Season 1 | Episode 8: "Multimediating"
This episode of Zeugma brings together a number of elements and subjects: First comes an interview about tactical media and digital activism with Dr. Rita Raley, Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Next, the University of Louisville's Ryan Trauman and Harley Ferris explore ways of incorporating audio assignments into undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses. Finally, we consider the productive forms of risk and failure that come with bringing new media into such courses, with various members of the DWRL offering their own experiences of techno-pedagogical failure.
You can stream the episode using the player below; you can download it via iTunes or our LibSyn profile.
Episode Co-producers: Axel Bohmann, Eric Detweiler, Hala Herbly, and Andy Uzendoski
This episode of Zeugma brings together a range of scholars, subjects, and media. We take up this relative disparateness as a challenge--a chance to put various discussions of various media into conversation, or what we dubbed "multimediating." At the broadest level, we consider the pedagogical implications and applications of new and "tactical" media inside and outside the classroom.
First, the DWRL's Trevor Hoag interviews Dr. Rita Raley, an associate professor of English at UC-Santa Barbara. Dr. Raley was the main speaker at the DWRL's 2013 Speaker Series, where she gave a talk entitled "From Creative Cloning to Where-Next: Tactical Media as Speculative Practice." In her related interview with Trevor, she discusses how tactical media have been used in student activism, as well as ways of making students more aware of how their information gets used and recirculated in digital spaces.
Next up is a guest contribution from two PhD students in composition at the University of Louisville: Harley Ferris and Ryan Trauman. They offer strategies and justifications for implementing audio assignments in undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses.
Finally, we consider some of the risks that come with bringing media--tactical, audio, and otherwise--into the classroom. More specifically, we gather together some DWRLers' thoughts about and stories of pedagogical failure. We start with one of the lab's project leaders drawing insights from Judith Halberstam's book The Queer Art of Failure, then turn to four brief narratives of techno-pedagogical failure. We present these tales not to scare listeners away from using technology in the classroom, but to acknowledge that failures can occur without destroying whole semesters--and can in fact be productive.
Here are links to a few of the highlights from this week's episode.
Currents in Electronic Literacy
The lab's digital journal, which in spring 2013 featured the full version of Trevor's interview with Rita Raley.
"Tactical Media as Speculative Practice"
A link to the full audio for Dr. Raley's talk at the DWRL's 2013 Speaker Series.
Ryan Trauman's blog on "the intersections of digital scholarship, new media, and emerging publishing technologies."
A repository of lesson plans crafted by DWRL staffers.
This episode features music from Aesthetic Evidence and Maciej Bether. All music obtaind via Jamendo and used under a Creative Commons license.