Tag Archive for peer-reviewed

“Building a scholarly multimedia publishing infrastructure”

citation

Ball, Cheryl E. (2017). Building a scholarly multimedia publishing infrastructure. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 48(2), 99–115.

abstract

This article provides a preview of Vega, a new scholarly publishing platform in development (set to be released in late 2017). With twenty-plus years of experience publishing scholarly multimedia in the journal Kairos, the author summarizes editorial practices for multimedia content in terms of the scholarly, social, and technical infrastructures required to sustain digital media-rich publishing venues. Vega is an outgrowth of those practices that aims to provide a stable platform for training editors, publishers, and authors in how to create, edit, and maintain the scholarly record.

supplementary materials

“Dialogue and PhD Design Supervision”

citation

Morrison, Andrew; Vaughan, Laurene; & Mainsah, Henry; & Ball, Cheryl E. (2015). Dialogue and PhD design supervision. In Proceedings of LearnXDesign. The 3rd International conference for design education researchers. Chicago, IL.

abstract

A doctorate in design stretches experience, acuity and knowledge in design practice into analysis and long form expository writing in an academic oriented thesis. The PhD in design is a mix of theory and practice, with innovation in practice-based inquiry and acknowledgement of insights and articulations based on design work. Supervision of design PhDs is a largely unresearched domain of design studies, culture and pedagogy. Much may be gleaned from this supervision that has wider import for other domains of doctoral mentoring where praxis is significant. The paper addresses these thematics through the dialogical reflections of four doctoral design educators and supervisors from two settings, one in Australia and one in Norway, and education systems experience in four continents. We have coordinated and taught PhD programmes in design and supervised numerous students from different countries and language backgrounds. As learning by design and designing for learning, our paper takes the form of a themed reflection on our supervisory challenges, experiences and reflections in engaging in dialogues of socio-culturally framed pedagogy in doctoral design along with our own changing professional, teacherly and research practices. We suggest extending the arguments and reflections presented to additional educational and cultural contexts.

supplemental material

“History of a Broken Thing: The Multi-Journal Special Issue on Electronic Publication”

citation

Eyman, Douglas, & Ball, Cheryl E. (forthcoming/2015?). History of a broken thing: The multi-journal special issue on electronic publication. In Bruce McComisky (Ed.), Microhistories of composition (pp. forthcoming as Chapter 4). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

abstract

This chapter looks closely at the summer, multi-journal special issue on electronic publishing, simultaneously published across five online journals in rhetoric and composition: Kairos, Enculturation, CCC Online, Academic.Writing, and The Writing Instructor. It traces how the same issues (and problems) in electronic publishing that were key in 2002, when this issue was published, are still relevant (and still problematic) today. By revisiting the major themes present in that multi-journal special issue — such as archiving, technical infrastructure, and tenure and review — we demonstrate how some online journals have addressed these issues and others have not, primarily through the example that, in the nearly 15 years since that issue was published, only one of the five journals publishing in it have remained online and accessible. Being editors of that journal, we conclude the chapter by proposing some best practices for sustaining webtext publishing that may be useful for others editing, publishing, or starting their own journals.

supplemental materials

 

“Bad Ideas About Writing” – CFP

Call for Proposals: Bad Ideas About Writing

Editors: Drew M. Loewe, St. Edward’s University and Cheryl E. Ball, West Virginia University

Proposal Deadline: Sept 1, 2015

In the tradition of the provocative science- and social-science-focused book, This Idea Must Die,” the proposed collection intends to provide teachers, parents, and administrators with short, provocative, and thoroughly researched answers to the age-old question of Why Johnny Can’t Write. But rather than being a book of scapegoated ideas and strawman arguments, the authors of these essays — as scholars of rhetoric and composition — will discuss, in readable relatively jargon-free ways, why the centuries of writing instruction that undergird the “public”’s understanding of what is expected from writing instruction and how it should be taught is mostly WRONG, or at least misunderstood. The collection will provide a snapshot of major myths about writing instruction, with footnoted resources and/or annotated bibliographies for each entry, and each essay– rants, if you will — that will be followed by anti-rants or counter-arguments or decrees of agreement by other authors. We envision the collection as an agon of opinionated statements about writing instruction that will spark debate and rethinking of pieties and myths.

The primary audience of this collection is intended to be the news media, editors of national trade publications that feature regular columns on higher education and writing, teachers of writing and teachers who assign writing from K-16+, as well as concerned parents.

Possible Topics:

  • Acontextual Grammar Instruction
  • The Rhetorical Situation and Rhetorical Triangle
  • Anyone can Teach Writing
  • Teacher as Audience
  • The Research Paper
  • Plagiarism as Anti-Morality/ Plagiarism Detection Software
  • The Routinization of Process Pedagogy
  • Outlining Facilitates Invention
  • Five-paragraph Essays Are Great!
  • Text Messaging Harms Literacy
  • FYC as Inoculation
  • Games Ruin Kids’ Brains
  • Single-Document Assessments of Courses or Programs
  • Rubrics
  • Pop culture is killing high culture – as writing topics:
  • Writing is Contentless
  • WYSIWIGs
  • Emphasizing Revision is Always the Best Way to Teach Writing
  • Universal Requirement of FYC
  • Writing Should Only Be About Writing
  • AP/SAT as Placement Mechanisms
  • MLA is the Pinnacle of Citation Forms
  • Dual-Enrollment FYC
  • Standard Written English
  • Basic Writing is for Dummies and Foreigners
  • Writing Can Be Taught in One Semester/Year

This is not an exhaustive list, and we invite contributors to propose additional topics. In addition, we also invite contributors to push back against these ideas. We seek an agon, not an echo chamber.

The editors seek 300-word proposals for entries that will be 1,200-3,000 words (plus, or including the responses). Proposals can be for the main entries or, if authors have a particular anti-stance (e.g., if someone thinks the above topics are good models of teaching writing) for response entries. Editors welcome collaborative proposals where one author (or co-authors) write the main essay and response-authors write follow-ups. If collaborative proposals are not submitted, the editors will attempt to find response authors for each post. (Yes, like the This Idea Must Die book, we imagine each chapter to be a series of bloggishly-length arguments that are supported by research and experience). The deadline for proposals is September 1, 2015. Please email questions and proposals to: drewml@stedwards.edu and s2ceball@gmail.com. (Markdown formats preferred.) Queries via email or Twitter ( @drewloewe and @s2ceball) welcome.

 

supplementary materials

Vega: An Academic Publishing Platform

citation

Ball, Cheryl E., & Morrison, Andrew M. (co-PIs). (2015–17). Vega: An academic publishing platform [funding proposal]. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scientific Communication and Information Technology program. $1,000,000.

abstract

The primary deliverable for this project is the free, open source EditMe platform, intended for publishing digital and media-rich scholarship. This editorial-management system will be a “turn-key” publishing platform for print-like and scholarly multimedia journals, books, and data sets. The platform includes features that will help editors and publishers provide an accessible, secure, sustainable, flexible, open, free, and collaborative environment for authors and readers, and which will help them engage in building and reading multimedia-rich, peer-reviewed content. (Note: Vega is the final name for this program. It went through two prior names before we settled on this one.)

supplemental materials

“Multimodality as a Frame for Individual and Institutional Change”

citation
Arola, Kristin; Sheppard, Jennifer, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2014, Jan. 10). Multimodality as a frame for individual and institutional change. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/multimodality-frame-individual-institutional-change/

abstract
This article provides some historical, institutional, and theoretical context for a multimodal pedagogy, as taught by the three authors in three different universities, which forms the basis for their guidebook, Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects.

“Multimodal Revision Techniques in Webtexts”

Multimodal Revision techniques in webtexts

citation

Ball, Cheryl E. (2013). Multimodal revision techniques in webtexts. Classroom Discourse [special issue: Multimodality].

abstract

This article examines how an online, scholarly journal, Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy mentors authors to revise their webtexts (interactive, digital media scholarship) for publication. Using an editorial pedagogy, in which multimodal and rhetorical genre theories are merged with revision techniques found in process-based composition studies, the author describes how webtexts are collaboratively peer-reviewed in Kairos and authors are provided macro- and micro-level revision suggestions for their scholarly multimedia.

downloads

“Genre and transfer in a multimodal composition class”

citation
Ball, Cheryl E.; Fenn, Tyrell; & Scoffield Bowen, Tia. (2013). Genre and transfer in a multimodal composition class. In Carl Whithaus & Tracey Bowen (Eds.) Multimodal literacies and emerging genres in student compositions (pp. 15-36). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

abstract
This chapter is about a teacher’s progression through three iterations of a class (at two universities) in multimodal composition, with a focus on how two students brought previous multiliteracy practices into the classroom, how that knowledge shaped instruction, and how the instructor learned to not assign texts by modes in a multimodal class so as to avoid a-generic production of wowless, “five-paragraph” videos.


accompanying materials

status

  • Update 6/08: Collection received advanced contract from Utah State University Press.
  • Update 4/09: Utah State Univ Press downsized; asked to send mss elsewhere.
  • Update 10/09: Collection reviewed by Pittsburgh University Press; co-editors responding to reviews.
  • Update 11/28/09: Email notification by editors for new revision deadline of Feb. 1, 2010, to be reviewed again by Pittsburgh UP.
  • Update 2/2/11: Email notification of contract by U of Pittsburgh Press. Ours is the lead chapter in the book. We had no revisions.

Fulbright Award

I have received a Fulbright grant to research scholarly multimedia journals at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway during the 2013-14 academic year. My project has three facets:

  1. to implement the first scholarly multimedia journal outside of the U.S., at AHO,
  2. to draft a reference book on starting a scholarly multimedia journal, and
  3. to professionalize students and faculty in writing and editing scholarly multimedia.

The full project-statement, which outlines my research and teaching plans, timeline, and benefits to the US and Norwegian universities and cultures is appended. (For the full Teaching Materials outline, please contact me.)

"Assessing Scholarly Multimedia"

citation

Ball, Cheryl E. (2012) Assessing scholarly multimedia: A rhetorical genre studies approach. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21(1).

abstract

This article describes what scholarly multimedia (i.e., webtexts) are and how one teacher-editor has students compose these texts as part of an assignment sequence in her writing classes. The article shows how one set of assessment criteria for scholarly multimedia—based on the Institute for Multimedia Literacy’s parameters (see Kuhn, Johnson, & Lopez, 2010) for assessing honor students’ multimedia projects—are used to give formative feedback to students’ projects.

accompanying materials

award

  • CCCC Award for Best Article on Pedagogy or Curriculum in Technical or Scientific Communication in 2013