Room 42

Isidore K. Dorpenyo is an  Associate Professor of Professional Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He received BA in English at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana (2008) and the MS in Rhetoric and Technical Communication at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI (2013) and his PhD in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture at Michigan Technological University (2016). His research focuses on election technology, international technical communication, social justice, user experience, public (civic) engagement, and localization. He is the author of the book: User-localization Strategies in the Face of Technological Breakdown. Isidore has co-guest edited two special issues: technical communication, election technology and civic engagement for Technical Communication and enacting social justice in technical communication for IEEE. He has published in Technical Communication Quarterly, Community Literacy Journal, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how electoral spaces serve as one avenue for TPC professionals to demonstrate discipline-in-practice. A conversation about the intersections among technical communication, election technology, and civic (public) engagement will reveal most of the issues that technical communicators are interested in, namely, social justice, public engagement, user experience, usability, document design, data, visualization, algorithms, localization, etc. This topic remains relevant because our electoral spaces have proven to be the breeding ground for social injustice. If you are in the US, think about the 2020 elections and its many issues; if you are in Ghana, think about the electoral space since 1992. A conversation like this helps to expand the scope of technical communication beyond organizations. Technical communicators in the field can expand the horizon. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-technical-communication-intersects-with-technology-and-civic-engagement/

Marybeth Shea teaches advanced composition at the University of Maryland. These courses include professional and technical writing where she typically instructs scientists and engineers in science writing, writing about the environment, and special sections under design for data analysis and computer science students. She has also co-taught special courses on big data and visualization. Recently, Shea developed a gateway course for medical humanities with colleagues in history, languages and literatures, and philosophy. She also consults with scientists – particularly environmental science teams – about communicating their findings for policy. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how an English Professor ended up in a chicken coop. A humanist, a social scientist, and a nitrogen/ammonia scientist specializing in flow across air, soil, and water systems walk into a poultry house... What happens next? What can an environmental humanist offer to specialized interdisciplinary environmental science for policy deliberation? Scientists use scientific methods; many humanists use stasis theory, a method used by scholars to work on the human dimensions of wicked problems, such as the environmentally destructive ammonia pollution from poultry production on the Delmarva Peninsula. The choices that poultry farmers make can be a large part of the solution to reducing the ammonia pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. But how do you convey the science and the choices in the most effective way? Human values and viewpoints are central to decision making and those are best understood with humanities and social science tools, like Q-Methodology (Q). Using Q, you can probe human subjectivity and gain a deeper insight into priorities and decision making of your audience. In this session, we’ll talk about how humanistic cartoons on cards helped make clear these farmer’s attitudes to themselves, to scientists, and others. Learn how to communicate effectively to the people who hold the power of change; how to craft information that helps them understand the science behind the results of their choices; and how changes can help solve environmental challenges while maintaining their priorities. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-humanities-studies-can-help-scientists-communicate-their-findings/

Dr. Daniel P. Richards is an associate professor and associate chair of English at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. He also serves as Chair of ACM SIGDOC. His research focuses on environmental rhetoric, risk communication, the public understanding of science, and the politics of higher education. His most recent project—a project funded through the Department of Defense—applies UX and rhetorical approaches to political negotiation between military readiness and renewable energy development. His work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Contemporary Pragmatism, and several other journals and edited collections. His most recent edited collection, On Teacher Neutrality (2020), is available through Utah State UP. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the recent trend in risk communication to rely on realism and simulation as a way to communicate a variety of risks. In terms of sea level rise, there has been a trend towards visualizing the effects of water inundation in mainly coastal communities as a way to facilitate understanding and generate action and awareness. Rhetorically, this makes sense. But do we know enough about whether or not realistic visualizations are more effective than less realistic ones? or just data? Are the downsides to using realism, or simulation and, if so, what are they? We discuss how to test these assumptions by applying user experience research to sea level rise visualization tools. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/simulation-or-realism-to-facilitate-understanding-and-generate-action/

Dr. Casey McArdle is the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. He directs the undergraduate programs: Experience Architecture (an undergraduate user experience degree housed in the Arts and Humanities), Professional and Public Writing, and a Minor in Writing. His research is centered around user experience, instructional design, technical communication, rhetoric and writing, accessibility, project management, and online writing instruction. His latest publications include “Finding a Teaching A11y: Designing an Accessibility-Centered Pedagogy” appearing in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, which he co-authored with Kate Sonka and Dr. Liza Potts. His book, Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic: Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors, which he co-authored with Dr. Jessie Borgman, won the 2020 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award. The book was followed by their edited collection, PARS In Practice: More Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors. These texts were inspired by the website he co-founded with Dr. Borgman, The Online Writing Instruction Community (owicommunity.org), created in 2015 as an open resource for contingent faculty struggling to find support for teaching writing online. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the ways accessible technologies and curriculum are impacting pedagogy and how programs are preparing students for professional spaces beyond their institutions. He will discuss how using his role as an admin can better connect his faculty and students with innovative spaces that create equitable learning environments while also modeling such practices to be used post graduation. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-accessible-technologies-impact-teaching-methodologies-and-practice/

Dr. Laura Gonzales is an Assistant Professor of digital writing and cultural rhetorics in the Department of English at the University of Florida. She earned her PhD in Writing and Rhetoric with a concentration in digital rhetoric and professional writing from Michigan State University in 2016. Laura is the author of more than 30 peer-reviewed articles, books, and edited collections focused on issues of language diversity, community engagement, and technical communication. She is the current chair of the Diversity Committee for the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication and the co-chair of the 2021 Association of Teachers of Technical Writing Conference. Laura is also currently collaborating with multiple community groups and organizations on the design of technical information related to COVID treatment and prevention in Indigenous languages. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss Laura Gonzales’ forthcoming book, Designing Multilingual Experiences in Technical Communication. The book traces Laura’s research with multilingual communities across multiple countries. She’ll discuss how technical communicators can collaborate with translators, interpreters, and multilingual community members to conduct research that is both ethical and justice-driven. This discussion will help technical communicators answer questions such as: 1) How do we conduct research with communities who speak languages other than English?; 2) How do we encourage feedback and participation from communities who speak multiple languages?; 3) How can technical communicators contribute to the design of multilingual information?; 4) What does it mean to design a multilingual experience in a technical communication research context?; and 5) why does language matter in technical communication research?

Sean D. Williams, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Technical Communication and Information Design (TCID) department at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. TCID is the only stand-alone technical communication department in Colorado, and currently partners with major companies on projects ranging from user experience design to cybersecurity research to designing professional development courses in engineering writing. Sean’s research has taken many forms over the years, beginning with information architecture in complex web environments to social media in technology start-ups and user experience design for 3D virtual reality. Most recently, his work focuses on user experience design in environmental communication, where his central focus is understanding how best to communicate science to drive personal conservation behaviors and public policy changes. His new book, Technical Communication for Environmental Action, (SUNY Press) due out in fall of 2022 investigates this question in detail and presents essays from 12 notable scholars who write about the intersections of environmental communication, science, and social justice. In addition to his work in the academic sector, Sean has been a founder or co-founder of four technology start-up companies, and he has consulted extensively with industry clients on a range of projects that include electronic health care records, intranet redesign, corporate training design, and usability assessments of mobile cybersecurity software. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss Sean’s recent research with water companies to describe the critical role that technical communication can play for environmental action and how technical communication might work at the edge of marketing, public relations and science communication. He will also reflect on recent advances in technical communication that connect issues of social justice and environmental justice, specifically with respect to how we use, allocate, and access water. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/how-technical-communication-can-impact-climate-change/

Dr. Rosário Durão is an Associate Professor at New Mexico Tech (NMT) where she teaches courses in Visual Communication and Graphic Design, International Professional Communication, Design Thinking for Innovation Lab, Branding and Social Media, to name a few. She received her PhD from the Open University, Portugal, with a specialization inTranslation Studies. Her dissertation was on “Scientific and technical translation: Proposal for training multicompetent translators specialized in producing scientific and technical documentation from English to Portuguese.” Rosário is currently completing the Graphic and Digital Design Certificate program from Parsons School of Design. She was the founding editor of Confluências, an e-journal dedicated to technical and scientific translation between 2003 and 2006, and the, also digital, connexions • international professional communication journal between 2013 and 2018. She coedited connexions with Kyle Mattson from the University of Central Arkansas from 2014 to 2018. From mid 2014 to the end of 2018, she also coordinated the multinational VISTAC - Visualizing Science and Technology Across Cultures research project at NMT. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss why Professional Communication and Translation is more than written language. Communication is always between people, no matter how many tools and technologies mediate it, and that, if it is to work, communication must truly meet the needs, expectations, and contexts of the people receiving it. She will also share some ways for researchers and instructors to be more in sync with the world around us, in particular (a) observing professionals in their workplaces (what they do throughout their days, the tools they use and how they use them, the role of sketching, designing, body language, as well as their role and interactions with video, blog posts, slideshows, graphs, document layout, communication design, and many other visual components), (b) understanding how individual and group cultures and nationalities shape the way people think and deploy verbal-visual language, especially the visual component, and (c) making sure that every one of us has as high a level of visual literacy as written, oral, electronic, and nonverbal—both theoretical and, most importantly, practical —for only then can we truly understand and convey the evolving role of visuals in communicating science, humanities, technology, engineering, arts, and business between people within specific languages, cultures and nationalities, and across different languages, cultures and nationalities. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/professional-communication-and-translation-its-more-than-written-language/

Charles Bazerman is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California Santa Barbara. As a teacher of writing he started to wonder what writing was and how they learned to do it. One thing led to another and he began investigating what kind of writing people actually needed to do in their lives; what their writing accomplishes; what forms of writing have made possible the advance of science, technology and domains of knowledge; how writing has changed society since its invention; how writers develop over their lifespans; and what happens to them as people as they develop as writers. Such questions led him into many corners of writing which he gradually came to see within a larger architecture of our social arrangements and communicative infrastructure, but still wondering what writing is, how people learn to do it, and what impact it has on people and society. Among his books are Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Research Article in Science; The Languages of Edison’s Light; and A Rhetoric of Literate Action. He has concluded that we live and navigate our way in a built symbolic environment. This built symbolic environment has become more extensive, enduring, and dense in the last five thousand years since the invention of literacy. Since then, reading and writing have transformed who we are and are becoming, as individuals and communities. Further, successful living in the contemporary world has come to depend on our skill in writing ourselves into the built symbolic environment, either directly or indirectly. This resource of skill in writing, however, is not equitably distributed, reinforcing disparities in being able to assert interests and power within the communicative infrastructure of society. It is, therefore, imperative that all are given the opportunity to become more knowledgeable, skilled, and intentional about the literate world so as to be able to make successful rhetorical choices and participate more fully within the built symbolic environment. In this episode of Room 42 the conversation will range in unpredictable ways across such questions drawing on his textual historical, quantitative, qualitative and theoretical inquiries. For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/the-built-symbolic-environment-words-to-live-by/

Dr. Diana Awad Scrocco is an Associate Professor of English at Youngstown State University where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in professional and technical writing, writing pedagogy and research methods, and healthcare communication. She is currently the director of the Professional and Technical Writing Program. Before coming to Youngstown State University, she earned a Ph.D. in Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice from Kent State University and collaborated with Joanna Wolfe at Carnegie Mellon University to establish the first communication center on the campus. Dr. Awad Scrocco’s recent research has appeared in Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, Journal of Argumentation in Context, and Communication and Medicine. Her 2012 article in Teaching English in the Two-Year College titled, “Do You Care to Add Something? Articulating the Student Interlocutor’s Voice in Writing Response Dialogue,” examines how written teacher comments on student drafts can encourage student writers to consider plans for revision; this article won the 2013 Mark Reynolds TETYC Best Article Award. Currently, she is working on a project exploring how experienced tutors support novice tutors while using an innovative tutoring model at the Carnegie Mellon writing center. Her article titled, “What’s Your Plan for the Consultation? Examining Alignment Between Tutor-Supervisor Session Plans and Tutor-Writer Session Conversations” is currently under review. Although Dr. Awad Scrocco conducts research in a range of academic and professional settings, including the composition classroom, writing center, and teaching hospital, the common thread running through these research contexts is expert-novice interaction and feedback. For instance, an article from her dissertation research on preceptor-resident physician conversations in a teaching hospital analyzes how expert physicians draw on common lines of argument to explicate notions and engage novices in clinical deliberation. Another publication from this study investigates how expert physicians actively engage novices in clinical decision-making by using guided, open-ended questions, proposals, and assessments. Dr. Awad Scrocco’s research suggests that expert feedback across diverse contexts includes some common features, providing insight into how experts can engage novices in learning irrespective of the teaching environment. Show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/improving-communication-between-experts-and-novices

The Room 42 Green Room is the meeting place for active conversations about topics of most interest for technical and professional communication practitioners. In this episode, we sit down with a group of very talented and tenured editors. They share what it takes to make an editor and the impact the role has in enhancing and elevating the overall quality of the entire team. Sure, they know grammar and punctuation and they can spot errors with a keen well trained analytical eye. But they also see the big picture of the overall content strategy and how it works with the corporate strategy. They have a fine-tuned ear for language and make sure that content created by many sounds as unified as content created by one. The versatility of a seasoned editor goes far beyond just editing, this person can be a big asset to your team. If you care about accuracy, consistency, and clarity, and if you want a stronger writing team, then you must have an editor on your team. In this episode, you’ll find: Edna Smith, Li-At Rathbun, Sherri Leah Henkin, Kelly Schrank and Dr. George Hayhoe. Show notes: https://tccamp.org/green-room/why-do-we-need-an-editor-on-the-team/

Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson is a Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition from Purdue University. Bill is also a Senior Researcher in the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center. He is a co-inventor of Eli Review, a software service that supports writing instruction and co-founder of Drawbridge, a learning technology company. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss teaching and research that have orbited the intersection of technical and professional writing and user experience throughout Bill’s 20-year career. Major themes in his research include improving feedback cultures as a means to see better outcomes in learning in clinical and public health. Bill's work explores the ways feedback, revision, and reuse can be trained and/or automated using machine-learning technologies. In his most recent book, RhetOps: Rhetoric and Information Warfare, he and Jim Ridolfo explore how state and non-state actors leverage digital rhetorical practices to weaponize and use it in campaigns of disinformation. Bill's current work in health services shines a light on the bright side of communication and includes a multi-site clinical trial evaluating a combined patient activation, shared-decision making and m-health intervention and its ability to reduce risk in patients. In this trial, all the interventions, all of the new "medicine" are changes in communication practices. The results so far are fascinating. Show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/communication-is-the-medicine

Partnering for Inclusive Language In this episode of Green Room 42, practicing professionals from technical and professional communications fields come together to discuss how inclusive language impacts their work. We share some common mistakes and some of the ways we can partner to develop Industry-wide standards for Inclusive Language with helpful lists and positive alternatives. Janice Summers and Liz Fraley speak with Larry Kunz, Steven Jong, Karsten Wade, and Dr. Lucía Dura. Link to the show notes: https://tccamp.org/green-room/words-have-meaning-partnering-for-inclusive-language/

In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the vast challenges of designing, conducting, analyzing, and delivering outcomes of projects that cross national borders. Nancy and Bernadette have witnessed first hand the legal, practical, and ethical challenges that emerge even during activities that seem relatively simple and straightforward. They will share a sampling of the stories of difficulties technical and professional communication (TPC) researchers and practitioners have faced, their strategies for navigating those challenges, and their reflections over how their projects changed or even failed. In this episode of Room 42, we’ll hear about their book, "Transnational Research in Technical Communication: Realities and Reflections,” a collection of stories from the trenches. Dr. Nancy Small is an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of First Year Writing at the University of Wyoming. She joined UW as a tenure-track faculty in 2016, after 25 years on the teaching faculty at Texas A&M. The last six of those were spent at the branch campus in Qatar. Her work has been published in journals such as Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, and the Journal of Usability Studies as well as in scholarly books about transnational and intercultural issues such as The Routledge Handbook to Communication and Gender and Western Higher Education in Asia and the Middle East: Politics, Economics, and Pedagogy. Her monograph, Feminist Sensemaking through Storytelling: USAmerican Women in Qatar, is based on ethnographic research of the white expatriate community during her six years living and working in the Middle East. Her current projects include an article on reading handmade material artifacts as textual memoirs of their erased makers, and a book-length project on rhetoric, place making, and public memory in the USAmerican West. In support of this last project, she received a spring 2021 fellowship with the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research. Dr. Bernadette Longo is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is the author of Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing (SUNY Press, 2000), Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals (ACM Press, 2015), and Words and Power: Computers, Language, and U.S. Cold War Values (Springer Press, forthcoming 2021). She is the co-editor of Critical Power Tools: Technical Communication and Cultural Studies (SUNY Press, 2006) and The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields (IEEE Press, 2017). Dr. Longo has also written and presented numerous journal articles and conference papers. She currently enjoys life by a small lake in New Jersey. For links and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/strategies-for-navigating-transnational-projects/

Dr. Eric P. James has always been good at asking questions, often seeing multiple-sides to complex issues. Eric is an Associate Professor in the Communication Studies Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He researches issues relating to workplace wellness, organizational identity, and control. He asks questions about the consequences of the ever-present creeping arm of managerial control. He has been published in a variety of outlets including the Journal of Applied Communication Research and Management Communication Quarterly. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss complexities in internal corporate communications. Eric James discusses identity, work, and wellness and the role communication plays in workplace health/lifestyle promotion and managerial control. We look at workplace wellness as a model for communication with content consumers. With workplace wellness growing in popularity throughout the corporate landscape, it seems almost more rare for an organization not to have employee wellness practices. With more and more employers adopting wellness and fitness for their employees, we discuss the implications and consequences of workplace wellness using white-collar and blue-collar case-studies and various “extreme” cases of workplace health/lifestyle promotion. We discuss the role of our employer in maintaining the health of employees. We explore the relationship between work, worker identities and wellness and the role that communication plays in all of it.

Clay Spinuzzi is a professor of rhetoric and writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He studies how people organize, communicate, collaborate, and innovate at work. Spinuzzi has conducted multiple workplace studies, resulting in several articles and four books: Tracing Genres through Organizations (MIT Press, 2003); Network (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Topsight 2.0 (Urso Press, 2018); and All Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2015). He blogs at spinuzzi.blogspot.com. In this episode of Room 42, we discuss how to best understand how people communicate, coordinate, and collaborate at work. For the last 25 years, Clay Spinuzzi has been conducting qualitative investigations into how people work. Using a qualitative case study approach based in sociocultural theory, Spinuzzi has studied the work of software developers, traffic safety workers, telecommunications workers, freelancers, SEO specialists, and early-stage technology entrepreneurs. Spinuzzi has conducted these investigations using an approach called topsight, which involves collecting qualitative data (observations, interviews, documents and other artifacts), then modeling relationships among them. The result is a robust audience analysis in which investigators better understand the people, tools, and objectives of a given organization as well as places where these people, tools, and objectives conflict or just don't match. This approach is the topic of his book Topsight 2.0, an easy-to-use guide for practitioners and students who want to understand information flow in organizations. In this episode of Room 42, we'll discuss Spinuzzi's research approach, drawing examples from his many studies.

Dawn M. Armfield, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication in the Department of English where she teaches usability, user experience, research methods, visual communication in technical communication, instructional design, travel writing, and prototyping. Her research focus is on human-centered design in emerging, immersive, and embodied technologies with a focus on empathy and ethics. She has published in interdisciplinary fields with emphasis in emerging technologies, visual communications, online collaborations, and educational technologies. Her most recent publication is a co-authored chapter, “Human-centered content design in augmented reality.”​ Prior to becoming a professor, she was an instructional technologist, systems analyst, project manager, and web content developer. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the semantic shift from user to human which has created a space in which the people, the audiences, that we create content for have more depth and diversity than those of us in technical communication used to focus on. In order to create spaces, documents, and environments that appeal to that diversity, we need to look at the ways people connect with one another, the problems that arise in those connections, and the solutions that we can deliver. By incorporating empathy and ethical studies into our practices, we can create information for real humans rather than monolithic audiences.

Dr. Huatong Sun (huatongs@gmail.com) is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Global User Experience Design at University of Washington Tacoma. She studies how to design and innovate for usable, meaningful, and empowering technology to bridge differences in a globalized world. Book author of “Cross-Cultural Technology Design” (2012) and “Global Social Media Design” (2020) from Oxford University Press, she writes for pubic media including Fast Company and The Conversation, speaks at SXSW, STC, UXPA, CHI, and ATTW, and offers workshops at local SIGs and international conferences. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss discursive affordances, network-building, and cultivating fan bases! Social media technologies are often considered a marketing tool in the Technical Communications community. This limits our ability to take into consideration the transformative power to restructure our networks and build new platforms globally that are inclusive. Huatong Sun discusses some of her transnational fieldwork findings elaborated in her recent book “Global Social Media Design.” We review the iterations of her course “social media”, that she has been giving for the past eight years and discuss the strategies of splicing networks and cultivating fan bases with social media technologies that are globally robust, i.e., designing for inclusivity by engaging cultural differences and nourishing differences into the design resources.

Yoel Strimling has been spinning straw into gold for over 20 years, and currently works as the Senior Technical Editor/Documentation Quality SME for CEVA Inc. in Herzelia Pituach, Israel. Over the course of his career, he has successfully improved the content, writing style, and look and feel of his employers’ most important and most used customer-facing documentation by researching and applying the principles of documentation quality and survey design. Yoel is an STC Associate Fellow, a member of tekom Israel, and the editor of Corrigo, the official publication of the STC Technical Editing SIG. As technical communicators, we put a lot of time and effort into creating the highest-quality documentation we can. We write because we want to help our readers do the tasks they need to do or understand the concepts they need to know. But what do we mean when we talk about “documentation quality”? What do our readers mean when they talk about it? And is it the same thing we mean? For the past seven years, Yoel has been researching these questions. As a practicing technical editor, he doesn’t always have time available to investigate what readers want. But as a “reader advocate”, he feels that it is critical that technical communicators have solid and empirical evidence to help them do their jobs better. Yoel’s published research into how readers define documentation quality is being used by technical communication departments around the world to collect meaningful and actionable feedback, and provide reliable methods and metrics for measuring documentation quality.

Dr. Brett Oppegaard, Ph.D., University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, researches digital media at intersections of technical communication, disability studies, mobile technologies, digital inequalities, and journalism. He teaches about news literacy, multimedia production, media accessibility, and media entrepreneurship, including within his two primary areas of scholarly expertise: Locative Media, or place-connected media, and Audio Description, which is the remediation of visual media into audible media for people who are blind or have low-vision. He worked for more than a decade as a staff newspaper writer, including as an arts critic, in the Portland, OR, area. He also has worked with a variety of publications since then, primarily as a freelance writer. He has been the Undergraduate Chair of UH’s Journalism Program since Fall 2019. His research has been supported by the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, and Google, among others. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss Audio Description. Audio Description is the remediation of visual media, such as photographs, into audible media, primarily for the benefit of people who are blind or have low vision. Research about this topic is complex and interdisciplinary, opening many fertile paths of inquiry, from multiple perspectives. Those include research related to compositional strategies, description genres, mediums, media technologies, reception studies, social inclusion, health benefits, etc. As a part of this research, Dr. Oppegaard hosts Descriptathons, which are hackathon-like events, bringing people together to learn about Audio Description basics, practice Audio Description, create audio-described public products, such as audio-described brochures, and simultaneously creating research data about Audio Description processes and products that can be analyzed and reported upon.

Dr. Lucía Dura is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies in the English Department and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She is a border resident with bordered identities and perspectives who enjoys working on collaborative, interdisciplinary projects. Lucía teaches and mentors students in rhetoric and technical writing projects. Her work on positive deviance, intercultural communication, and participatory methodologies foregrounds and leverages the assets of vulnerable populations to solve complex problems. She collaborates on risk communication and change facilitation initiatives with local, national, and international organizations. Her research has yielded numerous publications, presentations, and awards. Lucía co-chairs the Hispanic Servingness Working Group at UTEP and contributes to leadership initiatives. She also represents UTEP at the Graduate Education Advisory Committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and is an advisory board member and chair-elect of the Texas Center for Legal Ethics. In this session, we explore the applications and dimensions of positive deviance, an approach to social and organizational change. Positive deviance asks questions about outliers and exceptions. It prompts us, through asset-based inquiry, to search for solutions that already exist in our communities and systems, but that we tend to overlook. Lucía shares some examples of positive deviance research and practice in the fields of federal probation, education, and healthcare. She also talks about the ways using a positive deviance lens has impacted her daily life both at work and at home as a resident of the largest border metroplex in the world.

Dr. Amanda Licastro has a doctorate in English and recently moved from her position as an Assistant Professor to take on a role as the Emerging and Digital Literacy Designer at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the intersection of technology and writing, including book history, dystopian literature, and digital humanities, with a focus on multimodal composition and Extended Reality. Amanda serves as the Director of Pedagogical Initiatives of the Book Traces project and is co-founder of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy and the Writing Studies Tree. Publications include articles in Kairos, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Communication Design Quarterly, as well as chapters in Digital Reading and Writing in Composition Studies, and Critical Digital Pedagogy. In this episode of Room 42 welook into the story behind the forthcoming edited collection Composition and Big Data co-edited by Amanda Licastro and Ben Miller. The editors took a unique approach to peer review: they engaged the contributing authors in a radical approach to collaboration and cooperation that crossed boundaries, knocked down barriers, and yielded astounding results. Learn how big data is shaping our scholarship, what we need to do now to prepare, and how a collaborative collection of authors can highlight the ethical and practical considerations of applying data analytics to the field of Composition and Rhetoric.

Dr Traci Nathans-Kelly, is currently the Associate Director for the Engineering Communications Program at Cornell University, College of Engineering. Traci has taught technical, business, engineering, and scientific communication courses since 1989. She co-authored IEEE’s “English for Technical Professionals” online course, and she serves on the IEEE Educational Activities Board, the IEEE Continuing Education Committee, and the Editorial Board for IEEE’s Teaching Excellence Hub. Based on her extensive work in the field of presentation design, she co-authored the book,Slide Rules: Design, Build, and Archive Presentations in the Engineering and Technical Fields with Christine Nicometo, published by IEEE-Wiley. Her most recent online certificate for practicing professionals is "Technical Presentations," offered through eCornell. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how to create slides for technical presentations that support you and add value to your message. She is an expert in guiding STEM students in crafting better presentations and adopting habits that help them maximize the value of their slides. There are better and worse ways to calculate the multiple uses that any slide deck may have for a single project. We will discuss how to optimize the design of slides to 1) best support speakers in their live talks, and 2) create slide files that have lasting documentation, archival, or legacy value. Current default slide templates perpetuate the worst practices possible for content developers, audiences, and users alike. Imagine creating slides that not only support speakers in their live talks but have lasting archival value as well. Learn how to put a good presentation together rather than simply creating low value cue cards.

Dr Traci Nathans-Kelly, is currently the Associate Director for the Engineering Communications Program at Cornell University, College of Engineering. Traci has taught technical, business, engineering, and scientific communication courses since 1989. She co-authored IEEE’s “English for Technical Professionals” online course, and she serves on the IEEE Educational Activities Board, the IEEE Continuing Education Committee, and the Editorial Board for IEEE’s Teaching Excellence Hub. Based on her extensive work in the field of presentation design, she co-authored the book,Slide Rules: Design, Build, and Archive Presentations in the Engineering and Technical Fields with Christine Nicometo, published by IEEE-Wiley. Her most recent online certificate for practicing professionals is "Technical Presentations," offered through eCornell. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how to create slides for technical presentations that support you and add value to your message. She is an expert in guiding STEM students in crafting better presentations and adopting habits that help them maximize the value of their slides. There are better and worse ways to calculate the multiple uses that any slide deck may have for a single project. We will discuss how to optimize the design of slides to 1) best support speakers in their live talks, and 2) create slide files that have lasting documentation, archival, or legacy value. Current default slide templates perpetuate the worst practices possible for content developers, audiences, and users alike. Imagine creating slides that not only support speakers in their live talks but have lasting archival value as well. Learn how to put a good presentation together rather than simply creating low value cue cards.

Native to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Dr. Jason Tham is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Prior to working in Texas, Jason lived in Minnesota for 10 years while completing his degrees. Now, Jason teaches user experience research, information design, and digital rhetoric while doing research in technical communication practices, pedagogy, and technology. He is especially interested in how “design thinking” can help bring about meaningful disruptions to the modern workplace and higher education. In his most recent book, Design Thinking in Technical Communication, Jason unpacks the relationship between design-centric methods for strategic problem solving, collaboration, teaching and learning, and socially responsive innovation. With Joe Moses of the University of Minnesota, he co-authored the Collaborative Writing Playbook (link to come), which provides a flexible framework for instructors who assign team based projects using design thinking attributes. Dr. Tham will share some of his research and conclusions from his newly published book, which has become essential reading for instructors, students, and practitioners who want to apply principles of usability and user-centered design to their technical communication processes and deliverables. In his book, he argues that design thinking should be a core methodology and mindset for technical communicators. Thinking like a designer means taking a “radical collaborative” approach––an attribute of design thinking––in college education, research training, and professional development. We'll start at the beginning with a definition of design thinking and its meaning for technical communication contexts, including some of the history and places where it is currently in use in the workplace and in training circles. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss how applying some attributes of design thinking like "empathy" and "radical collaboration" can make us all better technical communicators.

Dr Tim Amidon is an Associate Professor of Digital Rhetoric at Colorado State University and holds appointments within the English Department and the Colorado School of Public Health. His research surrounds the interrelationships of technology, agency, and workplace literacy with focused interests in rhetorics of data, risk communication, intellectual property, and occupational safety and health. His scholarship has appeared in venues such as Communication Design Quarterly, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Hybrid Pedagogy, as well as within proceedings of the International Conference on Design, Usability, and Usability (DUXU) and the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC). In addition, Tim has served as a firefighter/EMT, technical rescuer, fire instructor, and/or fire officer in fire and emergency service organizations for over 20 years. In this episode, we discuss the way emerging technologies are transforming work within the fire and emergency services industry, including insights from an ongoing project funded by the NSF to develop a wearable physiological monitor to improve firefighter safety outcomes. He will also consider how practitioners, designers, and researchers might leverage UX and TPC research to cultivate coalitions for the design and integration of more accessible, equitable, inclusive, and just technologies. What does the sophisticated array of digital technologies—from remote sensors and wearables to drones and data analytics platforms—taken up across industries mean for the future of work? How might these technologies displace the existing tools, practices, and literacies workers coordinate in order to construct knowledge and communicate within various industries? How might these technologies reveal affinities toward and limitations in blue- and white-collar conceptions of work?

Erin Brock Carlson is an Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University, where she teaches Professional Writing and Editing courses, including multimedia writing, technical writing, and writing theory and practice. She earned her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University, an MA in English from Miami University, and a BA in English and Writing, Rhetoric, and Communication from Transylvania University. Her work rests at the intersections of environmental humanities and digital humanities, focusing on the ways that place, technology, and community are wrapped up in one another. Driven by a commitment to investigate the ways that communities can unexpectedly leverage their resources to address wicked problems, her work often utilizes participatory research methods, including photovoice and participatory mapping. She is currently focused on how communities in rural Appalachia are grappling with major economic and environmental changes by leaning into place (with all of its physical, social, and cultural trappings) as a strength for community-building. By treating place as a strength, rather than a weakness, we can re-frame conversations that often trail into stereotypes and generalizations, further reifying problems. In her collaborative project focused on pipeline development in West Virginia, she conducted over 30 interviews with rural residents directly affected by pipeline development on their land, finding that pipeline development is a fraught and often stressful experience, riddled with complex processes and protocols. In this episode of Room 42, we travel the intersection of environmental humanities and digital humanities to discover how technical communicators can be a bridge between divergent perspectives. How we might be able to fill in thick, complex, convoluted scenarios—scenarios like energy development in rural areas, where landowners and energy companies often fail to see eye-to-eye? Lived experiences are often excluded from the larger conversations about issues like energy development and the residents they are supposed to serve. These conversations are often couched in only environmental or economic discourse. This is where the unique skills of technical and professional communicators can create clear and consistent communication between multiple stakeholders and open up a unique opportunity for technical communicators to do community-engaged, meaningful work.

Krista Kennedy is fascinated by the ways that humans work closely with technologies and the rhetorical implications of policies and laws that shape that work. Her experience as a deaf academic informs her current project, which examines intersections of deafness, artificial intelligence, passing, and ethics of medical data collection. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Writing & Rhetoric at Syracuse University, PI of the Disability, Data, and Surveillance Project, affiliated with SU’s Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, and, for the 2020-21 year, NEH Visiting Professor of Writing & Rhetoric at Colgate University. She teaches courses on information design, cultural history of robotics, rhetorics of technology, and professional and technical writing. Noah Wilson is curious about the ways technologies shape our rhetorical actions, particularly how we make connections with other people. He is currently a PhD candidate in Syracuse University’s Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program and a Visiting Instructor of Writing & Rhetoric at Colgate University where he teaches first year writing, rhetorical history and theory, and surveillance rhetorics. His dissertation addresses recent trends in social media content recommendation algorithms that have led to increased political polarization in the United States and the proliferation of radicalizing conspiracy theories such as Qanon and Pizzagate. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the Disability, Data, and Surveillance Project, a joint project of researchers at Syracuse University and Loyola University Chicago, and the results of our ongoing study of algorithmic data collection in compulsory medical wearables. Device manufacturers and other high-tech companies increasingly incorporate algorithmic data surveillance in next-gen medical wearables. These devices, including smart hearing aids, leverage patient data created through human-computer interaction to not only power devices but also increase corporate profit. Although US and EU data protection laws establish privacy requirements for personal information and use, these companies continue to legally rely on patients’ personal information with little notice or education, significantly curtailing the agency of wearers. Join us to learn more about the complexities of algorithmic ecologies in medical wearables and navigating data surveillance disclosure in patient education materials.

Saul Carliner is a professor of educational technology at Concordia University in Montreal, where his teaching and research focus on the design of instructional and informational materials (especially in emerging media), the management of groups that produce these materials, and related issues of policy and professionalism. He has received research funding from SSHRC, Entente Canada-Quebec, Canadian Council on Learning, Society for Technical Communication, and Hong Kong University Grants Council. Also an industry consultant, Carliner has provided strategic consultation in organizational design, program evaluation, and effective instructional and informational design. Among his over 250-plus publications are the upcoming Career Anxiety: Guidance for Tough Times (with Margaret Driscoll and Yvonne Thayer), the best-selling Training Design Basics, award-winning Informal Learning Basics, numerous book chapters, articles, and op-eds and over 50 peer-reviewed publications. He has appeared on CNBC Asia, CTV Montreal, Global National, Globe and Mail, Jerusalem Post, Les Affaires, Montreal Gazette, and the Wall Street Journal. He is vice-president of the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE), Fellow and past board member of the Institute for Performance and Learning, past Research Fellow of the Association for Talent Development, and Fellow and past international president of the Society for Technical Communication. In this episode of Room 42 we have a candid conversation about techniques and strategies that can help relieve career anxiety. If history is any indicator of the future then it stands to reason that the employment environment will continue to change. Sometimes drastically. We touch on factors affecting commerce and how those changes will impact your future employability. We also discuss the skills and credentials you should acquire in order to stay competitive into the future.

Dr. Jack T. Labriola is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication at Kennesaw State University, where he teaches usability testing, information architecture, and the senior capstone design course. He has researched, written, and presented on a variety of topics ranging from a co-edited collection, Content Strategy in Technical Communication with Routledge, to articles on minimalist design aesthetics and mobile user experience, to conference papers on university partnerships and building up student research toolkits. Dr. Labriola’s professional mission is to continue to discover opportunities to research and create better experiences for users in their day-to-day use of technology. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss strategies for searching and finding collaborative projects outside of your comfort zone. We'll also share practical ideas to help advocate for the value you bring to help colleagues in different disciplines see the importance of communication and user experience. The messy world of research can offer you a unique opportunity to break out of your comfort network to expand your knowledge. It can also give you more career agility and, let's face it, it makes things far more interesting.

Heidi Y. Lawrence is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at George Mason University. She has a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech, an MA in English from George Mason, and a BA in English from Mary Washington College. Heidi’s work examines how the tools of rhetoric can be used to better understand and respond to controversial topics about science and medicine in the public sphere. Her monograph, Vaccine Rhetorics, explores what she calls the four primary material exigencies that facilitate and sustain discord about vaccines. Her other published work across a range of scholarly outlets in rhetoric, medicine, and public health further examines how language functions as both a space for understanding controversies as well as an ameliorative path to changing controversial issues in the public sphere. In this episode of Room 42, we have a candid conversation about the realities of authoring and publishing her book. Heidi shares her personal struggles and disappointments as well as life lessons learned along the way. The epic journey to writing and publishing a book about vaccines in a global pandemic is not all fairy tales and happy endings. In her own words: "Unintentionally, 2020 was an opportune year to publish a book about vaccines. When the year began, I thought I was 9 months and a handful of revisions away from a publishable book. Like magic it should all fall into place like a key in a lock. Between life delays, difficult reviews, and the simple fear of writing something crappy, the book (or the 'Voldemort Project' as my husband and I started calling it) was harder, took more time, and was more painful in every way than I ever could have imagined."

Professor Huiling Ding teaches technical communication at North Carolina State University. She is the Director of the MS in Technical Communication program and a University Faculty Scholar. Her research focuses on intercultural professional communication, technical communication, risk communication, and epidemic communication. Her recent projects have been exploring the connections between artificial intelligence, communication technologies, risk communication, and social justice. As the principal investigator of a large multidisciplinary NSF C Accel grant, she has been leading her team to examine how AI tools have been transforming the job market and job screening processes in the U.S. In this episode of Room 42 we discuss the impact of AI on job application materials and strategies. The socio-technological landscape of work has been radically and permanently changed. Ever increasing demands for recruiters to present the exact ideal candidates for job openings has created more reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for pre-screening and matching volumes of candidates against defined criteria. To understand the impacts of emerging AI-augmented pre-hire assessment tools, this talk will examine assessment tools such as applicant tracking systems, resume screeners, and on-demand video interviews. We will also examine assumptions about pre-hire screening criteria and procedures used by technology and the impact of such tools on job application materials and strategies. Event Page: https://www.single-sourcing.com/events/job-search-2-0-artificial-intelligence-impact-in-candidate-pre-screening/

Dr. Sam Dragga is Professor Emeritus of Technical Communication at Texas Tech University (TTU). He is co-author of The Essentials of Technical Communication(Oxford University Press, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021), Reporting Technical Information (Oxford University Press, 2002, 2006), and Editing: The Design of Rhetoric (Baywood, 1989). He was Editor-in-Chief (2016-2020) of Technical Communication the quarterly research journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and series editor of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication (19 titles). He has authored or co-authored a score of articles in journals and collections on such topics as professional ethics and intercultural communication. He is a Fulbright Specialist, a Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), and a recipient of STC’s Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication and the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Best Book in Technical and Scientific Communication and Best Article Reporting Historical Research in Technical and Scientific Communication. He served as president of ATTW (1997-1999) and initiated the organization’s annual conference in 1998. He also served as chair of the TTU Department of English (2002-2012). In this Room 42, we focus on the ethics of researching and publishing in technical communication—issues that might cause anxiety, especially for individuals new to the field or new to publishing. We will consider the perspectives and obligations of authors, journal editors, and manuscript reviewers and examine ethical practices in developing research projects, writing and revising manuscripts, and interacting with editors and reviewers.

Chris Dayley is an assistant professor of English and director of the Master of Arts in Technical Communication program at Texas State University. Chris has over 13 years of professional experience in higher education and his scholarly work has been featured in the academic journals Technical Communication Quarterly and Programmatic Perspectives. Chris’ research focuses on issues of social justice with a specific emphasis on diversity and inclusion in technical and professional communication (TPC) academic programs. Today's technical communication students will become tomorrow's technical communication professionals. Increasing diversity in technical communication academic programs is a very important part of increasing diversity in the field in general. What can academic administrators do to increase diversity in technical communication programs? What can professionals do to help increase diversity in academic programs? How does increasing diversity in the field help technical communication as a profession? In this episode Room 42, we discuss how to increase diversity in the field of Technical and Professional Communications.

Dr. Sara Doan is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches data visualization, information design, and Health and Medicine in Technical Communication. Dr. Doan's previous research on instructor feedback has appeared in IEEE Transactions on Technical Communication; her research on COVID-19 charts is appearing this January in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication. In this session, we talk about some very important lessons learned in a look back at what the COVID crisis has taught us all. We discuss guidelines for creating accurate, accessible, and eye-catching charts about COVID-19, particularly for sharing via social media. There is nothing like a global pandemic to bring to the front and center the need for accurate and understandable graphics.The use of visual aids in communicating important information to a diverse audience is nothing new. We know the importance of citing sources and accuracy, but stunning graphics with colors and lines influence our understanding and can shape behaviours and beliefs. With the advent of Social media and non-traditional news outlets, a new emphasis on stimulating data visualization is first priority. As professional communicators, it is paramount that we understand data visualization so that we can pair our technical accuracy with the human psychology of aesthetics. From good graphics gone bad when taken out of context to blatant manipulations to sway opinion with no foundation in fact. We’ll also talk about the need for us to focus on accessibility and the democratization of information especially in times of crisis.

A panel of academics from Michigan State University -- Ben Lauren, Stuart Blythe, Shannon Kelly, and Kaitlyn Nguyen -- discuss how they developed trauma-informed approaches to research and design practice. Ben Lauren is a songwriter, scholar, and Associate Professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures. Most recently his work has focused on institutional and social change. His first book Communicating Project Management was published by Routledge’s ATTW series. Stuart Blythe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. He teaches a range of courses in the undergraduate program in professional and public writing as well as the graduate program in rhetoric and writing. Shannon Kelly is a doctoral student at Michigan State University in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures. Most recently, her work is focused on institutional change with trauma-informed methods and relationality. As a former assistant writing-program-director, she is also excited about curriculum design and the role of mentorship in how learners learn to teach. Kaitlyn Nguyen is an undergraduate studying Experience Architecture at Michigan State University. Kaitlyn works as a Design Researcher for the MSU Essential Needs portal and a User Interface/User Experience Intern for the MSU Content Studio. She is currently researching how design impacts user interaction and response to products. In this episode, we discuss the SEEN (Supporting Equity in Essential Needs) project at Michigan State University. SEEN is an institutional and organizational change project designed to improve the university's responsiveness to students’ essential needs that came to life through the collaboration of this interdisciplinary group of MSU academics. Learn how practitioners in the field can benefit from working within trauma-informed frameworks and how trauma-informed approaches to design practice can improve organizational change.

Emma Rose has spent her career crossing the academic and industry divide. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma and an Adjunct Associate Professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering at University of Washington Seattle. Her research interests include participatory and human-centered design and developing methods to engage communities and marginalized populations in the design process. She is also the Past Chair of ACM SIGDOC, a professional organization dedicated to the design of communication. Prior to her academic career, she spent over a decade working at a User Experience consultancy helping organizations bring design thinking into their practices and product development. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss the relationship between User Experience and Technical Communication. Are they the same field, do they overlap, or are they distinct? How should we be preparing the next generation of technical communicators to work at the intersection between UX and TC? What skills do professionals need to be successful? In this episode, Dr. Emma Rose discusses the evolving state of UX and Technical Communication. She shares some of her recent research results that examine how the UX industry is changing. She also discusses the specific skills and dispositions early career professionals need to succeed in UX and how that is informing teaching and practice.

Guiseppe Getto is an Associate Professor of Technical and Professional Communication at East Carolina University and is President and Founder of Content Garden, Inc., a digital marketing, content strategy, and UX firm: http://contentgarden.org/. His research focuses on utilizing user experience (UX) design, content strategy, and other participatory research methods to help people improve their communities and organizations. He has published a co-edited collection, Content Strategy in Technical Communication, with Routledge. The findings of his research have been published in many peer-reviewed journals such as IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication; Technical Communication; and Computers and Composition. His work has also appeared in industry-based publications such as Intercom and Boxes and Arrows. In this episode of Room 42, he discusses how technical communicators can create user-focused, context-driven content to improve the customer experience. Technical content is increasingly valuable to organizations as savvy consumers search for reviews, tutorials, and technical specifications for their favorite products and services. Technical communicators exist at the crossroads of the customer journey, where information gathering, buying habits, and loyalty coalesce. But in many organizations, no one is truly in charge of improving the customer experience across all content channels. Someone needs to be. And maybe that someone is you!

Pam Estes Brewer, Mercer University, researches topics related to communication in virtual teams, online teaching, usability, and research methods. She teaches general technical communication courses as well as advanced and graduate courses in usability research, research methods, and international tech comm. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss how industry practitioners, working out on the front lines, can conduct reliable and valid research that can be published and instigate change in the workplace. Practitioners often have not had training in how to conduct reliable and valid research. Pam Estes Brewer explains how you can take your ideas, implement research that is both reliable and valid, and get it published so you can build change and support your career growth.

Samantha Blackmon (she/her) is a gamer/researcher/games researcher who loves playing games with her daughter and talking about games with anyone else who will listen or watch. She is passionate about games and making the games community a more inclusive space. Her research focuses on bringing together the voices of gamers, academics, and games industry folks in order to get a fuller picture of the games community and all of the people who comprise it. Her greatest academic goal is to create scholarship that is informed by and accessible to those outside of the academy, which makes for some pretty non-traditional work. Her recent work has included looking at how to use games in the classroom and a Black Feminist Mixtape analysis of how Black women have affected the video game industry. She is currently working on a project that pays homage to the upcoming 10th anniversary of her blog and podcast, Not Your Mama’s Gamer, and a project that looks at representation and visibility of marginalized people on live streaming platforms. Samantha loves video games, books, crafting, and coffee, definitely coffee. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss how technical communicators can use techniques pioneered and perfected in the games industry in their scholarship, their content projects, and in the classroom. We talk about the importance of reaching your audience, meeting them where they are, so you can reflect and relate to them. We also discuss how lessons from the gaming industry can be useful anywhere people are learning, absorbing, and interacting with content. For example, Samantha talks about how games have a way of "scaffolding their tutorials" so as to promote quick adoption and long term retention in content consumers. In this session, practitioners learn how to take these lessons and apply them in their daily content projects.

Sweta Baniya, is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Professional and Technical writing at Virginia Tech University. Her scholarship centers around the ever evolving, changing, and challenging global issue of natural and man-made disasters, such as earthquakes or climate change. Her research draws upon non-western paradigms into dialogue with contemporary rhetorical framings of natural and man-made disasters to support local and global communities faced with responding to such events. Her work has appeared in Enculturation, Journal of Business and Technical Communications, Journal of Technological Studies. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss the role of transnational publics as well as women in disaster management and disaster response. A former communication practitioner, she shares on how public voices, actions, and transnational activism is something technical communication practitioners can collaborate with in order to support communities suffering during and after a disaster.

Carlos Evia is Professor of Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, where he is affiliated with the Centers for Human-Computer Interaction, Communicating Science, and Humanities. During the 2020-2021 academic year, he is the faculty fellow at El Centro - Hispanic and Latinx Cultural and Community Center. His research and teaching work focuses on planning and developing technology-based content solutions for workplace communication problems, particularly in situations involving multicultural audiences or misrepresented communities. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss the benefits of intelligent content, such as single sourcing, content reuse, and multichannel publishing and how, even in practitioner circles, there is pushback and criticism against some of the tools and standards that technical communicators use to produce and publish intelligent content.

Rebekka Andersen has a Ph.D. in Professional Writing and is an Associate Professor in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis. She teaches courses in professional and technical communication and serves as the Associate Director for Professional Writing. Learn how we can all increase the relevance of research. First, learn how academics can increase the value, relevance, and accessibility of their research for non-academic readers. Then, find out how practitioners can get more benefit from academic research.

Kylie M. Jacobsen is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University. Her research focuses on user experience research methods in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Humanities, and Mathematics (STEAM) environments, specifically analyzing the emotional journey of learning. In this episode, we talk about why technical comprehension improves when you add the A to STEAM.

Dr. Joanna Schreiber is an Associate Professor of Technical and Professional Communication in the Writing and Linguistics Department at Georgia Southern University. Her research interests include project management, technical and professional communication programs, and technical editing. Her work has been published in Technical Communication Quarterly, Technical Communication, and the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. Joanna currently serves as treasurer for the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC). Join us in Room 42 as we discuss futures and foundations in technical and professional communications. By rethinking and re-imagining the traditional processes, an illustration of a range of knowledge and practices that comprise the field emerges. We’ll also explore the evolution of editing, how diversity and inclusion style changes have affected technical editing work, and editorial processes for improving accessibility. We will be introduced to a new book coming out Spring 2021 and you will be invited to be a part of new research beginning this Fall! Time permitting, we’ll also talk about one of Joanna's other passions, her rescue pups!

Kirk St.Amant is a Professor and the Eunice C. Williamson Endowed Chair of Technical Communication at Louisiana Tech University, and he is also the Director of Louisiana Tech’s newly formed Center for Health and Medical Communication. His research focuses on the psychology of usability and applying cognitive models to understand audience expectations and user preferences in different settings. In Room 42, he’ll be discussing prior work he has done in examining psychology, usability, and design and talk about a new approach he’s been working with, called “scalable usability,” in which he combines ideas from intercultural communication with concepts from cognitive psychology to identify usability expectations in different contexts.

Lisa Melonçon is a Professor of Technical and Professional Communication at the University of South Florida and incoming interim department chair in English. Her research focuses on programmatic issues in technical and professional communication as well as in user experience specific to health and medical settings. In Room 42, she'll be discussing a longitudinal research project (Patient Experience Design) on information design and patient education materials that has led to new insights into how technical communicators can understand foundational concepts of audience and contexts.

Why should practitioners care about research and journals? Ah, that’s the question, isn’t it? George Hayhoe worked a technical communicator in industry for 17 years, taught for 19 years, and has always spent part his career editing journals like STC’s Technical Communication and the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. He has co-authored and co-edited three books, including “A Research Primer for Technical Communication.” George says that these three things—professional practice, teaching, and journal editorship—have informed his approach to the role of the technical communicator. In this session, learn more about how practitioners and researchers work together to advance the profession. We’re looking forward to exploring the answer to this question and others in Room 42.

Remote work has become the norm during the global health crisis and it isn’t going away any time soon. Many companies are discovering productivity increases even with their staff out of the office and are beginning to announce to their employees they may be working from home from now on. While hundreds of blogs and articles on working remotely have sprouted up as everyone throws in their 2 cents, Dr. Pam Estes Brewer has dedicated the past 15 years researching and publishing on remote teaming and has accumulated a vast depth of knowledge in the field. Join us at the TC Dojo as we talk about this rapid growing trend and how it impacts the organizations and the individual as we move forward post crisis. How do we overcome challenges that may hold us back or cause a failure? What do we need to have in place for a winning strategy? How do we abate our own fears? If you have questions, chances are Dr Pam has answers.