As I mentioned last time, I will be guesting editing (with Bump Halbritter) a special issue of the Kairos publishing digital scholarship produced by undergraduates across the country.
Cheryl Ball, the journal's editor, asked her undergraduate students to "remediate" the call for webtexts into video cfps. The first drafts are below.
I've offered some feedback already, which I'll post via "comments" below. She's sharing that with the students now. But I KNOW they'd really welcome/value your feedback as well. Share that here and I'll share that with her and the students.
If you can get that feedback to us within the next week,that'd be great. Cheryl is hoping to share these during the week of 4Cs, which may not be possible. But we remain hopeful.
The text-based CFW is below, as well as the original proposal.
Thanks!
Proposal
(Re)mediating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric
Special Issue, Summer 2011
Guest Editors:
Shannon Carter, Texas A&M-Commerce
Bump Halbritter, Michigan State University
Summary
We propose a special issue devoted to digital scholarship composed by undergraduates. We know a lot of exciting work is being done in this area, and we wish to provide a venue for these important multimodal texts. Moreover, this special issue will celebrate the collaborative nature of student scholarship generated within the context of instruction. Thus, we invite significant contributions from the student author’s collaborating instructor.
Call for Webtexts
For years, the print-based, peer-reviewed journal Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric (YSW) has been publishing top-notch scholarship created by the country's undergraduates. For undergraduates creating multimodal scholarship on the subject, however, no such dedicated venue yet exists.
Until now.
With the 2011 special issue of Kairos tentatively entitled (Re)mediating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric, we will bring together digital scholarship produced by undergraduates composing with new media. We know such work is plentiful. We’ve seen it—at campus-wide celebrations, at area conferences, in our classrooms, in your classrooms. We’ve found it in in-house publishing venues resulting in local circulation and even nationally, published alongside some of the most established scholars in our field.
Circulation like this is important. It is how such work gets started, celebrated, mined, and seeded into new classrooms, programs, and approaches to composition.
Given this important work, the time is right to bring these exciting projects together, highlighting the fabulous work that’s possible amongst our undergraduates working with new media.
In other words,
Building on the tradition of the successful print-based journal Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric and the Kairos tradition of publishing cutting-edge, multimodal scholarship, this special issue invites undergraduates and their instructors to join the scholarly conversation in writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies through their own digital contributions.
The subject of this multimodal work will address rhetoric, technology, pedagogy, and composition studies--the same scope published in the recurring issues of Kairos. The limits of what counts as scholarship will be drawn no more tightly than they are around Kairos submissions more generally. We want to publish projects that are intellectually rigorous, engaging, and important. Due to our experiences in working with multimediated texts, we come to this collection with some expectations for what such scholarship will look and sound like; however, we remain open to consider submissions that challenge these preconceptions as well. We are hopeful that these submissions will expand the field’s understandings of "digital scholarship" and “writing instruction”—both in content and in form. We are certain they will.
We are also hopeful that this issue will promote further integration of new media in the undergraduate curriculum by sharing exemplar examples of student work and offering the tools for instructors interested in assigning and supporting this kind of work
(Re)mediating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric is calling for three types of submissions that will make use of four recurring features of Kairos: Topoi, Inventio, Praxis, and Reviews. The primary difference between Topoi/Praxis and Praxis/Inventio submissions is how tightly the topic of the student text adheres to the topics of rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, new media, and other topics Kairos typically publishes. Student texts that fall outside of usual Kairos topics will include an additional student-authored Inventio component.
1) Topoi/Praxis submissions: collaboratively-authored webtext comprised of the following two subsections: a) student-authored Topoi webtexts on issues tightly related to rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, new media, and other topics Kairos typically publishes, and b) a teacher-authored Praxis webtext that situates the student’s work within the pedagogical aims of the assignment that invited the student’s work. Student-authored Topoi texts should be mediated as appropriate, and may include, but are not limited to, any combination of text, hypertext, images, digital video, and/or sound.
Instructor-authored Praxis texts should articulate the instructional context that shaped the text (assignment, course, learning objectives, revision/feedback structure, institutional infrastructure). In other words, the instructor-generated Praxis text should complement the student Topoi submission by providing the context from which the multimodal project emerged, but the undergraduates remain the stars of this feature so the Praxis texts needn’t be more significant than a description of the assignment itself and a brief discussion of other relevant context.
2) Praxis/Inventio submissions: collaboratively-authored webtext comprised of the following three subsections: a) a student-authored, multimedia text of any topic or genre (in other words, texts not tightly related to topics Kairos typically publishes), b) a teacher-authored Praxis webtext that situates the student’s work within the pedagogical aims of the assignment that invited the student’s work, and c) a student-authored Inventio webtext that discusses the rhetorical decisions, contexts, influences, and material resources that directed the production of the multimedia work submitted (see “a” above).
All media included in either type of submission (Topoi/Praxis or Praxis/Inventio) must have copyright clearance for publication. Please see Kairos’ policy on Copyright (http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/submissions.html#copy)
If you have any concerns about copyright, contact the guest editors. We welcome any chance to help potential authors work through these issues.
3) Reviews: In addition to the above multimodal contributions, we invite reviews (by students or by whole classes) of student-produced work that is circulating outside of the academy or maybe a few local sites that are in use at specific institutions (so, student-produced reviews of student-produced digital work), or the like. What sorts of multimodal work are students composing outside of the academy? Inside the academy? Review it for us and let us publish it in this special issue of Kairos. Please see “Reviews” at http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/reviews.html for examples of previously published reviews.
Instructors and the student authors with whom they are collaborating are encouraged to contact the special issue editorial staff early in their project’s development.
All authors/co-authors accepted to the issue will be invited to submit Review and/or Disputatio multimedia and/or webtexts in response to the work of their special issue peers for possible publication in a subsequent issue of Kairos.
Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should be submitted in a single word-processing document and sent to the two guest editors below. The proposal should include
• Author name(s) and full contact information
• Section for which the proposal should be considered (Topoi/Praxis, Praxis/Inventio, or Reviews). If you are unsure, just ask! We’ll be happy to help you find the best place for this submission. See Kairos’ submission information with section descriptions here: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/submissions.html
• Statement from instructor regarding the context, assignment, and/or course from which the proposed project emerged/will emerge. If this is unavailable, student may submit a note stating that he/she was an undergraduate when he/she first composed this piece.
• One-page description of what you wish to develop for this special issue, including information about how far you are in the process and what you will need to develop the project you propose.
You are welcome to include a prototype (i.e., sample URL, screenshots, audio or video excerpt, etc) to accompany your design description. We cannot accept attachments over 2 megs via email. If your submission is larger than that, email us at least a week prior to the submission deadline so we can suggest alternative modes of delivery. Prototypes are not required, however, so please don’t feel you must be that far along with a project to consider submitting it. A proposal is all that is required.
Email submissions to guest editors at:
• Shannon Carter, Shannon_Carter@tamu-commerce.edu
• Bump Halbritter, drbump@msu.edu
Timeline
July 2009: CFW for the special issue goes out
October 2009: Webtext proposal deadline
November 2009: Guest Editor notifies authors of accepted webtexts, invited to submit works in progress to Faculty Advising Editors and/or to the sandbox for peer review (FAEs drawn from submitting faculty)
February 2010: Full webtexts due, reviewed internally
March/April/May 2010: webtexts reviewed externally
June 2010: authors notified of submission status
August 2010: final webtexts received from authors, copyediting review, etc.
January 2011: final webtext to editors (from guest editors) for queries and proofing
May 2011: issue goes live
Kairos Special Issue
(Re)mediating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric
Summer 2011
Invitation to Instructors--
Are your undergraduate students writing with new media? Are your students reviewing multimodal compositions created elsewhere? What are you doing to invite and support this good work? Do your exemplar student authors need a venue in which to share their digital work?
We invite undergraduate scholars to share their original, multimodal projects with Kairos readers for a special issue tentatively entitled (Re)medating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric (Summer 2011).
If your undergraduates are producing multimodal texts on topics tightly related to rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, literacy, new media, and other topics Kairos typically publishes, we invite them to submit to our Topoi section.
If your students are creating strong multimodal texts on other topics, we invite them for our Praxis/Inventio feature. Texts submitted for this feature should include a reflective piece (Inventio) that accompanies the main project submitted, offering a behind-the-scenes account of the creator’s rhetorical choices and experiences in producing this multimodal text. The Inventio text will help tie these topics to issues in rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, literacy, and/or new media (as per Kairos’s mission).
For both the Inventio and the Topoi submissions, we invite instructors to submit a short essay (“Praxis”) that describes the context from which these exemplar texts emerged: assignment, course goals, revision/feedback structure, and/or other relevant items.
For this issue, the undergraduates are the stars. However, we believe that excellent work happens most readily when we are able to provide a strong infrastructure for such work. Thus, we would like for this issue to provide instructor voices in combination with these top student authors. Doing so will help facilitate the successful integration of new media into a greater number of classrooms.
Reviews: We also invite student reviews (by undergraduate students or whole classes) of student-produced work that is circulating outside the academy or maybe a few local sites that are in use at specific institutions (student-produced reviews of student-produced digital work).
For details on the Praxis, Inventio, or Reviews sections of this special issue, please see the Call for Webtexts.
If you will be inviting your students to submit, please let us know as early as possible (by Summer 2009, if you can). We wish to invite all participating instructors to serve as reviewers and hope that once accepted texts have been selected those interested in this project will remain on board to serve as “Faculty Advising Editors” (FAEs), supporting these student authors as they ready their texts for publication in the Summer 2011 issue of Kairos.
Of course, all reviewers and FAE’s will be publically acknowledged in this special issue.
¬¬¬¬¬¬
Invitation to Student Authors—
Are you an undergraduate student producing innovative, multimodal texts worth sharing with a larger audience?
Are you writing with video? audio? images? A combination of all of these modalities? What have you learned about writing, technology, literacy, rhetoric, and/or new media as a result of this work?
Share your work with an international audience!
Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Pedagogy, and Technology invites undergraduates to submit multimodal texts that originated in one our more college courses. Exemplar projects will be published in the special issue tentatively entitled (Re)mediating the Conversation: Undergraduate Scholars in Writing and Rhetoric.
If your digital text (video/audio/images) covers a topic tightly related to rhetoric, pedagogy, technology, writing, literacy, new media, and other topics Kairos typically publishes, we invite you to submit to our Topoi section.
If your digital text covers a topic other than those Kairos typically publishes (see above), we invite those too! Submit these for the Praxis/Inventio feature and add a reflective offering a behind-the-scenes account of your rhetorical choices and experiences in producing this multimodal text.
If you are interested in reviewing student-produced digital work (work circulating outside the academy or within), we invite those for our Reviews section. We are looking for student-produced reviews of student-produced digital work. What sorts of multimodal work are undergraduates composing outside of the academy? Inside the academy? Review it for us and let us publish it in this special issue of Kairos.
Your instructor will be invited to work closely with you throughout the process, likely submitting a companion text that provides the assignment and other details that invited and supported the creation of your digital text.
See Call for Webtexts for details.
Deadlines and other important dates:
October 2009: Proposals Due (see “proposal guidelines” on the CFW for details)
November 2009: Authors notified of accepted webtexts
February 2010: Full webtext due
March/April/May 2010: full webtexts reviewed (internally, then externally)
June 2010: authors notified of submission status
August 2010: final webtexts/revisions due
May 2011: Issue goes live!
Posts
[from email to/from Cheryl]: Thanks for sending these along. A welcome break from this darn CCCC paper that I can't seem to get to writing/finishing. I did get a chance to view them and really enjoyed myself. I like them all, for different reasons.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks ago, Bump and I spoke about how fun we thought it'd be to include all of them. If you think that's appropriate, I think we'd welcome it. I'm not sure if Bump's had a chance to view these yet, but that was what he was suggesting before we'd seen 'em. I'd certainly welcome it.
If we go with just one (or two or three), my favorites are . .
a.l.wasowicz and Blue Suede Shoes
I also liked WetWyered, for different reasons. Well, I guess I liked them all for different reasons.
For what it's worth, here's my feedback.
devana's
Interesting choice conceptually, both timed at the one minute mark and providing some good action for "cooking" the call into something tasty ("success"!).
Change the word "papers" (in "Call for Papers") to "texts."
a.l.wasowicz (enjoyed this! though the text does peter out at the end before the message is complete.
This and the Blue Suede Shoes pieces are my favorites. Some of a.l.wasowicz's text is difficult to read, but I do love the "The Machine is Us/ing Us" feel! What a great way to represent multimodality. I'm not quite sure what to do with the image of the car/driver in development. Perhaps there is a way to unpack that image some more?
Also, some more care with the ways in which the text you WANT us to read is presented in relationship with the text that is less important. Might a shadowbox effect be possible? If not, perhaps additional time with the portion of the screenshot that you want us to read. Help the viewer know where you want him/her to look and when.
daharla
Catchy music, interesting effects. It does provide the message we want, with nice flashes of the "writer" working at his computer. The "proposal guidelines" provide too much text to read in the short time provided and I'm not quite sure what to do with the Teddy Bear (adorable, but . . . ?!)
jasondr
I like the juxtaposition between old ways of composing and new ways of composing, and digital projects exploring the actual literacy practices of students would be one possibility for students interested in sharing their work with us. But there are many other possibilities, so perhaps there is a way to get that idea in there too. We want subjects tightly related to new media, technology, and pedagogy. We also want students to share their new media work on other topics, coupled with a reflective piece explaining the moves they made and why. So if there is a way to open this video cfw up to these other types of submissions that'd be great.
WetWyered
The information is all there, which is great. Presented at a good pace so readers can follow it. And the idea of putting the call to this Star Wars ensemble is great fun. I can see why we would want the images to be a bit repetitive so the user can focus on the text. But the text is a pretty small for this focus, even so. Perhaps we can enlarge the text window and present it again that way? And the final note is a bit jarring. Perhaps there's something that can be done with that so it does seem it was just cut off at random (strategic cut would be better). And though I like the repetition of image/audio given the amount of text shared here (seems appropriate), I wonder if there might not be a way to integrate a little more action in that bottom half of the screen and/or with the audio track(s). Loved it when one of the characters clapped over his head. More of that sort of thing would be cool to see. Pushing more action up near the text so the reader doesn't feel she needs to look down to see some fun stuff but isn't left to believe that the only action worth viewing is the text itself.
Blue Suede Shoes
This is my favorite. The message is clear, presented at a good pace and in an inviting way. My only suggestions are that you slow it down a little in a couple of spots where the amount of text and the specific movement made it difficult for read to both reorient herself and read the text before we'd moved on to the next set of information.
Especially the "Does your work cover something else???" bit. Perhaps you can give that its own slide so the reader can take a minute to answer the question (in their heads, of course) before you tell them not to worry.
I love the opening image (Belushi, ala Animal House--a nice, iconic image of the college student, complete with the generic "college" on his sweat shirt). The next few images are a bit too stock for me. Perhaps other choices might offer the call more dimension? You might do a search via Creative Commons (click the Flickr tab) for film, video, writing, multimodal, students, audio, sound, images, and other such key terms. That might help push the envelop with respect to relevant images but still easily recognizable and fun (as you did with the Belushi choice).
I'm also not loving the "Join the party @ Kairos" line. As one of your viewers put it, "Is that a club?" Perhaps another line would be just as inviting but a little less confusing.
I do love the "You'll be famous" birdie. So delightfully Partridge Family! And well timed.
At the very end: They don't have to submit their masterpiece by October 2009. We just want to see a brief description of what they are planning to do, with the actual submission due a few months later.
Thanks for this great work! I'd love to see it included in the CFW!
--
Sorry for the shifting focus, Cheryl. Some seem to be address to the student, some to you. I should go back and clean it up but I better get back to my CCCC paper now. Fun is over (j/k--my project is fun, but I'm more interested in video right now and my panel ain't about that. Sigh.)
Best,
Shannon