Rhetorical Analysis of KarenSichler.org
ENGL 8123
Background and Goals
As a full-time lecturer at a pivot point in my career, the motivations for creating a personal website and online portfolio are numerous. I have been in my current role as a full-time lecturer at Kennesaw State University (KSU) in the School of Communication and Media (SOCM) for a decade. I have been able to teach a wide variety of courses and undertake several different roles in SOCM such as my recent position as the General Education coordinator. I have reached a plateau in higher education, however, due to my lack of a terminal degree which is the currency of the realm. To this end, I have matriculated in the Ph.D. program in English at Georgia State University. With my specific concentration in Rhetoric and Composition in tandem with my recently completed M.S. in Instructional Design and Technology also from Georgia State University, I am currently attempting to reskill and rebrand myself as digital literacy and rhetoric scholar. The aforementioned elements have always been points of interest and areas in which I have dabbled; however, I want to make them the focus point in the next trajectory of my career.
The online portfolio I have established, therefore, marks this transition. As the portfolio has evolved, I have been able to revisit and refine my prior curriculum designs as well as reflect upon what I want to spend my time writing and researching in the next decade. This online portfolio/personal website will be able to serve as my online “home” showcasing my skills and growth. I have already been able to employ my online portfolio in this capacity already when demonstrating my growth as an instructional designer for my portfolio exam in my MS program and when applying for a position as a one-year lecturer position for the Journey Honors College at KSU. In my application letter, I was able to link directly to examples shared on my website to supplement my application letter and CV.
Project Constraints, Controversies, and Conflicts
As I am embarking upon and emphasizing areas that have been tangential to my daily professional tasks, I am facing new challenges. First, this is the first course I have taken which has emphasized the building blocks of design. Up to this point, an understanding of the particular mechanics of design have been unaddressed. I had attempted to create a website previously; however, I became overwhelmed at the layers of decisions I had to make. Not only did I have to consider what types content I wished to share on my site, but I also had to make decisions about colors, shapes, typography. Without the correct framework, my prior attempt ultimately failed even though I had the ability to use a template to ease my design concerns.
My prior attempt shadowed me as I began to set up, design, and make decisions about my current online portfolio. One of the lessons I learned from my prior attempt was that I found the reliance on a template to be, ultimately, unsatisfactory. However, I did not have prior experience with web design or html coding. Realizing this as part of the new path I am undertaking, I decided to use a bare-bones template while coding all the specific content I shared on the online portfolio. Although this began as a serious challenge, I have been able to learn all of the code necessary to fulfill the design I created.
Strategies
Having worked in higher education for much of my adult life, I have a solid understanding of the types of content one needs to have to negotiate the spaces in a professional educational environment. The decision on what to include, therefore, was predetermined by the requirements for profession. At the heart of any application for a faculty position resides a call to demonstrate your skills as an educator, researcher, and colleague. As my current position as a lecturer emphasizes teaching, the focus of my creative output in the field has centered on the curriculum I design for the courses I teach. I have been able to stretch and grow my interests in digital literacy and rhetoric with the types of assignments I assign and material I teach. This can be seen in the amount of content shared in the “Courses Taught” section. As this is my current strength, I wanted to take every opportunity available to demonstrate the depth of engagement and dedication I have for the study and teaching of digital culture. One can see specific examples in my presentation of my design for Digital Public Speaking and Introduction to Digital Literacy courses I created.
By contrast, one area that has yet to be developed is research. During my first period in graduate school, I attended quite a few academic conferences to share my research. However, in the intervening period I have let that aspect of my career and activity lag. At my organization, lecturers do not receive any credit for research-based activities, nor are we permitted to include it in our annual review packets. As part of my return to doctoral studies, I have several projects I have begun. First, I am working on a textbook on digital privacy rights for an undergraduate audience. Second, I have a considerable amount of prior research on women and their identity as childfree and engagement with like-minded individuals in online communities. This topic has resurfaced due to the political rhetoric employed in the most recent presidential election.
Regarding the web design decisions I have made, I chose to emphasize accessibility and clarity over creativity. Upon first glance, it is evident I accentuated contrast in the colors I selected thereby making it more easily readable for users with any visual limitations. In addition, I also chose to create depth in the portfolio by imposing a hierarchy in the information I shared. For example, I created a modest landing page for the “Communication Law, Ethics, and Diversity” course design with only the basic information. If visitors to the online portfolio wish to go deeper into the assignments such as the Legal Brief, the Media Ethics Case Study, or the Media Diversity Content Analysis.
What I have attempted to create is a foundational document that can grow with me as I develop into the digital literacy and rhetoric scholar I would like to become.