Room 42

In this episode of Room 42 we discuss Audio Description. Audio Description is the remediation of visual media, such as photographs, into audible media, primarily for the benefit of people who are blind or have low vision. 

Dr. Brett Oppegaard, Ph.D., University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, researches digital media at intersections of technical communication, disability studies, mobile technologies, digital inequalities, and journalism. He teaches about news literacy, multimedia production, media accessibility, and media entrepreneurship, including within his two primary areas of scholarly expertise: Locative Media, or place-connected media, and Audio Description, which is the remediation of visual media into audible media for people who are blind or have low-vision. He worked for more than a decade as a staff newspaper writer, including as an arts critic, in the Portland, OR, area. He also has worked with a variety of publications since then, primarily as a freelance writer. He has been the Undergraduate Chair of UH’s Journalism Program since Fall 2019. His research has been supported by the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, and Google, among others.

Research about this topic is complex and interdisciplinary, opening many fertile paths of inquiry, from multiple perspectives. Those include research related to compositional strategies, description genres, mediums, media technologies, reception studies, social inclusion, health benefits, etc.

As a part of this research, Dr. Oppegaard hosts Descriptathons, which are hackathon-like events, bringing people together to learn about Audio Description basics, practice Audio Description, create audio-described public products, such as audio-described brochures, and simultaneously creating research data about Audio Description processes and products that can be analyzed and reported upon.

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-audio-description-improves-accessibility-for-visual-media/

Dr. Lucía Dura is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies in the English Department and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She is a border resident with bordered identities and perspectives who enjoys working on collaborative, interdisciplinary projects. Lucía teaches and mentors students in rhetoric and technical writing projects. Her work on positive deviance, intercultural communication, and participatory methodologies foregrounds and leverages the assets of vulnerable populations to solve complex problems. She collaborates on risk communication and change facilitation initiatives with local, national, and international organizations. Her research has yielded numerous publications, presentations, and awards. Lucía co-chairs the Hispanic Servingness Working Group at UTEP and contributes to leadership initiatives. She also represents UTEP at the Graduate Education Advisory Committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and is an advisory board member and chair-elect of the Texas Center for Legal Ethics. 

In this session, we explore the applications and dimensions of positive deviance, an approach to social and organizational change. Positive deviance asks questions about outliers and exceptions. It prompts us, through asset-based inquiry, to search for solutions that already exist in our communities and systems, but that we tend to overlook. Lucía shares some examples of positive deviance research and practice in the fields of federal probation, education, and healthcare. She also talks about the ways using a positive deviance lens has impacted her daily life both at work and at home as a resident of the largest border metroplex in the world. 

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-asset-based-inquiry-methods-can-reveal-solutions/

In this episode of Room 42 we discuss Dr. Li's book, the journey that led her to create it, and the lessons learned while expanding foundational knowledge for new and transitioning technical communicators around the world.

 Xiaoli Li is an Associate Professor of Professional and Technical Writing at University of Dayton, Ohio. She teaches technical writing, business writing, writing for the Web, usability and UX. During the winter intersessions of 2019 and 2020, she took students in her professional and technical writing in global contexts class to China and visited three universities and 10 companies. They met with over 50 technical writers and conversed with 30 Chinese college students. She coordinated and conducted three technical writing teaching workshops in Xi’an and Suzhou in the summers of 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Xiaoli received an MA in Scientific & Technical Communication from Bowling Green State University and a Ph D in Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design from Clemson University. Her research interests include technical communication in global contexts, technical writing pedagogy and program development, and collaboration between academia and industry. She regularly presents at professional and technical writing conferences. Currently she is on sabbatical leave. She works with China Technical Communication Alliance to promote the proposed technical writing certification program. 

Xiaoli has delivered the first Technical Communications textbook for Chinese techcomm students, written by Chinese writers, in English. This textbook is the first to cover structured authoring for students, trying to help students get closer to current practices. And, in a world where most content is written in English then translated to other languages, it's the first of its kind and it's helping to grow a community of technical writers in China. 

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-technical-writing-builds-global-bridges

In this episode of Room 42 we look into the story behind the forthcoming edited collection Composition and Big Data co-edited by Amanda Licastro and Ben Miller.

Dr. Amanda Licastro has a doctorate in English and recently moved from her position as an Assistant Professor to take on a role as the Emerging and Digital Literacy Designer at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the intersection of technology and writing, including book history, dystopian literature, and digital humanities, with a focus on multimodal composition and Extended Reality. Amanda serves as the Director of Pedagogical Initiatives of the Book Traces project and is co-founder of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy and the Writing Studies Tree. Publications include articles in Kairos, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Communication Design Quarterly, as well as chapters in Digital Reading and Writing in Composition Studies, and Critical Digital Pedagogy.

The editors took a unique approach to peer review: they engaged the contributing authors in a radical approach to collaboration and cooperation that crossed boundaries, knocked down barriers, and yielded astounding results. Learn how big data is shaping our scholarship, what we need to do now to prepare, and how a collaborative collection of authors can highlight the ethical and practical considerations of applying data analytics to the field of Composition and Rhetoric.

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/bringing-transparency-to-big-data-composition-and-peer-review/

In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how to create slides for technical presentations that support you and add value to your message. She is an expert in guiding STEM students in crafting better presentations and adopting habits that help them maximize the value of their slides.

Dr Traci Nathans-Kelly, is currently the Associate Director for the Engineering Communications Program at Cornell University, College of Engineering. Traci has taught technical, business, engineering, and scientific communication courses since 1989.  She co-authored IEEE’s “English for Technical Professionals” online course, and she serves on the IEEE Educational Activities Board, the IEEE Continuing Education Committee, and the Editorial Board for IEEE’s Teaching Excellence Hub. Based on her extensive work in the field of presentation design, she co-authored the book, Slide Rules: Design, Build, and Archive Presentations in the Engineering and Technical Fields with Christine Nicometo, published by IEEE-Wiley. Her most recent online certificate for practicing professionals is "Technical Presentations," offered through eCornell. 

There are better and worse ways to calculate the multiple uses that any slide deck may have for a single project. We will discuss how to optimize the design of slides to 1) best support speakers in their live talks, and 2) create slide files that have lasting documentation, archival, or legacy value. Current default slide templates perpetuate the worst practices possible for content developers, audiences, and users alike.

Imagine creating slides that not only support speakers in their live talks but have lasting archival value as well. Learn how to put a good presentation together rather than simply creating low value cue cards.

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/r42-dont-be-sidelined-by-your-slides/

In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how applying some attributes of design thinking like "empathy" and "radical collaboration" can make us all better technical communicators.

Native to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Dr. Jason Tham is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Prior to working in Texas, Jason lived in Minnesota for 10 years while completing his degrees. Now, Jason teaches user experience research, information design, and digital rhetoric while doing research in technical communication practices, pedagogy, and technology. He is especially interested in how “design thinking” can help bring about meaningful disruptions to the modern workplace and higher education. In his most recent book, Design Thinking in Technical Communication, Jason unpacks the relationship between design-centric methods for strategic problem solving, collaboration, teaching and learning, and socially responsive innovation. With Joe Moses of the University of Minnesota, he co-authored the Collaborative Writing Playbook (link to come), which provides a flexible framework for instructors who assign team based projects using design thinking attributes. 

Dr. Tham will share some of his research and conclusions from his newly published book, which has become essential reading for instructors, students, and practitioners who want to apply principles of usability and user-centered design to their technical communication processes and deliverables.

In his book, he argues that design thinking should be a core methodology and mindset for technical communicators. Thinking like a designer means taking a “radical collaborative” approach––an attribute of design thinking––in college education, research training, and professional development. We'll start at the beginning with a definition of design tnd places where it is currently in use in the workplace and in training circles.

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/design-thinking-for-writing-professionals/

In this episode, we discuss the way emerging technologies are transforming work within the fire and emergency services industry, including insights from an ongoing project funded by the NSF to develop a wearable physiological monitor to improve firefighter safety outcomes. 

Dr. Tim Amidon is an Associate Professor of Digital Rhetoric at Colorado State University and holds appointments within the English Department and the Colorado School of Public Health. His research surrounds the interrelationships of technology, agency, and workplace literacy with focused interests in rhetorics of data, risk communication, intellectual property, and occupational safety and health. His scholarship has appeared in venues such as Communication Design Quarterly, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Hybrid Pedagogy, as well as within proceedings of the International Conference on Design, Usability, and Usability (DUXU) and the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC). In addition, Tim has served as a firefighter/EMT, technical rescuer, fire instructor, and/or fire officer in fire and emergency service organizations for over 20 years. 

Practitioners, designers, and researchers can leverage UX and TPC research to cultivate coalitions for the design and integration of more accessible, equitable, inclusive, and just technologies.

What does the sophisticated array of digital technologies—from remote sensors and wearables to drones and data analytics platforms—taken up across industries mean for the future of work? How might these technologies displace the existing tools, practices, and literacies workers coordinate in order to construct knowledge and communicate within various industries? How might these technologies reveal affinities toward and limitations in blue- and white-collar conceptions of work?

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/digital-technology-the-future-of-work/  

In this episode of Room 42, we travel the intersection of environmental humanities and digital humanities to discover how technical communicators can be a bridge between divergent perspectives. How we might be able to fill in thick, complex, convoluted scenarios—scenarios like energy development in rural areas, where landowners and energy companies often fail to see eye-to-eye?

Erin Brock Carlson is an Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University, where she teaches Professional Writing and Editing courses, including multimedia writing, technical writing, and writing theory and practice. She earned her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University, an MA in English from Miami University, and a BA in English and Writing, Rhetoric, and Communication from Transylvania University. Her work rests at the intersections of environmental humanities and digital humanities, focusing on the ways that place, technology, and community are wrapped up in one another. Driven by a commitment to investigate the ways that communities can unexpectedly leverage their resources to address wicked problems, her work often utilizes participatory research methods, including photovoice and participatory mapping.

She is currently focused on how communities in rural Appalachia are grappling with major economic and environmental changes by leaning into place (with all of its physical, social, and cultural trappings) as a strength for community-building. By treating place as a strength, rather than a weakness, we can re-frame conversations that often trail into stereotypes and generalizations, further reifying problems. In her collaborative project focused on pipeline development in West Virginia, she conducted over 30 interviews with rural residents directly affected by pipeline development on their land, finding that pipeline development is a fraught and often stressful experience, riddled with complex processes and protocols.

Lived experiences are often excluded from the larger conversations about issues like energy development and the residents they are supposed to serve. These conversations are often couched in only environmental or economic discourse. This is where the unique skills of technical and professional communicators can create clear and consistent communication between multiple stakeholders and open up a unique opportunity for technical communicators to do community-engaged, meaningful work.

For transcript, links, and show notes:   https://tccamp.org/episodes/documenting-experience-west-virginians-affected-by-natural-gas-pipeline/

In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the Disability, Data, and Surveillance Project, a joint project of researchers at Syracuse University and Loyola University Chicago, and the results of our ongoing study of algorithmic data collection in compulsory medical wearables. 

Krista Kennedy is fascinated by the ways that humans work closely with technologies and the rhetorical implications of policies and laws that shape that work. Her experience as a deaf academic informs her current project, which examines intersections of deafness, artificial intelligence, passing, and ethics of medical data collection. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Writing & Rhetoric at Syracuse University, PI of the Disability, Data, and Surveillance Project, affiliated with SU’s Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, and, for the 2020-21 year, NEH Visiting Professor of Writing & Rhetoric at Colgate University. She teaches courses on information design, cultural history of robotics, rhetorics of technology, and professional and technical writing.

Noah Wilson is curious about the ways technologies shape our rhetorical actions, particularly how we make connections with other people. He is currently a PhD candidate in Syracuse University’s Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program and a Visiting Instructor of Writing & Rhetoric at Colgate University where he teaches first year writing, rhetorical history and theory, and surveillance rhetorics. His dissertation addresses recent trends in social media content recommendation algorithms that have led to increased political polarization in the United States and the proliferation of radicalizing conspiracy theories such as Qanon and Pizzagate.

Device manufacturers and other high-tech companies increasingly incorporate algorithmic data surveillance in next-gen medical wearables. These devices, including smart hearing aids, leverage patient data created through human-computer interaction to not only power devices but also increase corporate profit. 

Although US and EU data protection laws establish privacy requirements for personal information and use, these companies continue to legally rely on patients’ personal information with little notice or education, significantly curtailing the agency of wearers. Join us to learn more about the complexities of algorithmic ecologies in medical wearables and navigating data surveillance disclosure in patient education materials.

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/collisions-in-patient-education-surveillance-medical-devices-and-communication/