RESEARCH

I study relationships among usability, circulation, and knowledge-making. Specifically, I study how commodification of information and rhetorical circulation explain why economic activity overtakes democratic processes, undermines long-term sense making, and maintains the power disadvantage of marginalized people. I draw most on Technical Communication, Rhetorical Theory, and Digital Media research. Since, as a rhetorician, I study and teach ways decisions are made through communicating and making artifacts, I view those processes and products as “active” and research how our ecology structures thought and decision-making. I view the genesis of western civilization through the rhetorical works of Classical Greek and Roman philosophers, the solidification of western paradigms through Enlightenment philosophers and scientists, and the spread of western influence through theorists and designers of the 20th century and beyond. These stories make sense of the world as it exists today, including the asymmetrical power dynamics that marginalize people along the various intersections of race, class, gender, and other factors. Currently, information, data, and circulation structure the world and are big parts of how designers and technologies help us make sense of it. I am studying fields related to these issues: information theory, data science, augmented reality, and online education.

CURRENT PROJECTS

My work is at the nexus of technical communication, digital rhetoric, and education and I am currently working on the following projects:

Dissertation

My Dissertation is titled: Online Education, Circulation, and Information Economies of the Future.

My dissertation combines theoretical inquiry into rhetorical circulation of information as a commodity with empirical research into the labor of teaching and learning writing online. The crux of my dissertation is that, because knowledge is made through sharing and combining experiences, it has to be done in a communicative space. Rhetorical circulation theory deals with how (mostly digital) artifacts (information, data, etc) come to have meaning by being circulated, and OWI is a subset of online education (OE), which employs communicative circulation between peers as a revolutionary pedagogical tool, particularly at large scales. Both these premises owe a debt to information theory and the data—>information—>knowledge—>wisdom paradigm of data science. My dissertation interrogates the rhetorical implications of circulation-based knowledge-making as a cultural phenomenon, particularly at a time when knowledge institutions are operating on logics of scarcity and competition.

My empirical component is a Mixed Methods study of instructors teaching OWI courses and trying to teach students to make knowledge (i.e. by scrutinizing and writing information) in these conditions. My goal is to 1) contribute to best practices of OWI, as a pedagogy platform that will likely be the de facto post-secondary educational route for people marginalized by the traditional campus experience, and 2) argue for usability, as a practice of making data actionable to users by transforming it into information, to be a future-oriented practice as part of design and consumption.

Data, Information, Knowledge

Data, Information, and Knowledge (and Wisdom, technical or otherwise—DIKW for short) are all boundary terms, meaning they have broad use and appeal but important, individual definitions for different fields, which makes them load-bearing connection points—they can help different people with skillsets understand each other or lead them to disagree vehemently. One of my current projects is reevaluating these terms under modern rhetorical conditions, namely the circulation economy.

My first work on this subject was published by the ACM Special Interest Group on Design of Communication (SIGDOC). Here is a permanent link to the article PDF:

I am currently developing two more pieces that pursue threads I see this article left me to follow: 1) the implications of circulation markets on knowledge-making in more depth, and 2) the ways Rhetoric and Data Science can cooperate to refine how we collect and operationalize data (as information, knowledge, and wisdom).

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is often described as a high-tech, visual interface combining the real world with projected digital objects that aspires to replace device-bound interfaces (i.e. make screens obsolete). My research on AR argues that “augmented” reality it is within reach without dependence on powerful machines and complicated ocular apparatuses through sound design, haptics, and generally finding other ways to engage people with their environment. Thinking or AR this way (i.e. in addition to visual paradigms) expands how we think of it as a cultural shift, since user’s engagement with places and other people is augmented, not just their information or work.

I had a short empirical narrative to this effect published at First Person Scholar:

And I am currently developing a longer piece adding a comparison case to measure usability of different AR/embodied interfaces more expansively.

FUTURE PROJECTS

I have plenty to work on for now, but my future plans include:

  • Shopping my dissertation results as the basis for revisions of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) or the starting point for a new LMS catered toward writing and design instruction (emphasizing manageable interaction and communication between instructors and small classes) to increase the reach of quality education emphasizing teacher-student relationships.

  • Seeking partnerships with Information Scientists and Data Scientists to develop interdisciplinary approaches to data collection, processing, policy, and use.

  • Continuing to experiment with nontraditional AR experiences that make it more publicly accessible and usable (not just in terms or broad use but inherent availability to different abilities and identities).

  • Revisit my thesis work to better articulate metagaming as a future-oriented knowledge-making schema.