Projects

DWRL Project Groups

DWRL staffers lead projects that conduct ongoing research into questions of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. The goal of these projects is to integrate technology and the research interests of the project members. Leaders work closely with Assistant Directors, who provide support and help coordinate the efforts of all project members.

Current Projects

Visual Rhetoric Project

This project provides instructors the opportunity to join the DWRL's award-winning visual rhetoric research and publishing project, viz. This distinguished site ranks among the most widely-read of all publications produced at UT, and won the Kairos 2010 John Lovas Memorial Weblog Award. During the 2010 - 2011 academic year, the site averaged 11,000 - 12,000 unique visitors per month, more than triple its readership of three years ago, and the number of unique visitors continues to rise. Although it is often referred to as a blog, the project's scope is much broader than that. It contains a robust and growing body of texts on visual theory and semiotics, multimodal pedagogical materials designed for visual rhetoric instruction, and interviews with important figures in rhetoric and communications who focus on the interdisciplinary field of visual studies.

Over the last couple of years, viz. has expanded its repertoire to include collaborative research projects with organizations on and off campus. Recently, the team has worked with the Blanton Museum of Modern Art on the STEVE tagging project. Comprising an international consortium of art museums and galleries, the STEVE project is an initiative that endeavors to capture museum-goers reception of art through social media tagging. viz. contributed to this Mac Arthur-funded experiment to do a pilot research tagging analysis of Rhetoric and Writing undergraduates' experience of abstract art.

This year, we are delighted to announce a new partnership with the Harry Ransom Center (HRC). This exciting collaboration will give DWRL instructors the chance to engage with the HRC collections in their work for the Visual Rhetoric Project. The HRC is happy to give us access to artifacts for current and upcoming exhibitions, background materials on those exhibitions, and access to other HRC holdings. Members of the HRC team will consult with the .viz team on how to write about these artifacts upon request.

Digital Writing & Research Publications (DWRP) Group

This project provides the opportunity to gain experience publishing two different types of online journals, one graduate/faculty and one undergraduate. The DWRP group will collectively solicit and edit the spring 2012 issue of the lab's e-journal Currents in Electronic Literacy, as well as coordinate the review of submissions and official responses by the Journal for Undergraduate Media Projects (JUMP) editorial collective. In the case of both Currents and the JUMP, the group will assemble and publish issues using the Drupal content management system and ensure that these issues meet online accessibility standards.

Currents in Electronic Literacy is a respected journal indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and EBSCO (ISSN 1524-6493); ; it is internally peer reviewed by a cohort of graduate students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. Recent issues have featured original articles and interviews by leaders in the fields of literacy, literature, technology, and rhetoric including: Avital Ronell, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Geoffrey Sirc, Lawrence Lessig, Alan Liu and others. The 2012 issue of Currents will focus on memory and a variety of approaches to memory are invited.

The Journal for Undergraduate Media Projects was founded in 2009 as a showcase for undergraduate digital media and as a pedagogical resource for instructors in this growing field. Over the past two years, the JUMP's editorial collective of members has produced multiple issues from submissions received from all over the United States, and the site has garnered over a million hits. Rather than operate according to specific issue themes, the JUMP accepts rolling submissions and then compiles these multi-faceted submissions into an eclectic assemblage.

This research and publishing project offers members invaluable, hands-on experience in all facets of publishing multimodal academic journals, from distributing a call for papers (CFP) all the way through to publication and promotion. Members of this project group will have the chance to collaborate with scholars in the field of memory studies and to network with players in the fields of digital literacies and literatures.

Immersive Environments Group

The Immersive Environments group in the DWRL has historically explored the intersection of pedagogy, gaming, and virtual worlds. This year's group will focus on alternate reality gaming by expanding upon last year's work, conducting a case study, and publishing a collaborative "article."

In the 2010-11 academic year, the Immersive Environments group developed Battle Lines, an alternate reality game for teaching rhetoric, research, and digital literacy skills to undergraduates. Alternate reality games distribute a narrative across multiple media and environments, enticing players to solve puzzles by visiting websites, analyzing data, researching their environment, using library resources, and collaborating with other players. For its innovative pedagogical techniques in the service of rhetorical education, the group won the 2010-2011 John Slatin prize for Mastery of Electronic Media in Education.

However, our work with this project is far from over. We envision the Immersive Environments group for 2011-2012 as the second stage in this project. The 2010-11 group laid the groundwork, but members of the 2011-2012 group will have a chance to expand upon the project and form valuable partnerships in Austin and across the University of Texas's campus. The major aims of the 2011-2012 Immersive Environments group is to adjust the existing Battle Lines game for use in a RHE 312 class by altering clues to better fit the learning outcomes for this course. The group will then implement the game and perform a case study in a single RHE 312 class in the spring. Ultimately, the team will compile the data from the study for publication as a white paper, traditional article, or electronic publication.

Audio & Video Research Group

With more than 45 videos on our Vimeo page, three years of active research in the production of audio and video materials, and many audio/video collaborations, the DWRL is well poised to formalize its audio and video endeavors with the Audio & Video Research Group (AVRG). The group has four main tasks: researching online video tutorials; audio and video assistance; filming all lab events; collaborating with the UWC on the WRITE video series.

The AVG is researching and creating a prototype for an online tutorial series. The research includes interviewing target audiences about what kinds of video tutorials would be useful, researching extant video tutorials, creating and posting a sample video, and branding the series.

The AVRG is building on the lab's library of Speaker Series talks by recording all lab speakers and making the videos available through the lab's website and social networking sites. The group will also film and/or audio record all major lab events.

The DWRL and the UWC are collaborating on a writing process video series called, simply, "WRITE." The video series features writers talking about all the aspects of their writing process that don't fit in a paper handout. The video series begins with the assumption that writing is embodied and situated in places. Writers at all levels--from undergrads to professionals--talk about how they work, where they work, the applications and technologies they use, and the situations they find themselves in.