ODU ENGL 810 PAB 2 TOPIC: New Media and Rhetoric by Discussing Media and Pedagogy

TOPIC:           Annoted Bibliography, PAB1, 2 of 2New Media and Rhetoric by Discussing Media and Pedagogy (2 of 2)

Guasch, Teresa, and Espasa, Anna. "Collaborative Writing Online: Unraveling the Feedback Process." Deane, Mary and Guasch, Teresa. Learning and teaching Online. 13-30: Brill, 2015

Keywords: Communications and Information Technology, C&IT, computer-mediated communication, CMC, new media, enhanced learning, social organization, learning orientation, work modality, emotional climate, group response, gamification of learning

Bibliography

Denning, Mike, and Davis, Kate. "Almost as helpful as good theory: some conceptual possibilities for the online classroom." Research in Learning Technology 9.2 (2001): 64-75.

Guasch, Teresa, and Espasa, Anna. "Collaborative Writing Online: Unraveling the Feedback Process." Deane, Mary and Guasch, Teresa. Learning and teaching Online. 13-30: Brill, 2015.

Ivory, James. Virtual Lives: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO, 2012.

Murray, Janet H. Hanmlet on the Holodeck. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Stefan, Livia and Moldoveanu, Florica. "Gamified 3D virtual learning environment for improved students’ motivation and learning evaluation. A case study on “3DUPB” campus." The 11th International Scientific Conference eLearning and software for Education. 2015. 94-102. Bucharest.

Annotations

“All media as extensions of ourselves serve to provide new
transforming vision and awareness.”

Marshall McLuhan (qtd from Murray)

Guasch and Espasa look at how today’s online learning “can overcome challenges that may arise in collaborative writing tasks” (Guasch). Their study shows successful online learners, but they wonder about the efficacy of feedback in the detached world of the internet and dropped connection. Today’s distance students are much better than those just fifteen years ago when Denning and Davis decided that online socialization for learners is weakened because computer-based students are limited to “the single, textual cue” and missed the benefits of face-to-face interaction (Denning). We know, from our ODU online community, that today’s camera-based classroom interactions allow participants in the room, across campus, and around the globe to simultaneously see and talk with each other in a live stream. We also have a sidebar chat stream for in-class participation to ask questions or post comments without interrupting the flow of discussion, enriching the exchange of information and ideas. At the same time, another manner of online student engagement during class is the closed group (on Facebook, Google Hangouts or other permissions-based systems), limiting entry to only course students, giving a note-under-the-desk opportunity to discuss the class, offer onions, and see if anyone else shares their views or is as lost as they are during a lecture.

James Ivory’s “Virtual Lives” supports Guasch and Espasa  by analyzing online gaming and the surrounding communities. He finds that social opportunities for growth and friendship abound online, and that educational opportunities exist both within games, such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and in the virtual classroom (Ivory). I believe that because gamers are mostly “millennials,” or Generation Y, (Americans born between 1982 and 2000) have grown up on an online environment, so they are invite an opportunity leave the brick-and-mortar schoolhouse and learn in a virtual classroom, rendering the Denning and Davis work obsolete.

Download the free game

Stefan and Moldoveanu offer that designing “special graphical and instructional design to simulate an effective learning environment[s] and make students focus on their learning objectives” (Stefan). Aligning with Ivory’s views, they contend that a serious gaming experience, 3D or Second Life as a learner-controlled experience with “very little content and infrastructure” built in by the developer. Its popularity was that it “allowed users to interact with each other and the environment in” any way they choose, even letting gamers keep the intellectual property rights to self-created content (Stefan). 
otherwise, is a learning experience in and of itself. Ivory points to Linden Lab’s online game

Computer learning is growing (evidenced by the increased success of this PhD program). This relatively new synchronous, live-camera, in the classroom collaboration builds a 2.5-dimensional experience more enriching than a cold asynchronous dial-in based on a read-then-post learning model, but not as immersive as a traditional, tactile, seat-in-the-class environment. We are not at the point of offering a 3D “holodeck” experience (Murray), but students’ desires for a more “real” experience combined with their comfort of living with new online technologies, will bring us to a rich life-like digital learning experience that will have a new name, making the term “3D” sound like an archaically charming way of talking about today’s IMAX movies.

ODU ENGL 810 PAB 1 TOPIC: New Media and Rhetoric by Discussing Media and Pedagogy

McEwen, R.., Zbitnew, A. & Chastwick, J. (2016) Through the Lens of a Tetrad: Visual Storytelling on Tablets. Educational Technology & Society, 19 (1), 100-112.

Keywords: new media, tetrad, visual story, enhanced learning, of Visual Learning Environments, VLE,  Virtual Social Space, VSS

College departments of literature, rhetoric/composition, science and technology studies (STS), and communications (both professional and visual arts) each stake a claim on what the authors call “The study of digital and interactive information and communication technologies – so called “new media” (McEwen). Focusing largely on creating visual art on a tablet, McEwen and Chastwick examine the usefulness of tablet-based and visual storytelling for teaching of adults with “intellectual disabilities” (McEwen). They base a relationship between art and media on McLuhan’s statement that “art provides the training and perception, the tuning or updating of the senses during the technological advance.” The relationship is based on McLuhan’s tetrad.

Eric McLuhan’s Laws of Media (Library and Archives Canada) defines a tetrad as the simultaneous outcome of an artefact of any medium, based on these answers to these questions: “What does it enhance, what does it make obsolete, what does it retrieve that had [it makes] obsolete, and what does it become when pushed to extremes (Library and Archives Canada). For a more visual understanding of McLuhan’s tetrad, see Owen Kelly’s Venn-diagram-like view of a tetrad, or four laws of media, right (Kelly).

McLuhan's Tetrad, Illustrated

McEwen and Chastwick’s (M&E’s) paper is based on events stemming from a college extra-curricular art initiative. This further highlights importance of a tablet-based cross-curriculum effort “to foster social interaction and communication. McLuhan’s views on “touch media--…paper and marker and tablets…” brought M&E to consider two key questions (abbreviated here): (1) Do tablets change the art-making process, and (2) Does using a tablet for self-expression alter communication and/or social interaction?

The M&E study focused on using tablet technology as a valid pedagogical and learning effort for mentally challenged adults. Jane Moore and Chris Atkin studied the effects of Visual Learning Environments (VLEs) and online learning for what is often called “mainstreamed” (not mentally challenged) undergraduate and graduate students at the U.K.’s Liverpool Hope University where students are linked through a newly developed a multimodal online communication Virtual Social Space (VSS) (Atkin).  They found that the:

“attempt to realise a more holistic view of online learning support using the latest tablet technology that brings together content and resources, programme support and focused discussion in one place; the flexibility of the user-interface allows for a wide range of functions to be available from one screen, easily navigable, strongly visual, and instantly accessible.”

            The findings show that tablets (new media) enhances and even encourages a growing body of rhetoric for students across the curriculum, regardless of their mental acuity. I recently acquired an iPad mini as part of a new cell phone plan. My experience, like those experienced by subjects the table-use studies referenced above, is that using a tablet is fun, whether creating art, conducting research, reading, or streaming entertainment. Eric McLuhan warns against “taking something simple and making it complicated” (McLuhan).

Bibliography

Atkin, Jane Moore and Chris. "An Application (app) for Learning - The Student Interface with Tablet Technology in Graduate Studies." International Conference on e-Learning: 328-XIV. . Kidmore End: Academic Conferences International Limited. , 2012. <http://proxy.lib.odu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/docview/1326324735?accountid=12967 >.

Kelly, Owen. "McLuhan’s tetrads: what they are and how they work." Jun 2016. owenkelly.net. Web. 12 Sep 2016. <http://www.owenkelly.net/984/mcluhans-tetrads/>.

Library and Archives Canada. "ARCHIVED - Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan." 06 March 2007. Library and Archives Canada. 12 Sep 2016. <http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/030003-2030-e.html>.

McEwen, R., Zbitnew, A., & Chatsick, J. "Through the Lens of a Tetrad: Visual Storytelling on Tablets." Educational Technology & Society 19.1 (2016): 100-112.

McLuhan, Eric and Zhang, Peter. "The Interological Turn in Media Ecology." Canadian Journal of Communication 2016: 207-225. 12 Sep 2016.

PhD or Bust

What this is

This blog has a new purpose. It will follow and report on my scholarly journey of earning a PhD in English from Old Dominion University, focusing on two areas: 

1. Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Studies
2. Technology and Media Studies

My summer vacation

This summer I completed Dr. Sarah Appleton’s ENGL 775 English Pedagogy Seminar. The material was interesting, some students became friends and colleagues, and—more importantly—the course showed me a new way to look at my teaching. My career had been focused on the art of communication rather than the study and analysis of literature. Bringing that literary element of study to my classroom kicked everything up a notch. For example, by having student writers view their work from aspects other than their own, their audience, and their editor (as usual), they needed to consider the challenge of embracing non-readers (those not interested in the topic). Figuring out how to embrace “skimmers” increased the success of summer students published in mainstream media from 20% (2 of 10) to over 50% (5 of 9). 

The fall class of twenty students in that writing course looks to produce more published writers!