Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

"I Think There Is A Place For Small Programs:" Advocating, Implementing, And Sustaining Tpc Programs In Small Us Institutions, Martha Lynn Russell

English Theses & Dissertations

Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs in small institutions compose of over a third of all programs in the US, yet this space has been understudied by most scholars. To fill this gap, this dissertation presents findings from one-hour interviews with twenty-six TPC program directors in small US institutions with undergraduate populations of less than six thousand. The results of this dissertation include the ways that small institutions are advocating, implementing, and sustaining their TPC program in unique ways with implications for how any TPC programs regardless of size can learn from these findings.

Multisensory Virtual Reality Artists And Media Dimensions Toward Immersion: A Framework Of Mediology For Understanding Professional Communication Rhetorics, D’An Knowles Ball

English Theses & Dissertations

Multisensory elements are increasingly being added to virtual reality (VR) environments, allowing for higher levels of immersion for users as well as expanded creative media opportunities for multisensory VR artists. Recognizing multisensory VR as a networked ecology between the designer, the system, and the user, this dissertation addresses a distinct absence of resources on design principles and artistic professional practices specifically for composing multisensory VR environments. In investigating processes of invention, choices, tools, and methods on the parts of the artists, this dissertation fills scholarly gaps across disciplines that tend to focus on systems and tools or the user’s experiences …

Climate Change Games As Boundary Objects: Fostering Dialogic Communication Within Stakeholder Engagement, Megan L. Mckittrick

English Theses & Dissertations

Rising waters and the increasing devastation of flood events make coastal resilience a significant issue in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, particularly in the city of Norfolk. Enhancing resilience requires ongoing stakeholder engagement designed to invite dialogue while encouraging cross-jurisdictional collaboration and comprehensive problem-solving. Climate change games have been employed to support these endeavors. This dissertation provides a response to the following research questions: 1) What is the origin of the climate change game genre? 2) Why are key stakeholders in coastal resilience using climate change games? And 3) how do these games operate for these key stakeholders? To …

Rhetorical Agency In Algorithm-Centered Digital Activity: Methods For Tracing Agency In Online Research, Daniel L. Hocutt

English Theses & Dissertations

Contemporary scholars in rhetoric studies and technical communication have theorized rhetorical agency as engaging human and nonhuman actors in online spaces. One such space, where the work of scholarship, teaching, and technical communication practice intersect, is online research. In online research interfaces, scholars and students alike conduct research; scholars teach and students learn the online research process toward contributing knowledge; and technical communicators design and test meaningful user experiences in these interfaces.

However, the field offers few comprehensive methodologies for studying the emergence of rhetorical agency in online search environments, where the activities of technologies, humans, corporations, and environments coalesce. …

Adding Soul To The Message: Applying African American Jeremiad Rhetoric As Culturally Competent Health Communication Online, Wilbert Francisco Laveist

English Theses & Dissertations

This study examines whether online health communications targeting African Americans could be more effective by structuring the message in the format of African American jeremiad rhetoric, a culturally unique version of the American jeremiad literary form. Health disparities (also known as health inequality) persist among African Americans despite increased health knowledge, improved communication practices, and access to health facts online. The problem is systemic, and thus a predictable outcome that requires change in societal structures that produce and maintain inequality. Individual behavior changes to improve health is also necessary. Information alone does not change behavior. Altering environmental factors is also …

Rhetorics Of Functionally Applicative Game Design: Designing And Testing The Project Management Game Scrummage, Matthew Carson Beale

English Theses & Dissertations

In this project, I designed and tested Scrummage, a tabletop game to teach the scrum project management system to undergraduate students. The project grew from the gaps in both academic literature and pedagogical tools for project management and collaboration in the technical communication classroom. Although the field of technical communication places significance on project management, research shows that many employers find the project management skills and knowledge of recent graduates to be under-developed. Situated in the fields of game design, game studies, project management, and technical communication, this project asks how we as educators can improve the project management learning …

Reconceptualizing The Work Of A Content Provider For An Online Audience: A Case Study For How Pedagogical Strategies Can Provide Models Of Engagement For Producers Of Entertainment, Diane Cooke

English Theses & Dissertations

With the interconnectivity of the Internet, and the availability of affordable media compositional tools, the proliferation of online media continues to grow exponentially. However, each day is still comprised of a fixed 24 hours, with far fewer hours spent in active media consumption. Considering the global potential for content to be found (Moreville), discovered (Cormier) or spread (Jenkins), content providers are looking for ways to attract, cultivate and hopefully expand their audiences amid all this digital clutter. In the field of entertainment, this challenge is complicated when small content providers are not aligned with an online, curated network such as …

Eportfolios, Google Drive, And Cognitive Process Theory, Sarah Elizabeth Carl

English Theses & Dissertations

ePortfolios have gained popularity in higher education to document learning, assessing, and career showcasing. This thesis discusses how ePortfolios can be used in first-year writing classrooms to show writing processes using Google Drive, a non-ePortfolio platform and its connection to Linda Flower and John Hayes’ cognitive process theory. The thesis shows how a professor could use Google Drive as an ePortfolio platform through assignments.

Innovation Adoption And Diffusion In Synchronous Tutoring Owls: A Cross-Contextual Case Study Using Diffusion Of Innovations Theory, Cynthia Marie Pengilly

English Theses & Dissertations

Synchronous online tutoring shares many attributes with face-to-face tutoring such as real-time, document collaboration, and conversational cues provided by audio and video, yet writing center professionals know seemingly little about synchronous tutoring OWLs due to the lack of formal publications about synchronous online tutoring coupled with the prevailing paradigm that seeks to transfer face-to-face tutoring practices to online synchronous tutoring, which overshadows the innovation processes taking place in synchronous OWLs. The purpose of this study was to document emergent practices in the use of two different synchronous tutoring technologies and the processes by which those practices were adopted and implemented …

Communities In (Digital) Space: Creating Networks For Daily Living Through Pervasive Media, Jamie Lynn Henthorn

English Theses & Dissertations

Studies of online communities often focus either on communities that produce texts or the texts with which individuals engage. This dissertation examines online communities that practice in ongoing activities, in their leisure time, often with no end goal of producing any final text. Through interviews, surveys, and community forum analysis of running, gaming, and translation communities, this study finds that place and everyday habits factor heavily into the ways that sustained online communities structure their work. “Place” can have several meanings within this context, including the communities valuing specific locations or working with specific individuals because of where they live. …

Pedagogy At Play: Gamification And Gameful Design In The 21st-Century Writing Classroom, Danielle Roney Roach

English Theses & Dissertations

The language used to discuss play in current academic spaces tends to center around formal games (and computer games in particular in the 21st century classroom). Scholarly conversations tend to distort the actual practices that occur in classrooms and subsequently limit the scope of any investigation of the pedagogical function and outcomes of those practices. This project explores the use of play and games in the classrooms of nine composition instructors. From these stories, this project begins to map out a taxonomy in order to begin building toward a pedagogy of play for 21st century writing classrooms. Using a multiperspectival …

"Warning: This Is A Must Read": Participation And Disruption In Social Artifacts And Spaces, Angela M. Harrison Eng

English Theses & Dissertations

As I show in three separate case studies, content, technology, and participant relationships are key components in the design of social artifacts and spaces. One study highlights the invention and evolution of content across multiple spaces. The second shows content used as leverage for authority. The last case study examines the relationship between content and technological interfaces and how disruption may not always be successful.

All of these components make up what I refer to as disruption. Disruption describes participant acts that are executed to change existing power-based structures of information sharing. Using the insights gained from this research, I …

Microblogging As A Facilitator Of Online Community In Graduate Education, Vincent Anthony Rhodes

English Theses & Dissertations

Part-time and distance-learning students can experience a sense of isolation from their peers and the university. Concern about this isolation and resulting student attrition has increased in the midst of explosive growth in online course enrollments. One possible solution: building a stronger sense of community within the online graduate classroom using microblogging technology such as Twitter. Unfortunately, scholars across disciplines define community in different ways with some rejecting the concept altogether in favor of other theoretical constructs. And, few scholars have examined the notion of online classroom community from an English Studies perspective exploring the rhetorical exigencies that underpin this …

Refusing A Spoiled Identity: How The Swinger Community Represents On The Web, Barbara Kreston

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines whether and how Websites provide a way for the unique community of swingers, also called Lifestylers, to represent a new (and revise an old) deviant identity without risk to their social and employment standing. Unlike many marginalized social groups who publically rally, swingers have had to take advantage of virtual space to safely appeal to their audiences. The time period studied includes the history of the swingers "spoiled" identity via academy articles, newspaper headlines, and moral turpitude clauses from the 1950s to the current use of the Web to showcase swingers and their clubs. The study used …

The User Experience Of Participation: Tracing The Intersection Of Sociotechnical Design And Cultural Practice In Digital Ecosystems, David L. Jones

English Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I combine methods from Technical Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and User Experience Design to trace the social and creative practices of social web participants. Using actor network theory, I explore the concept of participation as social and creative practice that demands coordinative knowledge work enacted within a cultural space. Leveraging the insight gained from this research, I develop the user experience of participation as a research and design methodology that privileges the movement of people and information in order to structure and re-structure social connections.

I explore this methodology through three intersections between people and technology. …

The Effects Of Digital Technology On Basic Writing, Leslie Denise Norris

English Theses & Dissertations

At this study's research site—a small, Virginia community college—faculty, staff and students use digital technology to share information daily, which could cause a problem for some students: students may need digital literacy instruction before the college requires those courses. Another potential problem is that scholars (Stephens, Houser, and Cowan) indicate that some instructors across the academy treat students negatively if students do not demonstrate digital, rhetorical dexterity when communicating—particular digital skills that some students lack.

For this study, I surveyed basic writing (BW) instructors and students at the research site to learn more about their digital experiences. The surveys yielded …

Namaste: Pedagogical Methods For Designing Yoga & Art Experiences For/With Teen Participants, Tiffani Olivia Bryant

English Theses & Dissertations

Within this study, teens are asked to analyze yoga studio homepages in relation to their experiences with the practice of yoga. This dissertation research engages the teen girls as participants responsible for co-designing the learning constructs through which they make meaning out of their experiences. This research is rooted in informational design, experiential design, and design practices for a teen demographic through the artifact of yoga.

Participant observation is used to examine how eight teen girls understand yoga as a practice, internalize their experiences with yoga, and thusly communicate what they have learned about yoga and a sampling of digital …