#18478
Learner Access in the Virtual Classroom: The Ethics of Assessing Online Learning 
Web-based instruction is often valued because of the way hypertext and dynamic visual media may enhance course content. The advantages of virtual space are framed in terms of 'access' - access to broader dimensions of ideas, access to academic and non-academic databases and information, access to diverse learning communities.
LaFond, Larry. Kairos (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online
#13825
Learning to Write: Learning about Sustainability
I had been involved with a program at Clemson to integrate laptop computers into the engineering curriculum. In this pilot project, I had taught first-year writing since 1998 to engineering and science majors using their own laptops in classrooms equipped with ethernet connections and a video projector. This proved to be a rich environment for sharing work and collaborating among ourselves. I wanted to see whether we could extend our collaborations to other Clemson classrooms. Mary Haque (a professor in Clemson University’s Horticulture Department) and I decided that my first-year composition classes could collaborate with her horticulture classes.
Longo, Bernadette. Kairos (2001). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing
#25305
Lumiere Ghosting and the New Media Classroom
Refocusing courses around the structure of narrative and how they use theatrical forms of interaction in the presentation of complex online help and instructional systems
Gilette, David, John Elsdon and Enrica Lovaglio. Kairos (2005). Articles>Education>Multimedia
#25848
Review: Minimalism and Documentation
What is minimalism? Is minimalist documentation 'risky,' and if so, what can be done to mitgate the risk? Was the structure of Windows 95's Help based on John Carroll's Minimalist Model or was 'the result' more a Microsoft business decision -- or a bit of both?
Eiler, Mary Ann. Kairos (1997). Articles>Reviews>Documentation>Minimalism
#12983
Monitoring Order: Visual Desire, the Organization of Web Pages, and Teaching the Rules of Design
Monitoring Order looks at two potential sources -- writings about book design and writings about visual arrangement in painting -- for helping teachers of writing think about teaching visual composition for Web pages; both sources are problematic but suggest directions for further study.
Wysocki, Anne Frances. Kairos (1998). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Visual Rhetoric
#25111
New Literacies and Old: A Dialogue
Despite what some consider evidence to the contrary, the U.S.A. remains largely a nation of readers and writers.
Moulthrop, Stuart and Nancy Kaplan. Kairos (2004). Articles>Rhetoric>Technology
#25306
Picturing Work: Visual Projects in the Writing Classroom
Composition faces the daunting task of promptly translating its theories into pedagogical strategies and often these teaching experiences lead to new questions for scholarship.
Kuhn, Virginia. Kairos (2005). Articles>Education>Writing
#13832
In The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts, Richard Lanham suggests that perhaps those most resistant to the 'digital revolution' are members of English departments, those who are often divided between what does and what does not constitute a text. Often at the heart of this debate is the privileging of one literacy paradigm, that of print, and the marginalizing of another, primarily that devoted to the production of electronic discourse. To further complicate the issue, even when we do recognize electronic models of literacy, we tend to shape our experience, as Johnson-Eilola has so eloquently pointed out, through our nostalgia for earlier models of literacy, again, those focused on print and the printed page. It is no doubt important to teach students the ways in which rhetorical and literary texts are produced, distributed, and consumed; however, it is equally important for teachers of writing, primarily members of English departments, to acknowledge the production and consumption processes of texts external to the genres of the academy and to recognize that the essay is a printed form that admittedly for our students has little use outside the academy.
Wilferth, Joe. Kairos (2002). Academic>Portfolios>Writing
#31026
A Review of Digital Video Production in Post-Secondary English Classrooms at Three Universities
Digital video production in composition courses is both new and exciting. However, this newness comes with challenges and obstacles as well as more questions than answers. What exactly is so fun, attractive, liberating, and transgressive about digital video work? Is it the time invested in editing minutes or hours of footage into seconds of film clips? Is it the sheer thrill of having the power to overlay images, words, and sounds to produce an effect impossible in the real world and highly effective in the multimodal, rhetorical one? Is it that the composition teacher is finally asking for a product where grammar (understood as punctuation and sentence structure) is mostly invisible? Is it the crisis moments when the software, the hard drive, and/or the accompanying hardware crashes and we are still left with a classroom full of students to teach? Or, is it the mesmerizing effect of the screen that promises sustained attention to a composition assignment? The answer, we think, in all cases is 'yes'--yet sometimes that yes is a hesitant one.
Meeks, Melissa and Alex Ilyasova. Kairos (2003). Articles>Education>Multimedia>Video
#25296
Review: Review of Writing at the Edge: Student Webs from Brown University
In Writing at the Edge, George Landow has provided a hypertext that is both in and about hypertext.
Eyman, Douglas. Kairos (1996). Articles>Reviews>Hypertext
#25304
Even though Internet search engines occupy a huge space in students' lives, there seems to be little examination of the effect of search engines on students. The interfaces of popular search engine such as Yahoo and Google simulate annotated bibliographies, a very abstract form.
Smith, Donny. Kairos (2005). Articles>Web Design>Search
#10254
Search Engines and the Will to Truth
Thousands, probably millions of writers are putting up pages of information or speculation on the Web. They are choosing to bypass the whole apparatus of referees, editors, reviewers, catalogers, and indexers to make a direct appeal to 'the world' on the Web. If the cost of Web publication were that the pages remained un-indexed, few would choose it, for it would amount to being one drop in a sea of 1.5 billion pages: the chance of anyone with an interest in the topic finding the page would be infinitesimal. But along with all this unauthorized, uncatalogued writing has come the development of fast and powerful search engines, some of them indexing over one billion pages. And suddenly 'to look something up' means 'to run it by Yahoo!' It is easy to make a case against the Web search engines, and from that a case against the Web itself as a medium, or even a tool, for making and exchanging public knowledge. But...
Dillon, George. Kairos (2001). Design>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization
#18859
The following set of links provide information on issues of copyright intellectual property, and fair use.
Galin, Jeffrey R. Kairos (1998). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#25110
So Much, So Far, So What? Progress and Prediction in Technorhetoric
In any popular cultural innovation one cares to name, there is an explicit or implicit claim about the way that the innovation will 'change' or 'transform' life, its quality, or its effect.
Whipple, Bob, Jr. and Robert S. Dornsife, Jr. Kairos (2004). Articles>Rhetoric>Technology
#24674
So You've Decided to Develop A Distance Education Class...
As colleges and universities race into Distance Education via the World Wide Web, instructors are asked to move out of their 'safe' zones and into a new realm of teaching.
Walker, Cynthia L. Kairos (2001). Articles>Education>Online
#23068
This article is an examination of the discourse surrounding a new media tool, Macromedia's Flash, and a discussion of a qualitative study of Flash's use by students as part of an electronic portfolio assignment in a first-year composition course. My article explores how the software industry constructs Flash as a discursive object for the regulation of information flow, while also examining how the present generation of students interacts with these new media environments, making meaning within them through the use of simulacra tools.
Ellertson, Anthony. Kairos (2003). Articles>Education>Multimedia>Flash
#12982
Stories and Maps: Postmodernism and Professional Communication
Communication used to be about telling stories, about listening to narratives of discovery, learning, redemption, and war. Not just little stories, but big stories: heaven, hell, utopia. Relatively recently, though, the map has started to replace the story as our fundamental way of knowing. The new emphasis on spatial rather than temporal or historical concerns goes by a number of titles -- postcapitalism, networked workplaces, nonhierarchical management -- but the most popular (and often misunderstood) is postmodernism. In this text, I sketch out some of the ways that postmodernist tendencies affect the careers and possibilities for business and technical communicators. Briefly, I see the potential for increased responsibility, prestige, and influence for business and technical communicators, but only if we are able to reconceive what we think of as the value of our work; that is, we must reposition ourselves as mapmakers rather than authors.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Kairos (1995). Articles>TC>Rhetoric
#14406
Teaching Professional Writing Online with Electronic Peer Response
For primarily practical reasons, professional writing courses are increasingly being taught totally or partly online. These practical reasons concern me because I do not believe that a pedagogical practice whose benefits are being actively debated by scholars, such as online education, should be utilized only or primarily because it is seen as a way of saving or making money. However, online education is one pedagogical practice that, I believe, has great potential to improve writing. A year-and-a-half ago, I taught several partly online sections of my professional writing course, and I discovered that a strategy valuable in my traditional sections became invaluable in my online sections: electronic peer response.
Tannacito, Terry. Kairos (2001). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online
#13831
Documents associated with September 11 and its aftermath offer a sobering but appropriate opportunity for writing instructors to demonstrate the value of rhetorical analysis and the utility of the Internet as a tool for locating primary sources.
Losh, Elizabeth. Kairos (2002). Articles>Rhetoric
#25448
A bibliography with hundreds of online articles about weblogs.
Lowe, Charles. Kairos (2004). Resources>Bibliographies>Writing>Blogs
#13933
What Matters Who Writes? What Matters Who Responds? Issues of Ownership in the Writing Classroom
This text was originally constructed as a keynote address for the NCTE conference held August 10-12, 1995 at Colgate University and was delivered under the same title. Some text has been changed to accomodate hypertextual publication. To follow the text nearly as it was delivered August 11, click the link labelled 'Next' at the bottom of each 'page.' However, following the text in this manner defeats the purpose of this hypertextual presentation. Explore the structure of the text -- you may find yourself rewarded with your own unique reading experience. There are conceptual links to themes that run through the text (Postmodern (un)grounding, Collaboration, Copy(w)right/Ownership, and Possible Futures ), and navagational links ( Next, Previous, and Back ) which should provide you with many reading possibilities.
Lunsford, Andrea A., Rebecca Rickly, Michael J. Salvo and Susan West. Kairos (1996). Articles>Education>Writing
#31025
Highlights the major legal cases and illustrates how each case set up a rhetorical construct that allowed the next case to happen, leaving us where we are now. Highlights the provisions of the DMCA and how that law might impact our composing and publication practices.
Rife, Martine Courant. Kairos (2006). Articles>Intellectual Property>Legal>Writing
#26707
This webtext 'talks' in all the ways we are asked to talk about teaching digital writing: in the hallways to colleagues, in policy documents to administrators, in classroom exercises to graduate and undergraduate students, and to colleagues at conferences, in journal articles, and other scholarly genres.
#23884
Why We Need More Assessment of Online Composition Courses: A Brief History
Online courses now command a prominent position in composition scholarship where we dream of democratized education and liberating literacies. But...
Charles, Cristie Cowles. Kairos (2002). Articles>Education>Assessment>Online
#25107
Wi-Fi Rhetoric: Driving Mobile Technologies
I argue that the wi-fi industry promises mobility, security, and entertainment not by emphasizing the open-spectrum technologies upon which they are based but through strategies that anticipate and recycle generic consumer values. These values—obtained by quantifying and interpretting consumer behaviors or "choices"—are represented by a universal product image that obfuscates difference, contradiction, and conflict in order to distribute products efficiently to a mass audience.
Moeller, Ryan. Kairos (2004). Articles>Rhetoric>Wireless Web
