Data and Experience Design: Negotiating Community-Oriented Digital Research with Service-Learning

In this research with reflection paper, we discuss our experiences from a graduate level service learning course in which we assisted the local food bank on exploring the efficiency of their client tracking software, Link2Feed. In the semester-long project, we developed a close relationship with the staff of the community partner and worked to explore functionality and usability (Johnson, Salvo, & Zoetewey, 2007; Johnson, 2010) of Link2Feed. Throughout the semester, we applied various academic skills like taking interviews, rhetorical analysis of the software, and analyzing the community partner needs and how the software meets those needs. At the end of the semester, we were able to provide a detailed report on the features of the Link2Feed and its embedded functions. We also found ways to address the current needs of the partner organization for big data collection, reporting, and visualization. With the framework of experience architecture (Potts & Salvo, 2017) and workplace-based writing and communication and composition with community, we discuss the challenges of negotiating the needs of the community partner, their infrastructural limitations (DeVoss, Cushman, & Grabill, 2005), and the use of academic research to enhance the community partner’s efficiency to generate big data and knowledge via digital technologies. In this paper, we also reflect on the overall process of conducting a semester-long service learning/ community engagement project and the challenges and benefits of negotiating community partner’s priorities, the challenges in investigating an unfamiliar software platform, and the importance of regular communication with the professor

Interdisciplinary Pedagogy, Integrated Curriculum, and Professional Development

The challenges involved in facing and solving the most pressing global problems of the 21st century will involve collaboration and critical engagement from multiple disciplines. Interdisciplinary education and the critical skills it can teach—innovation, team-based collaboration, and effective communication, among many others—are crucial to preparing current students for their futures as professional problem-solvers. We introduce an integrated pedagogical approach between three introductory courses at Purdue University: Design Thinking in Technology (Tech 120), English Composition (English 106), and Fundamentals of Speech Communication (Com 114). Instructors and administrators in all three of these programs are working together to reinforce the valuable and important connections between STEM and Humanities work. Along with an overview of the development and implementation of this integration, we present a summary of findings from our ongoing assessment of the program. The integration has the most beneficial effects on students’ sense of community, which in turn significantly impacts their performance on team projects. When STEM and Humanities instructors and faculty share goals and spend time innovating together, the potential benefits to students and to the future of engineering education overall are clear

Comparative Study of Networked Communities, Crisis Communication, and Technology: Rhetoric of Disaster in the Nepal Earthquake and Hurricane Maria

In April and May 2015 Nepal suffered two massive earthquakes of 7.5 and 6 5 magnitudes in the Richter scale, killing 8856 and injuring 22309. Two years later in September 2017, Puerto Rico underwent the Category 5 Hurricane Maria, killing an estimate of 800 to 8000 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans (Kishore et al., 2018). This dissertation project is the comparative study of Nepal’s and Puerto Rico’s networked communities, their actors, participants (Potts, 2014), and the users (Ingraham, 2015; Johnson, 1998) who used crisis communication practices to address the havoc created by the disaster. Using a mixed-methods research approach and with framework created with the Assemblage Theory (DeLanda, 2016), I argue that disasters create situations in which various networked communities are formed into transnational assemblages along with an emergence of innovative digital technical and professional communication practices

Rethinking Access: Recognizing Privileges and Positionalities in Building Community Literacy

This article rethinks digital access and community literacy by sharing aspects of intentional engagement informed by social justice frameworks to establish community partnerships that empower communities both local and global with digital literacy. The article explores access, privileges, and positionalities that the author strategically utilizes to support the communities within her current locality and in her hometown Nepal. By showcasing multiple intentional and equitable partnerships informed via social justice frameworks, the article argues that we require a transnational context to redefine digital literacy and our students need to understand these contexts better given the demands of the current workplace

Coalitional literacies of digital safety and solidarity: A white paper on nextGEN international listserv

nextGEN, a listserv and advocacy collective founded and maintained by graduate students across the international field of writing studies,1 kairotically begun in response to controversial interactions on the WPA-Listserv in March 2018 (Laughner, 2019; “Where We Are,” 2020; Beare, 2021). Following the release of Vershawn Ashanti Young\u27s 2019 CCCC Call for Papers, the backlash on WPA-L discussed, and in many ways perpetuated, the on-going racialized, linguistic discrimination within writing studies, writ large. As graduate students contributed to these conversations, this situation clearly illustrated their systemic dismissal from disciplinary conversations. In this white paper, we highlight four tactical strategies used by nextGEN since its inception to demonstrate the importance of coalitional literacies in digital advocacy spaces. Finally, we conclude by briefly looking forward to future challenges and possibilities for the next generation of nextGEN. Overall, we offer this argument as a “white paper” because it is our–the authors–understanding and situating of the systemic problems that defined the emergence and early work of nextGEN.2 We offer readers a specific history, scholarly framework, and model for building and sustaining an international listserv and advocacy space for and by graduate students through coalitional literacies of digital safety and solidarity