Projects

Video and Professional Writing Pedagogy

Peter Fadde and I are writing a series of articles on video and composing in digital environments. The first article we published addressed developing a sustainable approach that would assist you in handling the rapid technology changes: "Video for the Rest of Us? Video for the rest of us? Toward a sustainable process for incorporating video into multimedia composition." In D. DeVoss, H. McKee, & R. Selfe, eds., Technological Ecologies and Sustainability: Methods, Modes, and Assessment. Computers & Composition Digital Press and Utah State University Press, 2009.
http://ccdigitalpress.org/tes/index2.html

A second article, "Guerrilla Video: Adjudicating the Credible and the Cool," appeared in a special issue of The Writing Instructor on "Disruptions of/in Professional Writing Pedagogy" in May 2010. It examines how professional writing teachers might navigate those difficult aesthetic shoals between the professional video look workplaces might want their employees to have and the grassroots aesthetics that most young people think are cool. Then it applies that discussion to video resumes found on YouTube.
http://www.writinginstructor.com/pwdisruptions

Further, Educause Quarterly's December 2011 issues includes our "Cool and Credible Web Video: Old Rules, New Rules, No Rules?" That article contrasts the basic rules used in TV composition with emerging rules of YouTube composition, and includes a tutorial.

We continue to study and ponder the production of and reception of digital video in old and new public settings. . .and how rhetoric plays a role.

Digital Humanities, Historiographies, and the Education of New Historians of Rhetoric

Together with Tarez Graban (Indiana University) I have been investigating how advances in digital humanities impact both historiography in rhetorical history and the education of new historians of rhetoric. A paper is circulating.

I have begun a second project on digital born work in community archives with Jennifer Bay (Purdue), in which we examine how new developments in community archival theory can be harnessed to explain and imagine digital work in archives. We presented on this at the Watson Conference in Louisville in 2010, and are conducting some further research with the Tippecanoe County Historical Association.

I recently have completed an historiographic article inspired by these projects and entitled "Inspecting Shadows of Past Classroom Practices: A Search for Students’ Voices." It relates the stories of two quite different students from the early 1920s, Lena a student from a rural Indiana school who attended a normal school in summers in order to teach and Emmett an engineering study at VPI who enrolled in a technical writing class during spring of his senior year. Lena's voice comes from her notebooks saved and donated to a local historical society and Emmett's come from his marginal notes in his textbook. My argument is that their voices add needed vitality to accounts of pedagogical history. This article will appear in College Composition and Communication in February 2012.
The opening page is attached.

Pedagogical History for Engineering Writing and Gendered Dimensions of Mentoring in STEM

Two projects related to the history of instruction in engineering writing are underway. The first looks at evidence found in an old textbook about a 1924 technical writing class, interested in whether and in ways that class enacted a humanistic or a utilitarian approach. It starts with the marginal marks made by an electrical engineering student in a 1924 class in "Technical English" held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The paper "After the Great War: Utility, Humanities, and Tracings from a Technical Writing Class in the 1920s" examines both the published discussion about instruction extant in that time period and the evidence of classroom work provided by E. L. Owens' marginalia from his copy of Homer Watt's 1917 The Composition of Technical Papers. It is scheduled to be published by Journal of Business and Technical Communication in 2012, and the proofs of opening is attached.

The second project examines writing instruction inside engineering in the late nineteenth century, targeting the "Contracts and Specifications" classes that were popular in engineering schools that also had law schools and seemed, from the surviving textbooks to have focused on writing. This project is co-authored with Mark Hannah (Arizona State), and we are interested in exploring the history of writing instruction that operated inside engineering. If that work had held sway, how different would our jobs be today?

A third project in this area addresses mentoring. This work began with a presentation on gendered mentoring that Jenny Bay, Kristen Moore and I prepared for the Feminist Workshop at CCCC in Atlanta. Kristen and I both presented on some aspects of mentoring undergraduate women in STEM areas. So, Kristen Moore and I, when our review of literature on gender in Engineering convinced us that the women undergraduates do not want to be singled out, started considering how we might make small, infrastructural changes to our technical writing classes that would mentor women without singling them out for special treatment (that they fear will be read as remediation). That article will be circulated in December 2011.

Flashpoints in Curricular/Disciplinary Change

The collaborative research group of Stuart Blythe (IPFW/Michigan State), Libby Miles (U of Rhode Island), Bob Schwegler (U of Rhode Island), Michele Simmons (Miami U of Ohio), Jeff Grabill (Michigan State) and myself are examining those moments in the processes of change where a flashpoint happens--what triggers them, what happens? How do people, often with little institutional power, make some discursive decision space for themselves? Questions such as these drive the work.

The group has presented at several CCCCs,conducted a national survey at the graduate level, and is working on a survey aimed at programs offering undergraduate majors in some area of writing.

Design-Based Research in Instructional Technology and Professional Writing

Together with Peter Fadde (Instructional Technology, Southern Illinois University) I am investigating how two fields with differing approaches, focuses, and goals, share an interest in design-based research. We are particularly interested in the places where the fields agree and disagree: what can those points tell us about the possibilities of design-based research?

We presented on this topic @ AECT in Fall 2010 and AERA in Spring 2011, and a first paper on the research findings is in circulation.

Vita for Patricia Sullivan

Abbreviated Vita




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