Status: Doctor

Yesterday I became a doctor.

I went and celebrated with a few friends who are also highly educated, and I admit, it felt a bit like this:

And so this is my final official blog as a Student Innovation Fellow, but I do plan to continue keeping a blog chronicling my journey through a tech world as a Humanities student at https://valerievisual.wordpress.com/ – which admittedly needs a revamp, and a cleanup before I start to use it again. That is not, however, the focus of this entry.

The point of this entry is to detail the status of my life as a doctor at this point in my journey.

Yesterday, my committee signed my paperwork.

My dissertation is titled: The Value of Scholarly Writing: A Temporal-Material Rhetorical Analysis of Google Documents

It analyzes how interactive writing software (IWS) like Google Documents serve to forefront functions of interactivity between writers, and by doing so, reshape and create Western values surrounding the academic writing process that are uniquely post-industrial. The whole thing aligns rather well with the work we do as Student Innovation Fellows, and a lot of my work as a SIF informed some of my theory and analysis.

My work as a Computers and Composition scholar has been validated over and over again in my SIF work. I have worked with cloud computing for nearly two years, theorizing how it alters users perception of time and space, and right when I am feeling like I might be saying nothing new, a SIF colleague who I respect very highly made the following statement, “Whenever I’m working on a Google Doc, I always want to save, and you don’t have to in the cloud. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to that.” I realized that if this colleague is still not used to the save features of cloud software, then I must be saying something fresh.

And again, when I learned how much fun it is to make simple data into visualizations, as I did for Marni Davis, and when I turned Oscar Rieken’s resume into an infographic, a whole new world of seeing opened up to me. I look at information much differently now, thanks to my projects. This factored in to the way I analyzed the features of Google Documents within my dissertation pages.

Working as a SIF also gave me the opportunity to leave the usual spaces of Humanities PhD life and peek inside the Information Technology world. The links between coding and composition have astounded me. As I began to teach  myself HTML and CSS, I began to understand the grammar and syntax behind coding reflect that of natural languages. Not only that, but I am beginning to see the barriers online that fall down as I learn to code, similar to the barriers that fall as we enter discourses. For example, without knowing anything about the language of law, anyone would be completely lost in a court, even if everyone is speaking English.

A problem does remain that the market is stretched thin, and finding a job is difficult for any PhD student. I find comfort in knowing that even the best and brightest students often don’t land jobs their first year on the academic market (a market that is so complicated and unlike any business market, it is difficult to explain it to anyone not involved in the process). What I do have is the experience I have gained during the Student Innovation Fellowship. Unfortunately, I lack the know-how to market these skills in a way that makes sense.

As I explore my options, I am learning about jobs that I had never heard of, skills I didn’t know existed, and a whole new world of technology that is related to my current research. No matter what I end up doing next, I am certain that it will be as interesting as the work I have done as a Student Innovation Fellow – and if I’m lucky – it’ll be even more so.

Student Work Collection

The last thing I did for the Student Innovation Fellowship on-site was co-host a couple of faculty workshops with Brennan Collins designed to get faculty interested in creating digital portfolios specifically designed to collect outstanding student work in a central location.

Since then, some of my tech-minded gears have really been turning. What would the university atmosphere be like if all instructors collected student work to be showcased on their personal portfolios?

If you visit the link above to Brennan Collins’s portfolio, you will see a very simple page that is a basic list of the student work. Brennan has collected this work over several semesters, and we are using it as a jumping off point for the first projects we may showcase on Edge Magazine. If you scroll through, you will see videos, PDFs with visuals, Prezis, and other media that students have used to present for Brennan’s course. This leaves open possibilities for Brennan to provide examples of his work above and beyond the usual documentation instructors provide such as assignment sheets or student evaluations (say, if Brennan were looking for another job, for example).

This kind of portfolio, it is important to point out, is different than a digital teaching portfolio. With a simple Google search, I found several examples of basic teaching portfolios on the open web. Below is a screenshot from an elementary school teachers’ home page.

example dig-port

As you can see, Stephanie Ladner has several sections, including her teaching philosophy, and a project she sponsors. But she does not collect student work. Of course, at this level, that would likely be a violation, given that she works with children who cannot give their permission for public display of their work. I am however, using Miss Ladner’s portfolio as an illustration.

Now imagine if all the instructors at GSU had simple portfolios like Brennan’s. Not only could instructors use this kind of portfolio for future career prospects, but they could use student examples to mentor new colleagues, to display what kind of student work comes out of their department, or to contribute to school-wide projects like Edge. And these are just three ideas I am coming up  with on my own. With more heads involved, I’m confident there would be so many wonderful uses for excellent student projects like the ones Brennan’s page features.

In order to promote the idea of digital portfolios showcasing, Brennan and I have hosted two workshops on the idea, and they have gone rather well. The instructors we have worked with are interested, and willing to spread the word. If the idea catches on and other instructors are also willing to collect outstanding student work, GSU could set the standard for this kind of sharing. With student permission, of course.

End of Semester

If you read my last blog entry, you know that we were planning a party/meeting to finish off the very first semester of our wonderful SIF program. It went off really well – there was so much food, we could have fed the people across the hall too!

Look at this amazing spread!!

Look at this amazing spread!!

As people trickled in, we waited to have the ‘meeting’ portion, and everyone ate in rounds. Whoever made that bean dip — you’re my hero.

Eventually, I asked Roxanne to put an interactive video made using Captivate 7 which featured our own Will Kerr building a box fort. Having sufficiently embarrassed Will, we opened the floor for people to ask any questions about the upcoming semester, and to show off projects they have been working on.

Our audience is not only captivated by presentations, they are also a very good looking bunch of smart people.

Our audience is not only captivated by presentations, they are also a very good looking bunch of smart people.

Robert Bryant blew us all away with his project wherein he has been creating digital models of 3D objects using Agisoft. He set up his computer and showed us how to interact with digital objects by waving your hand in front of a little device that reminded me a lot of the way the Wii system works.

Behold the Digital Ball

Behold the Digital Ball

We also got to watch several videos made by Thomas, Babacar, Ameer, Ryan and others that showcased the work they’ve been doing to promote Hybrid Pedagogy courses here at GSU. And we got to see another interactive video Roxanne and Ameer made for the science department which shows a hilarious young man named Kory making mistakes while using the Vacufuge Plus machine.

In all, the meeting was fun and informative. Even though I’ve been working to collect everyone’s accomplishments and achievements, I haven’t gotten to see all these projects yet in action.

Success.

SIF: positivity, morale and accomplishments

This week, the SIF overlords contacted me and asked me to collect and catalog SIF accomplishments so far. As someone whose default setting is >excited with bouncy option – I am excited that I get to do this job.

And while it may seem a little early to start talking about accomplishments, I know that I’ve already learned enough to fill a whole brain noodle – and I’m hoping that others feel the same way. So I created a Google Forms survey to send out to everyone – and Joe, and Brennan already beta-tested it! That was so fast!

I’ve used Google  Forms before, but only as someone filling out the form. This time I got to make, not one, but TWO forms! I made one today for the beta test for the Tools Wiki, which I will send to a few of you in the next week or so, and one for SIF Accomplishments. The forms are really easy to make, and have a variety of options for users to answer – like multiple choice, scale, text, and so on. My favorite part though is that they have lots of themes to choose from that make the forms look a little more fun.

By the time you read this, you’ll probably have already filled out my form, and some of you may have already met with me. My hope is that by all of us thinking about the most positive and helpful aspects of SIFdom, we will be able to deliver an accurate picture of our accomplishments to the powers that be, as well as grow as a community of innovators.

And remember – if you’re having a bad SIF day, Zoe brings candy to the Exchange, Justin makes weird noises sometimes, and there’s always coffee in the common area.

Rhet/Comp, Durkheim, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Me

In the last 7 or so weeks as a SIF, I have learned more than I ever imagined I would.

A few weeks ago, I decided to write an article featuring the SIF program. In a stroke of benevolence, Brennan gave me permission to spend some of my hours developing the article. So I set to work – basing the article on a footnote I harvested from Emile Durkheim’s sociologically ground breaking book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life written in 1912:

“A tool is material accumulated capital.”

When I read that note, I knew I was going to use it for something – but I wasn’t sure what – until I began to read Writing Teachers Writing Software by rhetoric and composition scholar Paul LeBlanc.

The article I wrote went live this morning at 3am on Hybrid Pedagogy. Here is the link:

Addressing the Elephant: The Importance of Infrastructure

Getting Started

Yesterday I met Monique McGee, my now co-editor of the main SIF (Student Innovation Fellowship) blog. We sat down to talk about the direction our blogs, and the main blog, would take over the course of this SIF induction. In case I haven’t yet mentioned, we are the first SIFs ever. Not Monique and I alone – there are about 18 (guestimation on my part) of us. And we’ll all be getting started, bumping around in the night, together.

A few things I learned from our very first meeting, which also included our new colleague Ramsundar Sundarkumar, called simply Ram (I’ll link his blog as soon as I can), include the following:

1. It’s going to be fun to be a SIF. There is a sense of humor in the office that is subtle, dry, and referential to a lot of the pop culture I already love.

2. Anything could happen this year. ANYthing – could happen this year.

We are all on this journey to explore innovation – we all have different skills – we all want to learn as much as possible.

If I had a seat-belt here in my kitchen where I am currently standing and writing, I would strap myself in.