Category: Invited

Researching Collaboratively: Teachers, Teams, and Technology

Computers and Writing Conference 2019
Theme: Mission Critical: Centering Ethical Challenges in Computers and Writing
June 20-22, 2019
East Lansing, MI

At an early age, we are encouraged to collaborate; we share wooden blocks, exchange colored crayons, and learn how to play together. But, by the time we reach college, our collaborations are fraught with difficulty and struggle. In industry, research, and sometimes in teaching, workers are required to operate in groups to complete large tasks or tackle wicked problems—complex, situated, ill-defined issues with an indeterminate scope. Some of our most significant human accomplishments (for example, DNA mapping and the internet) would not be possible without interdisciplinary teams of engineers, architects, humanists, doctors, scientists, and others. This talk focuses on collaboration in our digital age including how we as academics talk about, demonstrate, and teach collaboration in our classrooms; what we as researchers might need to know and understand about the digital tools that shape and inform our writing; and what industry could learn about teaming and how to foster and nurture teams. I call for more collaboration across the aisle, so to say, in the academy and beyond, removing the silos that have shaped our field’s history and restricted our scholarship. As a field of intersections among Technical Communication, Business Communication, Rhetoric and Composition, Communication, and English, we need 21st-century ways to work, share, and foster agency both as consumers and designers of, and for, the digital tools of today. By “standing on the shoulders of giants,” we can do and say more, but to reach further, we need to share and collaborate.

Joy Robinson is an Assistant Professor in Technical Communication and New Media at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dr. Robinson runs the eValuation and User experience (VUE) lab; a dedicated space for user experience (UX) and social science research. The lab specializes in biometric research and evaluation through specialized equipment such as eye tracking glasses and heart rate wristband monitors used to explore human autonomic responses to design/interfaces/stimulus. Her work has been published in Technical Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Communication Design Quarterly, and IEEE Professional Communication. Her forthcoming multi-authored article in Computers and Composition titled “State of the Field: Teaching with Digital Tools in the Writing and Communication Classroom” explores how teachers use and employ technology throughout their various teaching tasks. Her research and teaching interests explore technical, social, and theoretical interventions for situated human systems such as users, teams, and groups who are working/playing/studying in various contexts. Her wide-ranging interests arise from 20 years of varied work opportunities as a biomedical engineer, metallurgical engineer, technical consultant, and digital media specialist. Now as an assistant professor in English, she looks for new collaborators frequently and finds them in all walks of life.

We now have teachers of writing and communication who have always lived in a digital world: had access to the Internet, had email, and have grown up with social media. For these teachers (and the rest of us as well), digital resources have become ubiquitous. As teachers, we are participants in this digital evolution and are acutely aware that many digital resources are beneficial both to teaching and to society at large. Writing and communication scholarship offers several interrelated theoretical discussions about teaching with digital resources, often as a subset of or interlinked with discussions about multiliteracies, multimodality, and multimedia. Regardless of how we perceive digital technology, with limitless possibilities or as a slippery slope toward a dystopic future, digital technology is here to stay, and our pedagogies must reflect this reality. As teachers, we need to leverage technology in ways that help students think critically about their own technological choices. This talk will discuss ways to ensure that students become agents of their digital futures as well as consider how digital tools can be used for learning, teaching, and researching in the 21 century.