A DWRL Practicum Online Module by Abby Burns. As a hard-of-hearing instructor who struggles intermittently with listening fatigue, there are days when keeping up with class discussion eats away at all of my energy (or requires more energy than I have), diminishing my capacity to respond in real time. One...
Student Essay AI Co-Writing Public Demonstration
This is a small public demonstration of artificial intelligence (AI) co-writing in classroom contexts. The essays collected here respond to a proposal writing assignment assigned as part of the first-year composition course at the University of Texas at Austin. Each sample essay includes the final revised essay and all prompts...
Data Visualization: On and Off the Screen
It’s easy to consider digital rhetoric and writing in terms of always-advancing computer technologies. This isn’t inaccurate, and keeping our fingers on the pulse regarding the rhetorical affordances of new software makes for innovative digital writing, research, and pedagogy. At the same time, however, it’s helpful to remember that digital...
Under the Overpass
Growing up in the suburbs of Houston, I didn’t really encounter a lot of people who were homeless. After moving to Austin to begin my academic studies, I became much more exposed to this section of the community’s demographic. It’s almost impossible to walk around without passing by someone who...
Accessible Data Visualizations
Are you reading this blog post from computer screen or an screen reader? Did you need to adjust the font or text size, screen brightness, or filter the interface through a browser extension or rely on an app like Accessibility to access this information? In her entry on "Access" in Keywords...
When Data Visualization Goes Wrong and Numbers Mislead
Source image: The Most Misleading Charts of 2015 Fixed on Quartz To some students and readers, one of the rhetorical effects of data visualization is that the mere presence of a pie chart, graph, or timeline on a page confers “legitimacy” to an argument. At worse, this gesture attempts to...
Managing Attention in the Classroom with Distraction
Two of the more ubiquitous problems instructors face today are, on the one hand, the pervasive distraction of smartphones, and on the other hand, the inability to gauge a student's comprehension of classroom material in the moment. Although the latter issue long precedes the emergence of the former, these are...
Machine as Organism: Technology, Biology, and Collective
The constant increases in technological capacity, prevalence of automation and machine assistance, and the advancement of bio-tech, artificial intelligence, and medical technologies, expedite the tendency to view the issue of human subjectivity through a dichotomy of man/machine. This framing pre-inscribes a frictional relationship between man and machine, as if machines...
Workshop Recap: Overdubbing Audio
The DWRL's new recording room saw its first action in the Overdubbing Audio Workshop held this past Friday. Will Burdette was at the helm, and he began by instructing participants on both audio recording equipment and strategies, with particular focus on recording in studio environments. He then provided those present...
Visualizing Data with Google Maps
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text class="cs-ta-center"]Visualization: Sierra Mendez. Text: Amy Tuttle.[/cs_text][cs_text]It's hard to believe that at one time, map ownership was a privilege reserved for the wealthiest members of a society. But thanks to modern surveying...