Currents in Electronic Literacy

This workgroup is devoted to editing and publishing the CWRL’s e-journal Currents in Electronic Literacy. Recent issues have focused on social networking and the digital commons. Currents in Electronic Literacy (ISSN 1524-6493) is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and EBSCO.

Pedagogy

The pedagogy group has two ongoing projects:

eFiles

The eFiles assignment database provides teaching resources for instructors and teaching assistants in the English Department and Department of Rhetoric and Writing. This resource is currently password protected, but we hope to eventually open it up to those in other departments and at other universities.

Blogging Pedagogy

Blogging Pedagogy is a public resource that allows teachers to share assignments, document classroom successes and failures, or ask questions about pedagogy. The site attracts thousands of visitors a month and is linked on various blogs such as The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus Blog.

SPURS

The SPURS program is a partnership between the Department of Rhetoric and Writing and the Texas public school system designed to foster relationships between 11th grade writing courses in underrepresented high schools and college writing courses. The SPURS workgroup is currently collecting data on the program for a research study on its implementation and effectiveness.

Video Game

The Video Game group is currently developing a game for use in Rhetoric and English classrooms. The game is called Rhetorical Peaks and currently exists as a prototype. In January 2007, the Video Game group wrote a CWRL Whitepaper documenting progress on the game. This prototype was designed using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset. Currently, this group is putting together an LAITS Fast-Tex grant proposal in hopes of further developing the game.

Video game project receives additional funding

This April, the CWRL's video game workgroup was awarded a ~FAST Tex grant to fund the continued development of Rhetorical Peaks, a video game designed for rhetoric classrooms, in 2008–2009. With this grant, Rhetorical Peaks will move beyond the conceptual level and will soon be appearing in classrooms near you.

Rhetorical Peaks is the result of a two year video-gaming project in the CWRL. The game is loosely based on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and it follows the player / detective / rhetor into the fictional town of Rhetorical Peaks in order to get to the bottom of a murder most vile—that of Kendall Burke, the town’s best speaker. Why would anyone do this to someone who could argue so well? It’s up to Agent Rederick to get to the bottom of things. Of course, in a town like Rhetorical Peaks, there is no bottom to things and thus no right answer to the question of who killed Kendall. The best hope we have is that a sound argument can be made as to the killer’s identity. It will take all of the player’s rhetorical skills to be able to make this argument after questioning the locals, viewing the crime scene, and perhaps being witness to a few unexpected twists and turns.

Related: Annotated bibliography of video game resources

image credit: knitgrrl

Visual Rhetoric

The Visual Rhetoric group has developed a portal for visual rhetoric research and pedagogy called viz. Viz. offers a blog, assignment resources, essays, and a bibliography of sources related to rhetoric and visual culture. This a one-of-a-kind resource offers a wide array of visual rhetoric materials for both scholars and teachers.

This group has also developed a visual rhetoric slide presentation for use in writing classrooms. The Visual Rhetoric group hopes to expand this work to moving images, and is currently at work on a project to aid instructors in teaching film in rhetoric classrooms.

Web Development

The Web Development group is tasked with maintaining all of the CWRL websites, including instructor pages and the CWRL main website. This group also ensures that CWRL web resources are WCAG and Section 508 compliant. This group is currently at work creating a new design identity for the CWRL.