June 22, 2009 - by Bill Hart-Davidson, from the blog WIDE World Web
Last week, Kirk St. Amant of East Carolina University visited MSU and offered a workshop and a presentation. Both were very well attended events. Below, we've provided a short summary and a link to a PDF of slides from each event.
The Academic Book: An Overview of the Review and Publishing Processes
[slides]
This objective of this workshop is to provide an overview of the decision making process associated with publishing an academic book. In so doing, the workshop will examine
•How market factors and prospective readership can influence the publishing process
•How the review process of book proposals and book manuscripts operate in general
•What factors to consider when selecting a press and drafting a book proposal
•What factors to consider when trying to convert a dissertation into an academic book
Participants are encouraged to bring draft book proposals – and even draft introductory book chapters – to the workshop for discussion and review.
Online Education in the Age of Globalization: Trends and Considerations
[slides]
Online education has opened the classroom to students from around the world. Yet global access to online classes and online degree programs is but the first step in creating effective international learning environments. This presentation will provide an overview of the global market for and international interest in online education. In so doing, the presenter will discuss what aspects educators and administrators should consider in order to develop an effective online learning environment for individuals from other nations. The presenter will also examine what aspects educators should consider when organizing and overseeing an online class comprised of students from different nations and cultures. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of strategies administrators, educators, and students can use to develop more successful international online learning environments and experiences.
Speaker Bio
Kirk St.Amant is an Associate Professor of Technical and Professional Communication at East Carolina University and is the Editor of the Texas Tech University Press Series in Technical Communication and Rhetoric. His research focuses on globalization and its effects on industry and educational practices.
WIDE would like to thank all of our fellow co-sponsors for both events: the MSU Graduate School, College of Arts & Letters, The Writing Center, The Department of Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures.
June 3, 2009 - by Bill Hart-Davidson, from the blogs Billblog IV, WIDE World Web
WIDE researcher and recent Rhetoric & Writing MA graduate Jake McCarthy's research is featured in the article "Finding Usability in Workplace Culture" published in the June 2009 edition of Intercom, a publication of the Society for Technical Communication.
The article addresses the complexity of assessing usability in workplace settings where a myriad of factors can influence how, let alone how well, a particular technology functions. McCarthy and Hart-Davidson, co-authors of the piece, discuss the ways an ethnomethodological approach to usability analysis can be beneficial in such settings:
"Keeping an eye on office politics and entrenched practices while searching for usability issues gave us a unique view of the decisions writers made while interacting with the CMS. Instead of recording the length of time and number of steps required for people to complete tasks, we focused on the cultural motives for completing tasks differently than we had anticipated. Certain traditional usability problems turned up through our
observations, but our presence in the work environment made the workplace
culture impossible to ignore."
Though not suitable for every project, the longer "dwell time" and more in-depth relationship building that went into the project discussed by McCarthy & Hart-Davidson can be indispensable when the design of a new workplace tool is so integral to the core mission of an organization.