and Thank You
Kath Eats Real Food
Oh She Glows

So - who's out there that I'm not following? What academic has an amazing blog that I am missing the boat on? Please share!

Reading Strategies for Graduate Students

2010-09-21T11:25:00.003-04:00

I must confess. When I was applying last year to the PhD program and talking with current students, I blew off their comments that "there's more reading than you can handle." I thought - my only job will be school. I don't have a full-time job, so I will be able to focus all on school. In case you can't see where this is going - boy, was I WRONG! Needless to say, completing the reading for three courses each week takes a lot of time and energy and competes with spending time with my family, upkeep of my house, maintaining sanity by working out, and a barely existent social life. As I mentioned in an earlier post about priorities, I want to think seriously about reading strategies and how graduate students can not only get all of the reading done, but get something out of it also. Here's what I've got thus far.

The Three C's of Reading: Completion, Comprehension, and Critique

Completion

Read during any chunk of time that you have available. Don't just set aside several hours at a time to tackle your book list. Take advantage of a spare 20-30 minutes you have between classes or on the bus, whatever it may be. Resist the urge to check Facebook, Twitter, etc. and the pages that you can get through will add up quickly.
Read sitting upright. This might sound really silly, but it all has to do with where you are reading. If I sat in the Lazyboy to read and put the footrest up, my body was on enough of an angle that I would start to doze off after only 15 minutes of reading. As soon as I moved to the couch, which sits more upright with the footrest out, it made a big difference. I could sit and read all morning without getting tired at all. Same goes for reading in bed: don't do it. You mix your brain signals up and end up having trouble falling asleep at night or not being able to stay awake to read. Find a spot that becomes your reading spot and stick with it. You'll train your mind to focus on what you're doing when you're sitting there and become more productive.

Comprehension

Takes notes. (Duh!) Lots of notes. This means writing in your books and having a pen available when you are reading. I like to write down key words that summarize/explain a paragraph, and note key ideas at the bottom of a page. This helps a lot for class discussion - when I flip pages, I can easily remember what the section/chapter is about from my notes instead of having to re-read a paragraph. This is also connected to the idea to...
Develop your own shorthand. Book margins are small, so there's not a lot of room to write. This is where your own personal abbreviations come in handy. You can get more ideas into a small space. For example, I will put a star in the margin beside the author's main claim(s) for the chapters so that I can easily locate them amidst my other notes. I also like to abbreviate "-tion" words with a raised small "n" with a line under it - something my calculus teacher did in college to abbreviate the word "function." Genius! It not only saves time, but also allows me to put more summarizing/critiquing thoughts on the page.
Write down your thoughts after chapters. At the end of each chapter, I like to go to my computer and type down the key ideas that I gleaned from the reading. This allows me to materialize my thoughts and forces me to immediately summarize what I know as a result of reading the chapter. If I'm reading an article, this means that I summarize at the end of large sections.

Critique

Connect scholars to one another as you read. Scholarship is an ongoing conversation, and likely if you are reading for one class, many of the writers are essentially having a dialogue with each other. Think about what else you've read on the topic and what other scholars might have to say about what you are reading now. This is great food for discussion in class and shows that you can synthesize ideas (and remember things from week to week!).
Question what you read. How do these people know what they know? What is the writer's methodology? Theoretical thrust? Of course, you always want to learn new ideas/findings/theories from a reading, but you also want to objectively question how the writer arrived at these conclusions.

Of course, these are my personal reading strategies and not something I got out of a textbook or from a Suite101 webpage (ha!). They may not work for everyone, which is why I have a burning question - what do YOU do to accomplish your reading lists, to not only complete the readings, but to comprehend, to critique, and to positively participate in your seminars?

Poetics vs. Politics in a Discussion of Rhetorical Pedagogy

2010-09-19T18:55:00.005-04:00

Yikes. Blogging took a backseat this week to reading and reviewing student rough drafts. And also to this little gem of a response to two previous readings that I did for my Rhetoric and Digital Media class, which has been slightly adapted here for the blogosphere. I'll be back soon with something else!

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In the twenty-first century, digital technologies have complicated the study and teaching of rhetoric. Multiple media forms on the internet, newly emerging genres, and a complex web of technologies and systems give rhetorical studies an ever-expanding array of subjects for study, while at the same time rendering the teaching of rhetoric in universities problematic. Scholars have begun to consider the consequences of apparently ubiquitous rhetoric and the impact on various areas of scholarship. Richard Lanham, in his latest work The Economics of Attention, argues that, in the age of information, our new scarce resource is attention, and rhetoric provides an economic model for dealing with new challenges in communication. He offers specific details about the impact of the attention economy on the university and how institutions of higher education can address these issues. Read against Lanham, Bryan Garsten does not seem to attend to academic considerations of rhetoric in Saving Persuasion, as he focuses primarily on close readings of traditional rhetorical texts as related to judgment of political issues. My response will show how each scholar addresses, whether directly or indirectly, the important questions of rhetorical pedagogy in the twenty-first century, and argues for a new online pedagogical practices based on a reading of both Lanham’s and Garsten’s advocacy of rhetoric.

The most direct discussion of rhetorical pedagogy comes from Lanham, who devotes an entire chapter, “The Audit of Virtuality,” to analyzing what he calls myths of higher education that need to be reconsidered in this attention economy. He asserts that the very technologies that have created an attention economy are those that can be used to improve educational experiences for both pupils and professors. One of the earlier myths that he addresses is the fact that universities must be brick and mortar and individuals physically (in addition to mentally) present for students to learn and for instructors to teach effectively. On the contrary, he claims, and uses the Open University in the United Kingdom to demonstrate how “the digital medium allows new mixtures of text, voice, and image that create educational programs of unprecedented power” (240). He continues to comment on the ideas that scholarly work is not so incredibly serious that we should eschew play, which encourages creativity; that administration should no longer cocoon faculty from the outside world, but instead that virtual programs would expose faculty to real world issues; and that universities are not so separate from industry and as such, comparisons can only improve their collective function. Most notably for rhetoric, though, Lanham concludes the chapter by arguing that “the new electronic field of expression” radically alters what scholars are doing and how we are doing it, primarily for the way that “it creates a different rhetoric that puts words, written and spoken, in new juxtapositions with picture and sound” (248). He notes that academic teaching methods of changed, generally for the better, though he fails to explicitly describe these new practices at this point and only moves to discuss it in his final chapter, “Revisionist Thinking.”

Garsten, however, does not address modern pedagogy as directly as Lanham, though some insightful ideas can be inferred from his discussion of judgment that occurs in his final chapter, “Persuasion and Deliberation.” He concludes his book, throughout which he does a political reading of classic rhetorical texts, by calling for a deliberative democracy; deliberative based both on argumentation and also in the sense that citizens can “purposefully consider as completely as possible within the time that we have the factors relevant to our decision, bringing to bear upon our choice whatever different sorts of knowledge and information seem relevant, including perceptual, emotional, intuitive, experiential, theoretical, and scientific knowledge” (192). Garsten explains that in doing so, citizens draw upon their faculty of judgment, and rhetors should facilitate deliberation by posing questions that allow interlocutors to “draw upon the knowledge they take from their situations and from their particular commitments” (192-3). He also considers how persuasion “will require careful study of the particular characteristics of one’s audience” (193). Garsten clearly emphasizes the role of knowledge in persuasion in these to passages, but seemingly fails to discuss how this knowledge is acquired – at least formally. He does, however, reflect on the importance of individuals informing themselves of the arguments and opinions around them, of paying attention to fellow citizens, and to gain understanding of opposing views in order to strengthen our own arguments in the public arena.

The link then that connects Lanham’s attention economy-affected university and Garsten’s self-centered instruction is the setting in which learning can occur for their intended audience: online. Lanham advocates a return to teaching rhetoric in the university, displacing science and business programs in favor of arts programs for their focus on the attention structures he argues are imperative to know for succeeding in an attention economy. The virtual classroom is an ideal setting for Lanham’s charge to take place; while science-based courses require lecture and lab space, many rhetoric-based courses can easily be conducted online. The internet would show students first-hand how websites compete for their attention and give them much fodder for discussion. Furthermore, he discusses in the final chapter how not only university students need to learn about the attention economy, but consumers as well. He uses William Lewis’ argument that “‘[c]onsumers are the only political force that can stand up to producer interests’” (qtd. in Lanham 261), and make conscious choices every day that have political and aesthetic impacts. Too many choices, though, pose a problem for consumers, and thus Lanham claims that “training the chooser can protect and refine the freedom the market creates. . . [and] can build bridges between individual choices and understanding group behavior” (262). Essentially, he advocates not only formal training in university, but also for consumers to protect themselves from being misguided amidst the excess of information available online and for individuals to better understand the opinions and actions of others, just as Garsten does in his concluding chapter.

Each scholar’s approach to learning rhetoric online, however, would most likely look different. Garsten’s focus on political rhetoric and close reading of texts contrasts with Lanham’s advocacy of rhetoric in the university, particularly in humanities courses, and his economic approach to the issue in general. On one hand, Garsten encourages controversy to engage in judgment, and as such, a fitting exercise for deliberation may be found on public political forums, including news outlet-sponsored sites and partisan pages, that encourage participation from all citizens. Here, internet users could exercise Aristotle’s situated judgment by choosing a forum that interests them, while at the same time practicing deliberative partiality by reading and weighing arguments from the opposition when writing a response. Garsten’s approach is clearly group-oriented and relies on back and forth communication between individuals for learning and persuasion to take place. Without receiving a response to a post, or finding an opponent with which to debate, the setting is not interactive and thus would not facilitate learning by either party. He would also advocate repeated practice of debate, for “the best ideas will not always carry the day in democratic debate, and even the most attentive and skillful efforts at persuasion often fail for reasons unconnected with the merits of the cause” (211). So, the internet provides the perfect combination of opportunity and audience to exercise persuasion and hone rhetorical skills. There is an audience for everyone and essentially unlimited forums to house deliberations.

On the other hand, Lanham’s education model for rhetoric online is a more individual approach than Garsten’s, with people enrolling in virtual classes as they fit into their lives and not on a regulated semester system, “supplying knowledge when and where it is needed” (237-8). Students thus rely on their on self-motivation to learn or learn as they encounter situations that drive them to do so, and online courses result in both physical and temporal isolation of students from one another. If a student can enroll at any point during the year, regardless of the semester, basic principles such as group work or responding to peer writing would not be logistically easy to plan into the schedule, making it unlikely that students learning stems from anything but their own reading and interpretation of texts. Lanham’s model is flexible in terms of the models for study, for “the World Wide Web has. . . developed into an ever-richer community resource. The more people graze on it for their own purposes, the bigger it becomes and the greener its grass grows” (13). They could study the implications of multimedia web pages and the new ways in which web designers demand internet user attention. Also, one person’s blog posts can become the subject of another person’s study, which can be assigned reading by an instructor in his perpetual-registration virtual class, and so on. The cycle of production, and thus learning, is never-ending.

Overall, Richard Lanham and Bryan Garsten present theoretically and pragmatically different arguments in their respective works; however, each scholar’s argument has implications for learning and teaching of rhetoric in modern society. With the recent rise in networked classroom experiences and significant increase in online course materials, it will be important to read other works such as these for the pedagogical insights that they have to offer so that we may more aptly address issues of digital rhetoric for students and for our own learning.

Works Cited
Garsten, Bryan. Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U P, 2006.
Lanham, Richard A. The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.

Analyzing Visuals from the Gulf Coast

2010-09-12T18:01:00.001-04:00

I'm starting to make progress on my Visual Content Analysis project that I blogged about earlier. "Progress" meaning that I've narrowed my focus to an idea that hopefully the professor will approve and that hopefully will be manageable for a semester project.

Sticking with my interest in environmental issues, and trying to follow the guidelines for content analyses (large body of items to study, focusing on content of artifacts and not meaning), I've decided to look at photographic images of the Gulf oil spill from May (and ongoing) of this year. There are thousands of those, so I'm going to narrow the field and look at images on websites of conservation/environmental groups. These organizations have a specific agenda regarding the spill, and I think that will give me an interesting angle in analyzing photos of the disaster that they publish.

I'm particularly interested in human representation in the images - and lack thereof. By human representation, I'm referring to whether or not there are humans featured in photos of the spill. Coverage of the event has been fairly split, into photos showing strictly oil and the Gulf of Mexico, oil as it affects animals in the Gulf, or humans involved in cleaning up the Gulf. Conservation groups focus a lot of their time, resources, and energy on actively participating in efforts to "save" the planet. They also spend a lot of their digital space promoting their actions and showing how much they are a part of. Hence, many images on these sites show humans interacting with the environment, or as many ecofeminists may argue, subordinating it to humans (see Gaard, 1993). So what about representations of the Gulf oil spill, the largest environmental disaster in United States history? So many images thus far focus on the sheer immensity of the disaster and devastation it has wrought on the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. How might the conservation groups portray this event on their websites? I still have to flesh out a couple of hypotheses and conduct an actual sampling of the websites I've selected, but these musings are a good start.

The selections I'll look at:
The Nature Conservancy's page on their efforts in the Gulf of Mexico has a special multimedia feature on the oil spill, as reported by photographer Bridget Besaw.

The World Wildlife Fund website features Dr. Darren Collin's blog about his work in the Gulf.

Did you know that The Sierra Club has a Flickr account? Now you do, and they have a substantial collection of photos from the Gulf, including this one.

I think that these three groups will be enough, if I randomly select twenty photos from each of the websites. If you have any suggestions of national conservation organizations that I've left out and think I should consider, please let me know!

P.S. I found this NY Times photographer's blog during my search, and although I can't use it for my project because of the parameters I've set, it's still worth looking at. These were some of the first images published from the spill that gave a true perspective of the damage - and not from BP's tightly-controlled publications of the situation.

Preliminary Thoughts on Hybrid Teaching

2010-09-08T08:23:00.000-04:00

This fall, I'm teaching the same course that I've been teaching at NCSU - ENG 101: Academic Writing and Research - but in a new format. As a hybrid course, half of our course meetings are in-class and half are virtual. So, I have one 100-minute session per week with students, and they complete 100 minutes worth of work online to earn credit for the other "class meeting." I came into this new teaching experience with an open mind and wondering how this format would compare to my previous experience of four 50-minute class meetings in person per week. To corral my thoughts so far...

To start with what I see as a negative aspect - I only see the students once per week! Three weeks into the semester, I feel disconnected from them. Only seeing them on Thursday afternoons makes for a very different interaction with the students. I can't ask them how their weekend was, or follow up from a conversation we had the previous day, or even bring in as many current events as I'd like. To counter this negative, though, I will point out that I've only ever taught one class per semester, so I've always had the opportunity to get to know students personally. I won't always have this luxury and suppose that this problem may not be such a big deal by the time that I'm teaching three lecture courses per semester. But for now - this is a drawback. I feel that I'm at my best as an instructor when I really connect with the kids, and this has yet to happen (and it may still).

On the plus side - the students are doing a lot of writing. Definitely a lot more writing than when I saw them in person four days a week. When we're in person, I can get recognition of understanding by asking questions, have them do group work, or have them lead a part of the class. But when you have to evaluate a student's participation and understanding virtually, one of the most obvious options is to have the write and submit their work on the learning management system (we use Moodle at NCSU). The funny part is... it makes perfect sense! I'm teaching a course on academic writing, and my students are practicing writing. Not sure why it seems like such an epiphany, but when you're in front of students in person, it somehow feels as if you should be speaking to/with them and not watching them think and write. With online class time, I actually feel more free to assign work that gets them practicing the ideas we talk about on the days that I see them in person.

Other things that are positive: attendance is great. Because I only see them once a week, they're always there for that one day. They see how important it is to be there and do their best to get the most out of the one class session that we have each week. And with very few exceptions, they turn in all of the virtual work in a timely manner, and some have gotten in the habit of doing things well ahead of time, leaving them the opportunity to ask questions if issues arise. Moodle works pretty well for our class setup, giving us a central location for our class online. The students have caught on to the system fairly quickly, and I love not collecting a single piece of paper. The only component of it that I don't use is the grade book. For some of their class work, I use an Unsatisfactory/Satisfactory/Outstanding grade system, and Moodle translates those designations to grades of 0% / 50% / 100%. To me, satisfactory is a C, and there's a big difference between completing half of the work and completing it perfectly, so I haven't used the numbers for student grades as Moodle has calculated them. I've translated the grades into my own spreadsheet system, which requires a little extra work on my part, but allows me to use a grading scale that I truly believe in.

As we progress through the semester, I will try to shape my thoughts more cohesively to come up with a proposal for talking about the experience at the North Carolina Symposium for Teaching Writing hosted here at NCSU. In the meantime, if you have experiences with hybrid or distance ed. teaching, I'd love to hear ideas and suggestions for fostering a greater sense of community among the students for the one day per week that we are in class. How did you do it?

Rhetoric as the economics of attention?

2010-09-07T10:41:00.001-04:00

This week in my rhetoric and digital media course, we are reading Richard Lanham's The Economics of Attention. What a fascinating read! After several weeks of communication theory (not my strong point), this is a book that I've really gotten into and can't wait to discuss in class. And now to think through some of the key ideas before getting to class... (Not a full synopsis.)

Lanham's introduction I saw to actually be his weakest chapter. He spends time here justifying the niche of the book, showing the audience why this message is necessary now and what new ideas he's bringing to the table. This is where I saw him taking the most liberty with his logic and explanation for how he's arrived at the conclusion that rhetoric nowadays is the economics of attention. I believe he has a 100% valid argument and great idea, I just wasn't convinced with the explanations he used in the introduction. It is clear, though, that in today's information economy, we are drowning in knowledge and access to it, and the scarce resource that we need to allocate more efficiency is our attention. How to manage attention? Lanham claims that rhetoric is the key: the books, web pages, videos, songs, etc. that we will read/watch/listen will be the ones that pay attention to style and audience.

In the third chapter, Lanham begins to outline what he sees as "what's next for text," or how text will move beyond linear black and white print to the electronic forms now made possible through technology. This chapter is actually posted online, because it was written using HTML and he wants it to be read that way (though it is possible to read it in the book; I read the book chapter first and later went to read it online, what a difference!). The coolest point he makes here, I think, is a discussion of Martin Minsky's experimental e-text, where Minsky walks around in the margins of his book as he narrates. Can you imagine having the author roaming the margins of the book that you are reading, offering extra information as you hover your eyes over a certain word? I all of a sudden feel enlightened to this amazing possibility with e-text and want to see more of it in practice. I wonder where to find them? The e-texts we think of now are essentially Kindle books (or other companies' equivalents). How come we haven't made greater strides using all of the tools available to us? Overall, the argument in this chapter, with all of the examples of digital, animated, and interactive text is that digital media influences style, but it is also influenced by style.

The final chapter I want to think about is Chapter 7, "The Audit of Virtuality," as I'm helping lead discussion for this one in class tonight. Here, he explores how concepts of online universities can offer better models for traditional universities, ultimately arguing not that traditional universities need to change their ways completely, but that a university that succeeds in the new attention economy will oscillate between virtual and theoretical practices to better suit the needs of students. He claims that the four-year model for school, with semester courses, is no longer relevant, and that schools need to be more flexible to meet the needs of students. This also means that tenure may no longer be the best way to evaluate the suitability of a professor for a department, or that the same professor has to teach the same course for nineteen years running (as Lanham himself did). Instead, Lanham posits that a professor sets up a course one time, complete with readings, assignments, etc., and the university can offer the course virtually in unlimited settings. Lanham never addresses whether the course would be evaluated for effectiveness and whether a professor would work to improve the course over the years, as many professors do in their regular courses.

As an instructor teaching a hybrid (half in-class and half online) course for the first time this semester, this chapter was especially relevant to what I am currently doing. I recognize how I am in the middle of an attention economy in attempting to select readings for my students to do online, and I often choose fluff (style) over stuff (substance), knowing I can add missing or additional information later if I need to. But the first goal is how to get the students to do the readings for the online work days - and figuring how to get their attention is my first order of business when designing a day's work. What Lanham doesn't address, which I think is crucial for his model of a university that oscillates between virtual and traditional values, is how to support instructors in an attention economy. Because digital rhetoric demands a new attention model (one of Lanham's main claims), it goes without saying that instructors will need new models for teaching. How can we support the faculty in this endeavor?

Finally, as a graduate of a private arts college who appreciates her liberal arts degree, I have to say that his view of the re-emerging arts degree a little too utopian to be probable. Yes, this attention economy necessitates new rhetoric, but will employers recognize this as a skill coming from arts degrees? Not necessarily. This is one of his prophecies that I don't see coming true at the moment. On the whole, I definitely agree with his view of the new attention economy and see a new rhetoric emerging as a result, but I just don't see how arts degrees will be favored over others because of it. We may see new programs of study emerging, which I think is a better approach to producing graduates with the ability to work in an attention economy - not reverting back to English literature majors because they can recognize style when they read it.

Understanding McLuhan's Understanding Media

2010-09-03T08:53:00.000-04:00

This week, in History of Communication Theory, our class it tackling Marshall McLuhan's seminal text. I'm also leading discussion, so writing this ahead of time will hopefully give me an opportunity to think through some of my ideas about the text and digest some ('cause you know you'll never understand all!) of his thoughts.

On the whole, this is a book that I'm struggling with, and not because of its size. Two reasons: one, he's written the chapters in a very mosaic fashion, not linearly, as most books are. This is a different stream of thought to adjust to as the reader that really inhibits comprehension. Ultimately, I see this as a choice he made to further his argument about media. The bits and blurbs fit together sort of like television, and a lot like the way that we now read on the Internet: starting with one idea (browser tab), flitting to another (let's say your inbox, when it pops up saying you have a new message), then back to your first idea (browser tab), and then following a new train of thought from one idea (let's say to a hyperlink you open in a new browser tab to find out more about a specific term mentioned). We all do this! McLuhan was certainly ahead of his time with his assessment of how media impacts us. While he couldn't have predicted what media would come out, he already knew how it would change our lives.

My second issue with McLuhan is his methodology and presentation of ideas (not to be confused with writing style). I've often been frustrated reading the book, wanting to shout out to him, "Where is your evidence?" or "Where did this information come from?" and "Did you just make this up, or did that really happen?" It seems that the book is semi-truth and semi-probing McLuhan's mind with what he thinks happened historically or what construction of an event best works with his ideas. He'll state what seems to be a fantastic idea at the end of the paragraph, and then - poof, onto another subject. Essentially, I always want to know more information than he's provided. Part of this is my craving for well-structured writing - I never did well with James Joyce or Virginia Wolf in undergrad - because to me, as a researcher, those are the most valuable presentations of work, and well, because that's how our faculty expect us to write. It's not such a crazy concept!

So while there are structural issues that affect my perception of the text, I'm not totally criticizing the work. It's not a widely-read book in Comm studies for no reason - the man had a lot of key insights into media issues that still ring true today, in a world where I can't imagine how media could be any more pervasive in our lives. I can't tell you how many times I noted in the margins that his ideas still applied, such as in chapter four where he describes technological somnambulism. In other areas, it is remarkable how he was able to predict effects that took place well into the future, including his quip in the introductory chapter for the first edition of how with electricity, "the globe is no more than a village" (6).

After 500+ pages of examples of it, I'm seeing how the medium is the message. While I think that media today made this concept more complex, there's merit in his point. The message of the theatre is not the story line of the play, but the fact that what's presented is a "high" art form that we should appreciate and likely can't understand all of the ideas, unless we're in the highly literate class. The internet, though, is not so easy to pin down. It's clearly a medium with many media contained within it: television, radio, photograph, alphabet, etc. How does this affect the message? Can the messages from those media be contained within the message of the internet, or is it another idea entirely? McLuhan's editors in the critical edition talk about how the message of a medium refers to the effect that it produces in its audience. Obviously, there cannot be one single effect that we understand as the message of the internet. One effect that I can see is the idea that everyone feels they now have information that is appropriate for the world to know (or to be preserved). With the advent of blogs a little over a decade ago, the message is that everyone's private journal thoughts are fodder for discussion, that their ideas are important or relevant, and others should have a chance to read them, hence why people publish blogs. Same now with social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.: The message is that everyone's daily activities and special milestones are worth preserving digitally and being put out there for the world to see.

Work Cited:
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Critical Ed. Ed. W. Terrence Gordon. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko, 2003. Print.

Doctoral Student Priorities

2010-08-27T17:53:00.000-04:00

A little over a week into my program, and my head is full of student obligations, professional obligations, teaching obligations, personal obligations... too many obligations, not enough Meagan. Typical PhD paradox - what do you tackle when there's not enough time to do it all?

This has really gotten me thinking about priorities. What comes first? I was initially thinking coursework... duh. But conversations with fellow CRDMers have me re-thinking this. If my ultimate goal is to earn a position as a scholar in my field, teaching somewhere, shouldn't I focus on professional duties, such as presenting at conferences and getting published? That's not to say that books can go unread and seminar papers unwritten, but there's definitely a need to balance the two.

Added to this are those twenty-two little faces staring at me each day we're in class, students who expect me to be on top of my game, teach them something interesting, and grade things in a reasonable period of time. At least, that's what I expect of my professors, so I shouldn't give any less to my students. Though Carolyn Miller, a professor in my program, muddied the waters for me this week when she said in class something to the effect, "Teaching is a distraction. It will eat up as much time as you let it and then some." This was echoed by David Rieder, another CRDM prof, at our orientation, who remarked that I should always remember why am I here in the first place - that I love to learn and do research. Obviously, I'm conscientious and always want to bring my best to the classroom, but it's true: teaching and all of its accompanying responsibilities will take all of my day and then some if I let it.

Mixed in the middle is the obligation that was reiterated over and over by our faculty - write, write, write. Hence this blog. It's harder to write than I realized - and I know I still haven't gotten to academic material, but that's coming as we're now waist-deep in rhetorical theory, communications history, and visual content analysis - especially because it requires carving out at least a half hour for these personal posts, likely more for academic material that I could be dedicating to reading. It's true what every other PhD student has ever told me, but I never truly believed until now that I'm living it - there's more reading than you can handle.

I'm thinking of writing a post that discusses reading strategies for tackling large block of reading that will help me focus my attention where it's most needed. I may consult my academic idol, CRM, and other faculty for some much-needed advice and report back with hopefully some new ideas and a fresh take on accomplishing my reading lists.

In terms of ordering priorities... I'm not sure that I'll always place coursework over getting published or vice-versa but that I'll advocate being highly scheduled and highly disciplined when it comes to following my schedule. So, when I have a Wednesday to read a book, I get it done - then I can grade on Thursday without feeling like I'm shortchanging my studies. Or watch TV with my husband on Friday night, because I got everything done on Friday that I needed to do. Speaking of that... better go finish that reading!!

Go Pack!!

Project Brainstorming: Visual Content Analysis

2010-08-23T09:45:00.000-04:00

This semester, my elective course is COM 798: Visual Content Analysis. The CRDM PhD requires a minimum of two research methods courses, and this one will satisfy the quantitative methods requirement. I'm carrying over a qualitative methods course from my Master's degree, Rhetorical Criticism, with Dr. Carolyn Miller, though I expect to take another qualitative while I'm here to beef up my skills for my dissertation. Besides - the projects for those courses can accomplish some part of my dissertation writing, so why not take them and get valuable feedback?

Our first meeting for VCA is this evening, for which I've already read the introductory chapters of three methods textbooks. Even though we haven't even had a class meeting yet, I'm already thinking about my semester project that I will do. The sooner I start thinking about it, the better - every project that I do now can contribute to my dissertation later on, and I'd hate to waste a project on something that can't aid in some way/shape/form, even if it's just acquiring necessary background information on a subject. But what to study?

I'm really interested now in environmental issues and see these issues as pressing for our society for a long time to come. Many people do not understand how quickly we need to start changing our wasteful habits, consumption patterns, and addiction to oil, among many other things, if we want to survive on the Earth for many generations to come. I've been thinking for this project about analyzing campaign materials for environmental organizations to see what type of information is being disseminated, how these orgs. are doing it, what specific visual content is used, and how well written text and visuals work together to solidify the message. Obviously, I can't look at all those issues in one semester's project, so I'll have to work on narrowing my ideas and choose the research question that can best be answered by the type of analysis that I am doing.

Visual content analysis, being quantitative in nature, works best when the researcher has a large number of artifacts to analyze and is looking primarily at the content of the images (hence the name) - and not an underlying meaning or interpretation of the message being sent. Features of the images are rendered into codes, and the codes are counted and tallied for analysis of frequency, presence or lack of presence, and co-existence, to name a few options. Right away I think that accumulating images from several different environmental organizations is feasible because this method lends itself to working with a large body of evidence. Narrowing it down to what type of messages - for instance, deforestation, oil, wildlife, water conservation - and selecting an appropriate sampling method are issues to consider before finalizing the topic. Audience consideration is a must, and at this point, I'm leaning toward materials targeted at skeptics/people who have yet to take action to help the environment. The rhetorical strategies will be more obvious and impactful, I think, than those targeted at those who are currently involved/invested in the issue. Also, I should note that I'll acquire all of the materials from the Internet, so it's possible to look at messages from organizations not only on their own websites, but also advertisements and social media campaigns, as those sources might have a greater audience than the main websites themselves. The latter sources may also be a better way at seeing how groups target those who have yet to take action, as presumably those who regularly visit the websites of the groups are more involved or aware and are not going to those sites to decide whether or not to take action (unless maybe directed from an ad or Twitter update? I can see this becoming an issue for me already).

So, for some examples... The Nature Conservancy has several campaigns going on right now that could serve as good material for study. They have an extensive web site, and I've seen their ads around the web. Also up for consideration: TreeHugger (almost exclusively a web site, though), The Sierra Club, The World Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace, Earthfirst, United States Environmental Protection Agency... there are so many organizations dedicated to the cause. I think I'd like to narrow my focus to some of the bigger groups, as they presumably have more resources to dedicate to awareness and promotional materials. I also think that I will focus on groups who have an American audience - maybe not exclusively, but a majority, to narrow my project into something more manageable and, hopefully, generalizable.

So - what campaigns are you familiar with that may be worth studying? Any groups that I've missed in my short list that are worth looking at? What campaigns have the most interesting materials to study?

Starting the New Year - As a Teacher

2010-08-17T11:24:00.000-04:00

Now that I've shared my nervousness about starting my new PhD program (see below), I'd also like to reflect on the other new start I'll experience this week - as an instructor. I teach ENG 101 at NCSU, the mandatory first year writing requirement for all students at the university. With a couple of years "under my belt" (metaphor!), I'm confident in my knowledge of the subject, assessment abilities, and classroom management. This semester, though, I want to start focusing on something that has become a really important issue for me: fostering innovation and creativity among a group of students who haven't had to do that yet in their young lifetime in the classroom.

One of the books I read this summer, Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, emphasized the destructive consequences of America (and the whole world) remaining addicted to oil and other traditional energy sources. (I'd love to tell you about the entire book, but seriously - go read it for yourself. I promise it will change the way you think about consumption, and hopefully how you act too.) One of his solutions? Innovation and creativity. How did we get this far today? Without American (and global, too) ingenuity, we wouldn't have the Internet, knowledge of what causes cancer, solar energy, and the thousands of other discoveries/inventions that we rely on daily. And the only way we can solve future problems is through more creativity and ingenuity. So I want to teach my students to think - really think- and get involved in issues that they care about. Starting with helping them find an issue that they really care about, teaching them to open their eyes to all of the smart writing and ways that they can find out more about these causes.

I've designed the final half of my course around this mission. For their third essay, students will write a literature review, identifying a cause/social issue/problem they see in today's world and what research currently exists on the topic. This will help them to really get into one issue deeply and hopefully open their eyes to what others are doing about it. Their final project is a policy proposal, where they take the research that they have found for the literature review and then come up with their own idea(s) for solving the issue and have to convince the appropriate audience to take action on said proposal. I've had success with these two projects in the past, but now want to focus on fostering critical thinking about issues throughout the semester.

So - how can I encourage creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, ingenuity, and all-around dissatisfaction with the status quo among my students all semester? I don't have a perfect answer. Of course, through reading. I'll have to start by finding them for the students, but then, I hope they'll start searching for readings and ideas on their own. I want to encourage them to be global citizens without being preachy. This is where I need some help - what else can I do? Any good readings to suggest? How can I enact my ideas in the classroom for my students?

I'll plan on blogging about our progress throughout the semester and share successes and failures as well.

Earning Your PhD is like Designing a House

2010-08-11T23:31:00.001-04:00

One of the projects that I completed during my Master's degree was a prolonged study of metaphoric criticism. It goes without saying now that I have a heightened awareness of metaphors and how ubiquitous they are in our communication. The project opened (metaphor) my eyes to how much we rely on images and seemingly unrelated words to describe what we are talking about. Even the title of this blog is a metaphor (and not a great one, but short and memorable enough to work). So why am I thinking about metaphors tonight?

This afternoon I attended orientation for the CRDM with the nine other incoming students for the class of 2010. We heard from program faculty and current students, each providing their own advice for being successful both as a PhD student and future academic professional. The usual spiels - try to read a bit of everything, write a TON (yay for blogging!), make sure to have fun, read more than you write, etc. etc. And all of them reiterated - "this works for me, though it may not work for you." So that got me thinking... what might work for me? I think I'll take a different approach to viewing and tackling the work ahead of me.

Outside of research and course work, my greatest passion is interior design. Over the past two years that we have lived in Raleigh, I've slowly been transforming this cookie-cutter townhouse into a home that exudes our personalities while serving as a comfy base that we truly enjoy returning to at the end of the day. Each room serves a different purpose, contains various and sundry pieces, and has taken a while to compose (and none are yet complete). Together, they have become our home; however, it is perpetually a work in progress. Our art is forever rotating, I will one day find the perfect duvet cover, there are always more stylish curtains, the dining room chairs would look better if reupholstered, and I'm dying for new countertops. The bones are good. But it's still a work in progress, one piece (or two) at a time.

And metaphorically, my PhD is my next house to design. Like when we moved here two years ago, I have a blank canvas. It's solid structurally - I'm confident in my Master's coursework, I'm self-motivated with strong time management skills and a support system to boot. Now - for the work that takes me from merely a student to an academic professional, future professor, expert in the field. I've got rooms to work on: determining my focus in the field, networking, establishing an online presence, solidifying my teaching persona, finding my confident and capable writing voice. All rooms that together build the home. None that can be completed hastily or carelessly. Each serving an important role in my life.

And thus, I may have to forgo my literal home design as I work on this metaphorical house design for a while. Well, four years. And maybe by then, we'll be moving.

Another School Year Begins

2010-08-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

And so another summer has slipped away and the new school year looms ahead of me. This year is big - the beginning of my PhD program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NC State. Even though I've been at NCSU for the past two years working on Master's degree (in English - concentration in Rhetoric and Composition), I'm still getting the "new school butterflies."

I'm a nervous person by nature. The week before my wedding this summer, I could hardly sleep - I'd wake up at 3:30am, remembering that I hadn't packed the marriage license, get up to write it on my to-do list, only to stay awake because I'd alarmed myself with all of the other tasks that I hadn't written down yet either. But I have to remind myself: we pulled the day off without a hitch, got married, and treated our friends and family to a wonderful night that we're still receiving compliments on. Shameless self-motivation for a moment: I made an amazing wedding happen, living in another country from my family. I CAN DO ANYTHING! And I most certainly can be successful in the CRDM.

I know a large part of being successful in graduate work is in the writing. This blog is my attempt not only to chronicle my experiences while working on my Phd, but an outlet for ideas and rough drafts of portions of essays - all in all, a way to improve my writing and embrace my writing voice.

If you are starting your PhD too, or working on it currently, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a link to your blog, and I'd be glad to follow your experiences too. One other thing I know about graduate school is that you don't do it alone. It's crucial to have a support network that can be empathetic and motivating.

Go Pack!!