Digital Commons Network^™

Universities As Open Knowledge Institutions: Sharing Vital Research, Katie Wilson, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Richard Hosking, Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Rebecca N. Handcock, Alkim Ozaygen, Aniek Roelofs

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Universities are key creators of knowledge. Ensuring that research outputs are not inaccessible behind paywalls, and that research data can be interrogated and built upon is central to efforts to improve the effectiveness of global research landscapes. Mandating and promoting open science and open access (OA) for published research outputs and sharing research data are important elements of building a vibrant open knowledge system, but there are additional benefits. Supporting diversity within knowledge-making institutions; enabling collaboration between universities and communities; addressing inequalities in access to knowledge resources and opportunities for contributing to knowledge making are also important. New tools are …

Re-Imagine The Spaces At Research Libraries During The Most Challenging Times, Shali Zhang

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Research libraries in U.S. have continued looking for new ways to use library spaces to support the needs of learning, teaching, and research, with rapidly changing information technologies and high expectations for dynamic learning environment. Students and faculty look for research libraries to enable their collaboration, innovation, and explorations. The enhanced library space often features contemporary architectural and aesthetical design, at convenient locations, with concept of facilitating formal and informal learning, easy access to collections, technologies, supporting services, and flexible furniture arrangements to support a variety of learning activities. Since early spring 2020, library personnel at Auburn University in the …

Fostering Innovation In The Library's Experiential Studio, C. Jeffrey Belliston

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The paper focuses on the Harold B. Lee Library’s Experiential Studio, which is an interdisciplinary design space where students, faculty, and librarians from multiple colleges and departments can work together on solving compelling social problems. Many courses taught in the studio have employed design thinking processes to foster innovation and the studio itself is a product of design thinking with the most recent iteration having opened in January 2020. Some courses taught in the space since its inception in 2014 have been community collaborations—some local, some national, and some international. A local collaboration included working with the Lee Library to …

The Materials Curation Inventory Toolkit: Interview Worksheet, Megan Sapp-Nelson, Jake Carlson, D. S. Brandt, Christie Sahley, Donna L. Ferullo, Linda J. Mason, Hanzi Xie

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This worksheet is designed to elicit the information necessary to develop an inventory of materials produced by a particular research project and targeted for curation. This worksheet is meant to be filled out as a part of the interview.

What Can Asian Eyelids Teach Us About User Experience Design? A Culturally Reflexive Framework For Ux/I Design, Jennifer Sano-Franchini

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

The proliferation of web applications in recent years has brought about conversations among technology designers about user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design’s role in propagating and reaffirming cultural bias, and in facilitating race-based discrimination. At times, such conversations have demonstrated how taking stock of racialized and cultural bias during the design process can challenge widely held design assumptions. For example, in 2015, Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social network, was reported to have facilitated racial profiling when users began posting to the application’s Crime and Safety section reports of “suspicious” persons on the basis of racialized appearance, as opposed to …

Testing In Translation: Conducting Usability Studies With Transnational Users, Emma J. Rose, Robert Racadio

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

What do we mean by usability in everyday life? For us, everyday life implies the series of choices and decisions that happen each day as people are trying to get things done. These things are often taken for granted, they might seem mundane, they may be overlooked. Usability inhabits everyday life in the documents used by a Vietnamese mother of two young children, having recently moved to the United States, and navigating the healthcare system in a new country for the first time. Usability shows up again as a Chinese couple considers whether or not to move out of their …

Designing For Everyday Life In Global Contexts, Guiseppe Getto, Huatong Sun

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

This special issue is a situated response in this discourse context, to investigate research issues surrounding the mundaneness and messiness of “Designing for Everyday Life in Global Contexts.” For the past two decades, a steadily growing body of work on the intersections of intercultural communication and information design has been developing within the field of Technical and Professional Communication (e.g., Kostelnick,1995; Chu, 1999; Fukuoka, 1999; Honold, 1999; Thatcher, 1999; Zahed, Van Pelt, & Song, 2001; St. Amant, 2002, 2005; Sun, 2006, 2012; Agboka, 2013; Breuch, 2015; Gustav, 2015; St. Amant & Rice, 2015; Maher & Getto, 2016; Sun & Getto, …

Digitally Mapping The Buddhist Holy Land: Intercultural Communication, Religious History, And Networked Rhetoric, Derek F. Maher, Guiseppe Getto

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Intercultural communication presents an array of well-known and much-discussed challenges, including the difficulties of engaging in productive dialogues regarding cultural assumptions, the problems of translation, tensions between macro-level value systems and the uniqueness of individual cultures, and challenges to developing communication technologies that are culturally appropriate (Kostelnick, 1995; Maylath, 1997; Thatcher, 2006; Sun, 2012). When addressing the diverse dimensions of religious culture, there is the added obstacle that understanding another’s religion can sometimes become entwined with how people feel about their own deeply held religious values and assumptions (Jackson, 2004). Special obstacles to understanding can arise in relation to religion …

Religion And The Professional Ethos: The Ymca, Dale Carnegie, And The “Business Man”, Lance Cummings

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Despite predictions of religion’s demise in the first decade of this century (Krattenmaker 2010; Meacham 2009), religion and spirituality have come front and center in many public arenas like pop culture, health and well-being, and politics. Whether it be the power of the religious right and left in politics, anxiety over Islamic terrorism, or simply the use of meditation within large corporations, religious issues play an important role in how we view and participate in secular society. This is no less true in the world of business and professional communication. Considering the role religion has played in rhetorical thought and …

Intercultural Connectivism And Personal Learning Networks In Course Redesign, Joseph Moses, Ann Hill Duin

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

As the call for proposals to this special issue states, “the need to share our pedagogical knowledge is paramount.” We agree that “the assumptions underlying much of contemporary communication pedagogy are oversimplified and fraught with groundless stereotypes” and that pedagogical change amid the increasingly globalized and networked classroom has been too slow. Participants need multiple means to understand and increase their capacity for working interculturally and in global virtual teams. One such means is through the pedagogical deployment of personal learning networks.

Globalizing The Local In The Silkair Mi 185 Crash Investigation, Kyle Mattson

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

While effective definitions of culture and broader theories of intercultural complexity can help frame the work of professional communicators on worksites and projects of international importance, these definitions and theories may not fully prepare practitioners for complex motives at play in the development of some transnationally momentous documents. Moreover, even though professional communicators may benefit from working definitions of national and communal cultures, such knowledge and articulations are not enough when transnationally disparate jurisdictions intersect decision-making. These administrative assemblages (see A. Ong, 2005, 2006, 2008) function as hierarchies that complicate intercultural work in ways professional communicators have not fully considered. …

Cultural Polysemy: Exploring Cultural Codes Through Digital And Non-Digital Practices, Anirban Ray

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Culture is a coherent entity we use for describing our cooperative interests with others in political, social, and historical contexts. Culture is functional in that it is defined through individual and collective articulations in time and space. Its representations occur through macro categories of nations, race, habits, practices, and values as embodied in the following models: contexting (Hall, 1976); value orientation (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961); cultural dimension (Hofstede, 1996); Seven-Dimensions of culture (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1997); Seven Value Types (Schwartz, 1999). Culture also gets defined in terms of its situatedness based on specificity of contexts and practices: social constructionist approach …

Operationalizing Culture With Design Cards In Cross-Cultural Design: Translating Critical Knowledge Into Provocative Insights, Huatong Sun

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Operationalizing culture is “one of the most fundamental issues cross-cultural researchers face” (Matsumoto & Jones, 2009, p. 324), as stated in The Handbook of Social Research Ethics. Inconsiderate research design could “ignore the large degree of individual differences that exist in human behavior” (p. 325) and eventually “vindicate” cultural stereotypes the researchers mean to avoid.

In the field of cross-cultural design, a big challenge is how to inform and guide the design process with a sophisticated understanding of culture. This design challenge is a contextualized problem of operationalizing culture in practice. Insensitive design recommendations could end up strengthening the cultural …

Intercultural Connectivism: Introducing Personal Learning Networks, Ann Hill Duin, Joseph Moses

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Global connectivity makes intercultural communication an increasingly common experience. Providing students with insight and practice in intercultural communication is increasingly imperative. As Thatcher (2010) stated in the inaugural issue of this journal:

"We have a large task ahead of us: to develop and operationalize models of intercultural rhetoric and professional communication in the context of globalization (p. 14)... We need to especially pay attention to how new communication and information technologies require different etic frames for common human thresholds of interaction… How do we assess communicative purpose and media selection in global contexts? How do we plan for audience-author relations, …

Translocal Pragmatics: Operationalizing Postnational Heuristics To Locate Salient Cultural Overlap, Massimo Verzella, Andrew Mara

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

The importance of creating projects that allow students enrolled in American universities to collaborate with students enrolled in foreign institutions cannot be overemphasized. However, for these projects to be effective in terms of learning outcomes, it is important that instructors identify the factors that either prevent or prompt fruitful collaboration across cultural boundaries. The power of cultural boundaries demands that research on intercultural communication conceptualize and measure cultural difference. Additionally, research on intercultural communication has been irrevocably altered by the pace of communication technology change that allows for rapid and rich cross-cultural communication across great distances. An understanding of culture …

Editor's Introduction, Guiseppe Getto

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Researchers and practitioners of technical and professional communication deal with culture on a daily basis. We are members of an increasingly complex communication infrastructure that is global in scope and that is fueled by the proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) within all aspects of our lives. We are citizens of nations around the world that contain their own laws, rules, and customs. We are members of professional fields and academic disciplines that carry with them particular conceptions of knowledge-making, power, and competency. We are also members of organizations, institutions, and communities that we must navigate on a daily …

Multilingual Writers In The Mexican Sociocultural Context: Towards Improved Pedagogical Practices In The U.S., Virginia Locastro

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Currently, the education of Latina/o students in the United States for higher education and future careers comprises multiple moving parts. As the U.S. educational system, in particular the Pre-K-12 years of schooling, struggles despite efforts to address the needs of all students, both native English speakers as well as English language learners (ELLs), to better prepare them to enter institutions of tertiary education and succeed in careers, various organizations and consortiums articulate more rigorous educational standards (WIDA and the Common Core Standards as two examples). These recent proposals focus on academic literacy skills, in particular on reading and writing skills …

Writing And Rhetoric Along The U.S.-Mexico Border, Barry Thatcher, Kelly Medina-López, Omar Montoya

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Recently, our field has seen a strong surge in the interest in writing across borders, multilingual and ESL writing, and globalization and rhetoric (see, for example, the 2010 Penn State Conference on Border Rhetorics; 2014 Border Rhetorics, Rhetoric Society of America). This surge parallels, in many ways, the growing enrollment of international student populations and second-language writers in U.S. writing programs, which is widely documented (Roberge, Siegal, & Harlau, 2009; Matsuda, 2009). Given this development, it would seem appropriate or even natural that writing programs would be developing curriculum to meet the needs of these multilingual students. In fact, that …

Non-Convergent Literacy Practices And Dominican Students In The U.S., Andrea Parmegiani, Sharon Utakis

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

This paper presents a literature review to articulate a pedagogical rationale for integrating English writing instruction with writing instruction in Spanish as a strategy for improving success rates among Spanish speaking ESL students (SS-ESL) at Hispanic serving institutions such as Bronx Community College (BCC), where we both teach ESL. This rationale underpinned the creation of a new learning community cluster that was piloted at BCC in Fall 2013. The cluster included an advanced ESL class, a Spanish composition class, and a Freshmen Year Seminar (FYS). Success indicators for the students enrolled in this cluster were very promising.

Methodological Journey: Lessons Learned From A Student-Led Intercultural Pilot Study, Ryan James Price, Rebecca Walton, Matthew Petersen

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

New technical communication scholars face the challenge of developing cultural competence in order to effectively and appropriately carry out intercultural research. With interculturally competent technical communicators in increasingly high demand, instructors wrestle with the challenge of preparing students for cross-cultural work environments (Melton, 2011; Smith & Mikelonis, 2011; St.Amant, 2011). The field has adopted a wide variety of globalization-driven, culture-conscious educational practices over the past few decades, but a knowledge gap still persists regarding how to equip new scholars with training and tools that are necessary for building cultural competence, particularly as it relates to designing and conducting research. In …

Digital Ethnography For Intercultural Professional Communication: Some Best Practice Principles, Michael Madson

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

With global compressions of time and space, intercultural contact is heightening. Digital networks are converging. Perhaps more than ever before, professional communicators require cultural and technical savvy, allowing them to navigate, in a principled manner, digitally-mediated contexts (Spilka, 2010). Since no mediation is value neutral, digital technologies can spark intercultural friction (Thatcher, 2004; Warshauer, 2003, p. 6), blur ethical codes (Capurro, 2008; Himma, 2008), and perpetuate colonial relations (Ess & Sudweeks, 2012, p. xvi). How to operate in such complex, power-laden environments is a central concern in intercultural professional communication (IPC) and merits additional inquiry.

Designing For Engagement: Intercultural Communication And/As Participatory Design, Guiseppe Getto

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Within rhetoric and professional communication, intercultural research has most often focused on such elements of communication situations as languages, issues regarding translation, and adaptation to culturally situated value systems of interlocutors (Maylath, 1997; St.Amant, 1999; Thatcher, 2010; Wang, 2010). Technological infrastructure for intercultural situations, however, is largely conceived of as a material base upon which communication runs. If we consider an infrastructure as a dynamic meeting of communicators, modes of communication, and technologies, however, it is unclear how we might apply existing intercultural research methods and findings to the design of such communication systems. As a heuristic for moving toward …

Editor’S Introduction To The Special Edition On Methodology, Rebecca Walton

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Intercultural professional communication (IPC) is a burgeoning research area. New venues have been created to publish work in IPC, including this journal, Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization, in 2010 and connexions international professional communication journal in 2013. More broadly scoped venues in technical and professional communication also recognize the importance of intercultural work. See, for example, Ding and Savage’s special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly on new directions in intercultural professional communication (2013) and the topics of interest for the ATTW Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication, topics which include the globalization of technical and professional communication, intercultural communication, …

Rhetorically Navigating Rwandan Research Review: A Fantasy Theme Analysis, Rebecca Walton, Ryan Price, Maggie Zraly

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Research ethics review is foundational to protecting the rights of research participants, particularly vulnerable populations (e.g., members of socially/economically marginalized groups, people who do not speak the dominant language, illiterate/semi-literate people, pregnant women, prisoners). Internationally, the review of human subjects research is influenced by shared ethical codes such as the Belmont Report and the Declaration of Helsinki, but national and institutional contexts also frame research ethics review. Rwanda’s in-country human subjects review processes are situated within a context that includes factors such as the historical impacts of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi1 ; rapid urbanization; youth population growth; and …

Singapore’S Quarantine Rhetoric And Human Rights In Emergency Health Risks, Huiling Ding, Elizabeth A. Pitts

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) began spreading in Asia in March 2003, many affected countries and areas scrambled to mobilize public health resources and rushed to find effective ways to contain the virus within their territories. In late March and April of the same year, the World Health Organization (WHO) added numerous East and Southeast Asian countries and regions to its list of areas affected by SARS: mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, and Taiwan. Singapore was among the first countries to eradicate SARS and was taken off the WHO list on May 30, 2003.

Minga Perú’S Strategy For Social Change In The Perúvian Amazon: A Rhetorical Model For Participatory, Intercultural Practice To Advance Human Rights, Lucia Durá, Arvind Singhal, Eliana Elías

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, when Minga Perú’s radio production team receives a letter about spousal abuse, or any other burning topic, the letter is catalogued based on subject, audience relevance, and urgency. Listeners’ letters serve as the basis for creating the program scripts of Bienvenida Salud (Welcome Health), Minga’s long-running socio drama broadcast three times per week by ten jungle-reaching radio stations. In the program, Emira, Doñita, Peta, and Pasionaria bring social issues to life in a seriously playful and culturally-relevant manner, spurring conversation among listeners and subsequent decisions and actions. Minga has created a listener-as-producer feedback loop whereby …

Global Intellectual Property Law, Human Rights, And Technical Communication, Tyanna Herrington

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

International trade in intellectual products has increased in recent years, leading to a dramatic rise in the U.S. International Trade Commission's (USITC) caseload (USITC 2012, pp. 20-25). As individuals interact globally through travel and internet access, they also more frequently use and create intellectual products that are accessible on a global scale; thus, nation states' treaty negotiations on intellectual products have an important impact on their own citizenries as well as those of others. When technical communicators author intellectual products they may enter into a process of communicative interaction that leads to self-actualization , the state of having achieved personal …

After The International Bill Of Human Rights (Ibhr): Introduction To Special Issue On Human Rights And Professional Communication, David Sapp, Gerald Savage, Kyle Mattson

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

If published work is at all a reliable indicator, the issue of human rights has not yet emerged as a consistent thread in professional communication scholarship: but over the past decade the literature has addressed themes related to the larger issue of human rights. Such themes include, among others, social justice and globalization; critical responses to development and globalization; critical race theory and whiteness studies; and discourses of diverse publics and indigenous knowledges (Agboka, 2013a, 2013b; Bowdon, 2004; Broadfoot & Munshi, 2007; Haas, 2012; Johnson, Pimentel, & Pimentel, 2008; Lipus, 2006; Mattson, 2013; Nugent, 2013; Savage & Mattson, 2011; Savage …

Incorporating Digital Health Literacy Into Adult Esl Education On The Us-Mexico Border, Erika Mein, Brenda Fuentes, Francisco Soto Más, Andrés Muro

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

The increasing digitization of information and communication has undoubtedly impacted the ways in which people in the United States access and interpret health information. Although the traditional emphasis of health literacy research has been the comprehension of health-related texts such as patient information forms, prescriptions, and medicine labels, the increased use of electronic means to locate health information requires more critical engagement with texts beyond basic comprehension. In accessing electronic health information, patients need to be able to navigate the vast amount of online health information and to interpret and synthesize health information across multiple sources (i.e. websites) while also …

An Intercultural Analysis Of Sources Of Medical Information In Spanish-Speaking Diabetes Patients, Marta Antón, Ulla Connor, Kathryn Lauten, Stephanie Balunda

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Understanding and improving health literacy have become important goals in health communication. Research has shown that limited health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes and that it is more prevalent in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. The goals of this study are to describe English-speaking (ES) and Spanish-speaking (SS) diabetic patients’ perceptions of sources of health information, to identify the actions patients report taking in seeking that information, and to test reading comprehension of medical information among SS patients.

Data for this study were based on semi-structured interviews, life-story narratives, and a reading comprehension test with diabetic patients (43 …