I've spent more than 15 years writing about digital rhetoric and pedagogy on this blog, so this seems oddly like business as usual. One of my pastimes is watching English football, and I read some blogs and listen to podcasts. Of course, there's nothing happening right now, but many of those folks are pressing on,... Continue Reading →
Sharing support materials for teaching writing online
As WAC director, I've been putting materials together internally on our CMS to aid instructors and faculty in this transition. Along the way I've been adding stuff into the site that I've seen shared by others. With that thought in mind, I've set up a page on this website where I am posting the support... Continue Reading →
Advice to students who unexpectedly enrolled in an online university
First of all, I understand how much this probably sucks. I've been a professor for 20+ years, but right now my son is a college freshman and my daughter was looking forward to enjoying a victory lap in her final semester as a college senior before heading off to a Phd program. Of course, there... Continue Reading →
advice for the unplanned online class
UB, like many universities, is preparing to take all its classes online in short notice. Some schools have already made that choice as you know. Our Spring Break is next week so I imagine we'll know a lot more before school starts up again on the 23rd. I'm sure everyone is getting tons of advice... Continue Reading →
who wants to “own” writing?
There's this old Steven Wright line that goes something like, "I used to say I wanted to own the world but then I wondered 'where would I put it all?'" That seems apropos here. To clarify, in higher ed circles the idiom "to own writing" would appear to mean claiming sole disciplinary-intellectual authority and control... Continue Reading →
hindsight is 2020: twenty years of ed tech banter
Audrey Waters writes today listing "the 100 worst ed-tech debacles of the decade" (h/t Seth Kahn). Coincidentally I learned today I had been nominated to be one of UB's SUNY Online Teaching Ambassadors. This got me thinking about the 20+ years in which I've been teaching online and hybrid courses (which is basically the span... Continue Reading →
distributed vs. centralized incompetence
Here's the basic thing. Humans are in/competent. I mean: it's all relative, right? As I (cynically) tell my students, in terms of being "digitally literate:" you don't have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun your friends. Let me be more specific. At my uni (and I imagine most others), the IT folks... Continue Reading →
English Studies in the post-digital world
Though there are some ongoing conversations about the notion of a post-digital world (including Justin Hodgson's Post Digital Rhetoric and the New Aesthetic and Mike Flatt's discussion of post-digital poetics), I'm starting here with the mildly disturbing corporate speak of Accenture on how to be competitive in the post-digital world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=173&v=dpaw_ZAHZ-Q Accenture identifies five elements... Continue Reading →
the “robot-ready” humanities
So I'm in the midst again of another well-intentioned effort to communicate the value of liberal arts (specifically English) majors and was introduced to this report, "Robot Ready: Human+Skills for the Future of Work," by the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and ESMI, which is a firm involved in economic modeling. I want... Continue Reading →
