It’s been some
time since I’ve written an update for this blog. This is, perhaps due to the
excitement that is inherent in the final months of a PhD program, or of how
busy it can be preparing a resource as long-lived and storied as the OWL for
its eventual hand-off to the next generation of OWL leadership. Either way, as
the time runs out on my time sitting in the OWL’s nest and serving as the
content coordinator, I wanted to write one final update about the usability
work that we’ve been doing at the OWL and it’s purposeful transition to
focusing on user experience design (UxD).
When this project
started its planning last spring, I was very excited to be a part of the
process. I was, of course, somewhat tentative about my own involvement as I was
unsure of what the 2014-2015 academic year would hold for me. In the end, I
wouldn’t be able to participate as fully as I had hoped—being distracted by an
aggressive dissertation timeline and an even more aggressive job hunt. However,
I have recently had time to reflect on this process and on my own, somewhat
tertiary involvement in it. The catalyst for this reflection was a group
presentation at Computers & Writing 2015,[1]
and has made me consider three possible implications of the work that was
carried out by Prof. Salvo’s ENGL 515:
Advanced Professional Writing students.
The first and
perhaps most immediate implication is that OWLs, usability studies, and UxD
implementation can be an important space for the continued professionalization
of undergraduate students. For undergraduate students it is the opportunity to
work on an intensive project with a real world client, an opportunity that can
often be missing from the undergraduate experience. Working with a real client,
as opposed to the professor serving as a simulated one, can impart a number of
skills on the individuals lucky enough to partake in the experience. The
students’ in the 515 course gained skills with problem/solution negotiation,
meeting with a client to better understands needs/wants, developing novel
solutions, presenting these solutions to a client, and responding to client
feedback. During our Computers & Writing presentation, Mr. Yim reflected on
what he had learned during this project and it was abundantly clear that this
project had given him the opportunity to practice the skillsets he had learned
about in his other coursework in a way that gave him real and marketable
experience. In short, it helped to serve as an educational component that has
differentiated him from a number of other undergraduates with the same degree.
The second
possible implication relates to interdisciplinary research. It is very like
that the work carried out in the Advanced
Professional Writing course can have impacts in the area of second language
writing and in the area of intercultural rhetoric (IR). Based on my own
experiences as the OWL Coordinator and based on presenting on OWL-related
research at conferences in China and the United States, there is a great deal
of interest in OWLs in the traditionally defined EFL context; that is, outside
of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I have been approached
by writing centers professionals from contexts ranging from Poland to Japan
asking about what it takes to start up and OWL, how best to manage one, content-development
best practices and how to talk to central administration about OWL needs. While
I have often done my best to speak to these areas based on my experiences, I
have been unable to point them to other, published resources to help them bolster
their case. This is, in part, because OWL scholarship has not kept up with its
global expansion. Given this sizable gap, I believe that the marriage of UxD,
SLW, and IR could provide valuable insights that could inform best practices
and equip these professionals with the means to advocate for much needed
resources. A possibility for this is to examine how L2 student-writers find and
interact with OWL resources while engaged in a writing task, and then to look
at how this information is parsed and deployed paying particular attention to
issues of access and understanding related how the material is presented and
organized on the OWL site being used. This data could then be interpreted
through the lens of IR using studies such as McBride (2008),[2]
which examined how expectations of web design where largely based on
experiences grounded in local-rhetorical considerations. Work of this nature
could then extend knowledge in all three areas. It is my hope to continue
contributing to this underexplored area when I reach my new institution in the
fall.
Finally, there
was an implication that I hadn’t considered before Computers & Writing, and
that is the value that exists in public work. Throughout this process we have
attempted to share as much of the research as possible with the public. This
has taken the form of this blog and the posts by various stakeholders in the
work, as well as the final recommendations report from the 515 class. This is
rather valuable, as it doesn’t just present the preened version of events that
may appear in a published article. Rather, is has shown the struggles,
challenges, and opportunities that have arisen throughout the process; and,
this can serve as a useful object lesson for anyone hoping to carrying out the
same or similar work in the future. Internally, it has also led us to consider
how we might share the behind-the-scenes work in order to better inform best
practices for other OWL designers and developers. There are a number of forms
that this may take (e.g., sharing our development manuals and style guides).
However, that is a conversation that will be held largely by the new wave of
Purdue OWL leaders. As a soon-to-be OWL alumnus, I look forward to its
outcome.
[1] Conard-Salvo, T., Yim, A., Paiz, J.M., & Spronk,
C. (2015). UxD and online writing labs: Meeting the needs of a changing global
audience. Presented at Computers & Writing 2015, Menomonie, WI.
[2] McBride, K. (2008). English web page use in an EFL
setting: A contrastive rhetoric view of the development of information
literacy. In U. Connor, E. Nagelhout, & W. Rozyci (eds.), Contrastive Rhetoric: Reaching to
Intercultural Rhetoric (219-240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
