This webtext invites audiences to engage with Conference Creatures, an experiment in feminist new materialist praxis in which the authors create and distribute crochet creatures at academic conferences. Through photos, videos, and interactive elements, we demonstrate how Conference Creatures enacts non-extractive forms of networking that move our professional spaces toward relational praxes of belonging in academia, particularly for graduate students and junior scholars.

This piece juxtaposes two games created with generative AI: a commentary on the challenges of being an administrator handling competing demands regarding the use of generative AI, and a similar game structure centered on the digital humanities. Together, these two works offer a commentary on the conversations around generative AI in the humanities and a demonstration of the increasing value of these tools as part of multimodal composition.

Using the results of a qualitative research study, this webtext theorizes ways to resolve the quantum indeterminacy of online learning spaces in ways that serve social justice efforts. The webtext's design encourages readers to engage with content in varied, unpredictable ways, mirroring the ways that digital learning spaces are experienced in single-multiple ways.

W.E.B. Du Bois clearly understood that simply collecting data was not enough; rather, it needed to be presented in a way that was accessible and engaging for the everyday person. “Hello Black World” pushes Du Bois' model further by incorporating 3D visuals, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). This new exhibit allows viewers to easily compare the statistical 2D graphs of Du Bois' time with present information in 3D.

We provide a tour of the ecology of emerging digital tools and artifacts that increasingly mediate public engagement with science in the context of environmental decision making. As our examination of emerging technologies in this context illustrates, while not all technical communication is science communication, science communication is increasingly also productively viewed as technical communication.

This webtext juxtaposes six exercises in place-based writing, locative, media, and creative methods during a “BioBlitz” held at a nature reserve. Four frameworks inform the six educational interventions: “creative-critical electorate fieldwork,” Indigenous environmental justice, deep mapping and critical cartography, and analog/digital/post-digital writing. Readers can explore descriptions of all six workshops, authored by the facilitators. Together, the pieces that make up the “North Woods Project” show the array of paths that researchers and practitioners in arts, sciences, and technology can take when united by a single location and a shared theoretical framework.

The webtext presents a study on student attitudes toward public-facing science communication. Drawing upon a set of short 5-7 minute “bite-sized” interviews with 21 students at a STEM-focused institution, the researchers reveal the students’ thoughts about how to determine the accuracy of scientific media, the role it played in their educational journey, and their thoughts about the public’s ability to assess information.

We argue that the commonly used metrics for science communication video engagement, such as the number of views, reveal little about the longer-term impact on viewers. To explore this potential impact, the authors analyzed the comments of a video they created with Kurzgesagt, a professional science communication YouTube channel with 20 million subscribers. The video, “We lied to you…and we’ll do it again,” directly addresses the challenges of simplifying complex content for viewers. Such simplifications will never be able to capture a scientific topic’s nuances, so Kurzgesagt strives for transparency about each video’s limitations, with the goal of inspiring viewers to learn more.

This webtext shares the curriculum for a day camp workshop that invites pre-teen students to learn about and engage with sustainable design practices, and to share their observations and findings through discussions and multimodal webtexts. They also discuss the value of addressing sustainable practices from multiple age perspectives, and based on multiple sites—a pollinator garden, a bike repair shop, a thrift store, and more.

In this collection, we present the perspectives of seven different writing instructors from backgrounds ranging from comparative literature, creative writing, English, history, and writing studies. We all work in the UC Santa Barbara Writing Program, which has multiple upper-division courses and a Professional Writing Minor track in Science Communication. Here we share our different pedagogical reflections, as well as specific assignments, to illustrate a range of interdisciplinary lenses that can be brought to the classroom.

In their podcastEveryone's Writing with AI (Except Me!), McIntyre and Fernandes respond to the emergent conversation surrounding AI in rhetoric and writing studies. This webtext includes the podcast's first episode, an interview with Dr. Michael Black, and ends with the authors' thoughts about AI and writing studies.

Kennedy asks readers to consider the ways that syllabi allow and disallow students to partake in learning. They encourage instructors to reconsider how their syllabus statements can promote access rather than create barriers to learning.

Not everyone has the luxury of publishing only in Open Access journals likeKairos, but that doesn't mean that there are no legal and ethical ways to make sure scholarly work can be accessed outside of paywalled publications. We offer a guide for authors to share their academic work legally and ethically, regardless of where it was first published.

A digital text adventure, a topographical survey, a chorus of violence: perimortem [in (theoretical) rigor] is a creative-critical parser game that enacts Eelam Tamil diasporic-disabled repairing composition, extending Trammell's (2023) "repairing play": a Black phenomenology of play that begins with the idea that torture is play for people of color who share collective histories and ongoing experiences of racial and ethnic violence. Mapped using kolam geometry, perimortem is a parser game designed to simulate the pleasurable and painful affects of composition and challenge the Euro-Western moral and aesthetic aversion to tortured embodiment in scholarly writing by explicitly, interactively illustrating the presence of torture-and/as-play in academia.

Instructors have used Wikipedia to teach information literacy, composition, and as a supplement to the study of a specific topic. This webtext aims to lower the barriers-to-entry for using Wikipedia in advanced editing courses by providing an extensive overview and documentation through examples of the issues involved and a series of educational materials for both instructors and students.

Exploring the unspeakable and unthinkable language of academic crushes, scholarly kink, and cybersex(uality studies), we unpack our relationship as trans, neurodivergent queers and nascent scholars to each other and the critically queer, severely disabled digital spaces in which our relationship emerged.

Describing the incorporation, assessment, and revision of a multimodal project partnership between a first-year writing program and a studio library, this webtext argues for more in-depth partnerships between writing programs and libraries.

This webtext presents the final reflective episode of the podcast version ofBad Ideas about Writingreleased between July 2020 and May 2022. The audio and transcript share insights into the podcast's exigence, praise for Creative Commons licenses, specific production choices made, and brainstorming about audiobook versions of scholarly texts.