Atkins
45 articles-
Abstract
Organizations increasingly recognize web accessibility as both necessary and beneficial for legal, ethical, and economic reasons. This article shows how instructors can easily integrate accessible web design into an introductory web design and development course for business students who have limited experience with design theory and user interface design. By applying testable criteria, following industry-standard guidelines, and using online tools, these business students can successfully build websites that individuals with visual, hearing, cognitive, or motor-control disabilities can use. The authors present their approach, describe specific assignments, and provide suggestions for incorporating accessibility into a traditional introductory web development course.
-
Generative AI in first-year writing: An early analysis of affordances, limitations, and a framework for the future ↗
Abstract
Our First-year Writing program began intentional student engagements with generative AI in the fall of 2022. We developed assignments for brainstorming research questions, writing counterarguments, and editing assistance using the AI tools Elicit, Fermat, and Wordtune. Students felt that the tools were helpful for finding ideas to get started with writing, to find sources once they had started writing, and to get help with counterarguments and alternate word choices. But when given the choice to use the assistants or not, most declined. Generative AI at this stage is unreliable, and many students found the tradeoff in reviewing AI suggestions to be too time consuming. And many students expressed a preference for continuing to develop their own voices through writing. Our experience in engaging AI led to the creation of the DEER praxis, which emphasizes defined engagements with AI tools for specific purposes, and generous use of reflection.
-
Abstract
Although retrospective project reports are common in the materials development literature, accounts of textbook writing sessions are rare; so too are accounts of open textbook production. Open textbooks are learning resources that are free to use and oftentimes adapt by virtue of their copyright permissions. The authors used concurrent verbalization and interviews to document writing episodes while preparing their first book, an open textbook devised for corequisite technical writing courses. Corequisite designs pair content courses with explicit skill-building modules as a means to support underprepared learners in higher education in the United States. Qualitative content analysis of the data revealed how teaching and other praxis influenced the open textbook’s composition: in the authors’ applications of technical writing principles, pedagogical reasoning skills, and nonteaching work. The findings may encourage open textbook writers to exploit their established composing practices and knowledge bases to proceed with textbook production. In addition, the article highlights the usefulness of concurrent verbalization to textbook research and identifies the various materials development opportunities open textbook projects provide. It also contributes to the underresearched area of textbook production by exposing the complexities of open textbook development and how two novice authors negotiated them during writing episodes.
-
Abstract
Sequential rhetoric can serve as a framework to instruct UX practice (through user story maps) to new learners because it is both approachable and affordable. Sequential rhetoric consists of five main facets that incorporate planning elements (core visual writing and envisaging) and composing elements (interanimation, juxtaquencing, and gestalt closure), which this essay both defines and relates to convergent scholarship. We argue that sequential rhetoric transfers beyond the technical classroom and into the profession itself.
-
Abstract
Expertise research spanning a variety of domains has established the central role that deliberate practice plays in developing expertise. This type of practice demands time, internal motivation, effort, feedback, and determination to surpass existing levels of performance. To leverage the rigors of deliberate practice, the two expert textbook writers who participated in this study deployed the writing processes of reviewing, writing it down, and incubating while developing textbooks for English language teaching (ELT). Data collected mainly via concurrent verbalization—whereby the participants expressed their thoughts aloud while engaged in textbook writing—and pre- and post-concurrent verbalization interviews revealed that the participants called upon these processes in purposeful ways as metacognitive strategies used to maximize writing effectiveness, with metacognition operationalized here as the participants’ knowledge and recognition of how they thought and worked. This study provides insight into how textbooks are written in practice and thus has implications for the research field of materials development; the findings also point to practical strategies that might be utilized by those who write language learning materials.
-
Abstract
Expertise research spanning a variety of domains has established the central role that deliberate practice plays in developing expertise. This type of practice demands time, internal motivation, effort, feedback, and determination to surpass existing levels of performance. To leverage the rigors of deliberate practice, the two expert textbook writers who participated in this study deployed the writing processes of reviewing, writing it down, and incubating while developing textbooks for English language teaching (ELT). Data collected mainly via concurrent verbalization—whereby the participants expressed their thoughts aloud while engaged in textbook writing—and pre- and post-concurrent verbalization interviews revealed that the participants called upon these processes in purposeful ways as metacognitive strategies used to maximize writing effectiveness, with metacognition operationalized here as the participants’ knowledge and recognition of how they thought and worked. This study provides insight into how textbooks are written in practice and thus has implications for the research field of materials development; the findings also point to practical strategies that might be utilized by those who write language learning materials.
-
Abstract
Preparing students to understand and practice search engine optimization (SEO) teaches them writing skills, technological literacies, and theoretical background needed to pursue a successful technical communication career. SEO employs a multifaceted skillset, including an understanding of coding, skills in shaping and crafting effective user experience (UX), marketing skills, effective research strategies, and competence in accessibility. We argue that instruction in SEO in undergraduate and graduate programs in technical communication prepares graduates for the interdisciplinary and agile profession they seek to enter and enables them to be successful in positions from information architect to technical editor. Our article details how studying and enacting SEO helps students to develop proficiencies and knowledge central to technical communication pedagogies, including technological literacies, an understanding of the interconnections between human and non-human actors in digital spaces, and the ethical concerns central to work within those spaces. We then detail how SEO can be incorporated into technical communication curricula and share details of client-based projects that can facilitate that integration..
-
Abstract
In The Iconoclastic Imagination, Ned O’Gorman sets himself to a difficult task. He surveys over a half-century of political thought, political discourse, and political imagery in order to examine and evaluate the relationship between visual and political cultures. It is to O’Gorman’s credit as a thinker and as a writer that he does not sacrifice depth for breadth. Indeed, his book is an exemplary work of rhetorical criticism, for it advances not only our understanding of neoliberalism as a rhetorical production, but also, and perhaps more significantly, it advances our understanding of how to do visual rhetoric.As a rhetorical history, the book offers a unique perspective on neoliberalism. Tracing the ideology’s origins to postwar efforts to reimagine the role of the nation-state, O’Gorman establishes that neoliberalism is best understood in the context of broader efforts to redefine what constitutes the legitimate exercise of state power. This history adds nuance to previous accounts of neoliberalism, particularly in its account of neoliberalism’s attitude toward images, an attitude that O’Gorman astutely identifies as iconoclastic. As manifested in images of national catastrophe—the Kennedy assassination, the Challenger disaster, and the 9-11 attacks, among others—the iconoclastic attitude regards as impossible the existence of any image adequate to representing America’s political processes more generally. For his part, O’Gorman demonstrates the error of this attitude by using these same images to represent a particular political process and to make his case for iconic representation as “the means by which we grasp our political existence” (16). This insight into the relationship between political and visual representation frames a series of case studies in which O’Gorman unpacks the ideological valence of images without reproducing neoliberalism’s hostility to visual representation. When understood in the context of rhetorical studies, this is a significant accomplishment. As with any discipline influenced by the linguistic turn, we too often regard images as vectors of oppression and false consciousness and seek to reveal them as such. Bruno Latour characterizes this attitude as a subtle and pernicious form of iconoclasm that reduces the critical operation to the trick of uncovering the trick; by exposing the manipulator behind the image, big ideology, big media, big whatever or whoever, we undermine the truth value of an image (“Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 30, 2004, pp. 239–42). However, the ease of the operation precludes deeper insights into images. Specifically, iconoclastic criticism cannot account for the processes by which we come to view certain representations as legitimate. This shortcoming, in turn, makes it difficult to comprehend the role played by images in various fields of human endeavor including, but not limited to, the political.It will come as no surprise to the reader that Kenneth Burke touched on the limits of the iconoclastic attitude, though he didn’t discuss images, at least not explicitly. Rather, he concerned himself with how to confront human error without undermining the belief in human progress necessary to positive social action. He voiced this concern in Attitudes Toward History, where he enjoined critics to strive for a “maximum of forensic complexity” that strikes a balance between “hagiography and iconoclasm” (226, 107). If we extend this call to the task of visual rhetoric, then our goal, to appropriate a phrase from James Elkins, is to make rhetorical criticism “more difficult” (Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction, p. 63). O’Gorman does exactly this in The Iconoclastic Imagination.Take, for example, the chapter titled “Zapruder,” in which O’Gorman traces the circulation of the eponymous film to throw light on a productive paradox of iconic iconoclasm. With each appearance—first in Life magazine, later in a television special, still later in the movie JFK—the Zapruder film occasions new efforts to resolve the tension between our collective dependence on representation and our growing distrust of images. In this account, the Zapruder film is the repeated focus of a grand critical effort to uncover the truth behind the image by dismantling it. And in every instance, we see the critics come to a similar conclusion: the film cannot allay suspicions about the official version of events, and neither can it offer a stable alternative. Instead, the film can, and does, signify the inadequacy of images to the task of representation, which in turn supports neoliberalism’s ongoing rejection of images as adequate to representing economic and political processes. The Zapruder film thus becomes an icon of iconoclasm.Ironically, the processes of signification that make the Zapruder film an icon of iconoclasm also make the Zapruder film available to O’Gorman’s decidedly iconophilic critique. As conceived by Latour, iconophilia, like iconoclasm, reveals the human hands behind the creation of images. However, where iconoclasm reveals the work of human hands to expose the image as a vector of false consciousness, iconophilia does so to gain insight into the image as an epistemological resource. And as elaborated by Finnegan and Kang, Latour’s conception of iconophilia encourages a stance on political imagery that does not look for something behind or beyond the image, but instead focuses on the flow of images to account for their function as inventional resources (“‘Sighting’ the Public: Iconoclasm and Public Sphere Theory, QJS, vol. 90, 2004, pp. 395–396). This is precisely the stance taken by O’Gorman, and in taking it he models what Burke might call a healthy attitude toward images—an attitude that embraces representation as salutary for democratic politics while at the same time acknowledging the ways in which the processes of representation can, and are, used to advance the neoliberal rejection of the same.All that having been said, and as O’Gorman points out in the final pages of his book, this approach has its limits. What happens when neoliberalism’s catastrophes do not yield images? What happens when, as with the 2008 financial collapse, we have no image of failure? Does neoliberalism escape critique? O’Gorman worries that the answer is yes. However, I wonder if this pessimism owes to O’Gorman’s treatment of the icon as the sine qua non of political representation. Perhaps, if we look to a different species of sign, namely the index, we will find cause for optimism.In Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of signs, the index differs from the icon insofar as it signifies not primarily through resemblance, but instead though a causal connection to its referent (Philosophical Writings, 102–103). This is not to suggest that an index cannot resemble that to which it refers, but that it need not resemble it. For example, a fingerprint is an index, but so too is a weathercock; of these two, only the former resembles its referent. Nevertheless, in both cases the indexical reference is a representation amenable to interpretation and critique.O’Gorman suggests the representational possibilities of the index in his chapter on CNN’s coverage of the 9-11 attacks, in which he argues that CNN’s televisual coverage adopted the “style and logic” of the interface. In his analysis, CNN adopted a mode of representation that owed more to the referential logic of the computer interface than to the older, mimetic logic of photojournalism. This leads O’Gorman to posit the interface as a “new sort of icon,” one that does not represent limited or absent information, but instead organizes an abundance of incoming information into a coherent image of catastrophe (144–145). The interface as icon metaphor does important work, as it allows O’Gorman to uncover relationships between new technologies of representation and the neoliberal aesthetic. Nevertheless, it obscures the extent to which we can regard the interface as an index—a representation that reveals not through its resemblance to an event but through its referential connection to the same.With respect to the 2008 financial collapse, I propose we direct some of our theoretical and critical energies toward exploring the index as mode of representation. For although it might be true that the collapse did not yield an icon of iconoclasm, it did yield an abundance of indexes of catastrophe, signs linked to their objects by a causal connection. These indexes of catastrophe appeared in the form of “For Sale” signs, foreclosure notices, and half-finished housing developments. As critics, we can assemble these materials to create an image of catastrophe that will, in turn, serve as the basis for an iconophilic critique modeled after The Iconoclastic Imagination. It therefore seems to me that we need not worry about a lack of images, though we might need to make visual studies still more difficult. Fortunately, I think we’re up to the task.
-
Abstract
Abstract Less than a year after the bombing of Hiroshima, Congress passed the McMahon Bill for the domestic control of atomic energy, otherwise known as the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. In this article, I reconstruct the controversy surrounding the passage of this legislation, and specifically the effort by proponents of the McMahon Bill to focus the controversy on what role, if any, the military should have in decisions related to atomic policy. Throughout the controversy, proponents of the McMahon Bill evoked the threat of the garrison state to stress the dangers of a politically powerful military and presented the public with a choice between a slow-motion coup d’état led by experts in violence and a commission of experts appointed by the president. In so doing, they transformed what began as a controversy over how to control atomic energy in a manner consistent with the best traditions of representative democracy into a controversy over who was best qualified to manage atomic energy on the public’s behalf. This transformation allowed them to herald the passage of the McMahon Bill as a victory for democracy even as they acknowledged it as a historic break from tradition. The controversy over domestic control must be acknowledged as a key moment in the evolution of Cold War rhetoric—a rhetoric in which national security would trump issues of public participation and in which the public’s exclusion from the policy process could be taken for granted.
-
Clarifying the Relationship between L2 Writing and Translingual Writing: An Open Letter to Writing Studies Editors and Organization Leaders ↗
Abstract
A concerned group of L2 professionals write an open letter to express their concern that the terms “L2 writing” and “translingual writing” have become almost interchangeable in—writing studies publications and conferences and further argue that much will be lost if “translingual writing” replaces “L2 writing.” Each are distinct areas of research and—pedagogy: L2 writing is a more technical description applied to writing in a language acquired later in life, while translingual writing describes an orientation to language—difference. Without attention to the distinct contributions made by each field, L2 scholarship becomes marginalized in publications, conferences, and hiring practices. The letter—authors and endorsers encourage writing studies editors and organization leaders to recognize and understand the difference between the fields so as to ensure a strong and—enduring future for L2 scholarship.—
-
Abstract
Research Article| December 01 2012 Celluloid Circulation: The Dual Temporality of Nonfiction Film and Its Publics Nathan S. Atkinson Nathan S. Atkinson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (4): 675–684. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940630 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nathan S. Atkinson; Celluloid Circulation: The Dual Temporality of Nonfiction Film and Its Publics. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2012; 15 (4): 675–684. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940630 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
-
Abstract
We review Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's original formulation of presence as a technique of argument associated primarily with the selection of individual rhetorical elements, and the recent extension of the notion by Gross and Dearin, where presence is understood as a second-order effect that denotes the systematic expression and inhibition of patterns of rhetorical elements across an entire text or rhetorical artifact. We argue for an additional extension to this more global notion of presence, one that makes it not only global within a text or class of texts, but also comparative, allowing the analyst to make rigorous comparisons of expressed and inhibited rhetorical patterns across different texts, or different classes of texts, including different rhetorical genres. A return to the original conception of presence allows us to make this extension, and we illustrate global presence within this newly proposed comparative framework by analyzing two genres of self-presentation in classroom practice: the cover letter and the self-portrait. We show the close ties between global presence and genre as ways of theorizing deep similarities across texts.
-
Abstract
Preview this article: Poetry Slam, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/29/2/teachingenglishinthetwoyearcollege2000-1.gif
-
Abstract
Preview this article: The Mad Professor Lectures Out of Doors, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/24/1/teachingenglishinthetwo-yearcollege3810-1.gif
-
Abstract
Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol and Ritual in the Greco‐Roman Era by Donovan J. Ochs. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1993; xiv + 130pp. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students by Sharon Crowley. New York: Macmillan, 1994. 364 pages; glossary; time‐line of important moments in Greek and Roman rhetoric; bibliography; index. Landmark Essays on Kenneth Burke. Edited by Barry Brummett. Davis, CA: Hermagoras P, 1993; xix; 290 pp. Ramon Hull's New Rhetoric: Text and Translation of Llull's Rethorica Nova. Ed. and Trans. Mark D. Johnson. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1994; 1; 109. Thinking Through Theory: Vygotskian Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing by James Thomas Zebroski. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook P, 1994. 334 pages. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth‐Century England, by Steven Shapin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994. Pp. 483.
-
Abstract
Preview this article: Envisioning the Stranger's Heart, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/56/6/collegeenglish9206-1.gif
-
Abstract
Preview this article: How English Teachers See English Teaching, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/26/4/researchintheteachingofenglish15427-1.gif
-
Abstract
Preview this article: Poem: The Poet as Collegiate Wrestler, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/43/4/collegecompositionandcommunication8862-1.gif
-
Abstract
Preview this article: Poems, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/47/7/collegeenglish13249-1.gif
-
Abstract
Preview this article: Comment & Response, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/42/3/collegeenglish13858-1.gif
📍 University of Kansas -
Abstract
Preview this article: Dehellenizing Literary Criticism, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/41/7/collegeenglish13895-1.gif
-
Abstract
William Bleifuss, B. D. S., Royal A. Gettmann, Bernard Kreissman, J. E. M., Jr., Theodore Hornberger, Ross Garner, George T. Watkins, III, R. E. K., Fred H. Higginson, L. M. Myers, Joseph Mersand, John P. Cutts, Edward Ruhe, David V. Erdman, James Schroeter, Sam S. Baskett, Book Reviews, College English, Vol. 23, No. 5 (Feb., 1962), pp. 402-415
-
Abstract
Organicum, practical handbook of organic chemistry (1st English ed.) Edition. by P.A. Ongley (Editor), B.J. Hazzard (Translator). Be the first to review this item. news reporting and writing 11th edition practical english handbook 11th edition practical english handbook eleventh edition pdf john t practical english. A Cambridge English: Preliminary (PET) for Schools qualification shows that a student has mastered the basics of English and now has practical language skills.
-
Abstract
Sylvan Barnet, I. B. Cauthen, Jr., David Kaula, James G. Southworth, Joseph H. Summers, William B. Coley, William Gillis, Martin Steinmann, Jr., John C. Thirlwall, Leon O. Barron, Henry W. Wells, Philip Young, Arthur Fenner, Jr., George T. Watkins III, Daniel Bernd, Walter F. Wright, Lucille S. Cobb, Paul R. Stewart, Books, College English, Vol. 22, No. 6 (Mar., 1961), pp. 434-447