Exploring Two Decades evaluating Digital Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion (in the Humanities)Dr. Cheryl E. BallAssociate Professor of Digital Publishing StudiesWest Virginia University

@s2ceball

nice Brown, MFA in late 90s, postmodern literary theory > HT theoryended up in e-lit (1st ETD): ETD (sciences) and e-lit work pushed T&P changes in digital writing.

Background

In this talk: outline field of digital writing studies to trace changes in T&P practices and guidelines.

Kairos is fulcrum for T&P changes in digital writing

History: 1996 (not first, but longest - 20th anniv), grad students, HT theory, completely online, webtexts Independent, open-access (libre), collab peer review10-15% acceptance rate (could talk all day about how)

Names for this Fieldcomputers and compositioncomputers & writingnew media compositiondigital writingdigital rhetoricdigital literaciestechno-pedagogyViews from a Distance - a word-cloud based webtext on the disciplinary history of writing studies by Derek Mueller. (http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/16.2/topoi/mueller/)

primary audience of Kairos after MFA, PhD in RTC (intersects: RC, TC, PW, CW) RQs: how rhetorical writing makes meaning and is taught through and with digital technologies

field is now dated back to 1975 when the first article about c&c came out: Ellen W. Nold's Fear and Trembling: The Humanist Approaches the Computer published in CCC. First journal, C&C, started in 1983. Kairos, then, comes along when the field was established but with the advent of the Web. other journals were also doing Web-based work, or even networked-writing work (Postmodern Culture, 1990, email), many in sciences, but sharing written text, print-like scholarship in the same tradition as ever.

This is why Kairos is unique: webtexts, from the beginning

SHOW EXAMPLES

Tenure Issues

Not surprisingly, getting tenure by publishing webtexts has always been at the forefront of authors and editors minds.

apocryphal stories, turn out true: Marcy Bauman (2002), Dan Anderson (2003), Ray Seimens.

first issue dedicated to tenure in digital scholarship: Spring 1997.

Early Digital Tenure GuidelinesCCCC Position Statement on Promotion and Tenure Guidelines for Work with Technology (1998)

Candidate should: Educate othersExplain their work in terms of traditional scholarshipNetwork with technologists

even tho guidelines existed prior to the three examples I mentioned earlier, they werent always helpful because (1) incumbent on candidate, (2) external evaluators not always called (and not many of those), (3) local guidelines didnt accommodate

> CCCC tenure narratives

T&P Narratives (2001)http://www.ncte.org/cccc/committees/7cs/tenurepromotioncases

http://www.uc.edu/journals/composition-studies/issues/cccc-data.html

2005 study (now being redone) showed that NO TT scholars in digital writing studies got tenure based on webtextual work. Only one or two published a digital piece pre-tenure.

full screen of tenure portfolio 09 @ ILSTU

why digital tenure portfolio? (webtexts and OA work)(Editor of Kairos for 8 years by then; my first publication - elite - was in it)(> ALL T&P applications for CAS are required to be electronic, starting Fall 2014)

other schools: Findlay, Kent State

writing about webtextsinfrastructure & metadata projectsgrants (tool-building)

Although less and less of my scholarship is in webtextual form, its taking three radically different directions: blogs, columns, and alternative publication venues digital project administration born from grants, which produces white papers and tools print-based articles (that I cross-publish on my OA website) on scholarly publishing

THIS IS WHERE DH PROJECTS COME IN

Rise of Digital Humanitiestraditional (online) scholarship about DHDH projects (but not counted)tools (Zotero, etc.)grants (ODH)collaboration (in lone-genius fields)collections/archives (NINES, etc.)public humanities (social media & open peer review, etc.)

circa 2011, began DH takeover of MLA by then, lots of print-like scholarship about DH, and lots of DH projects, but latter didnt count for tenure.

PROBLEM: still counting in re traditional forms of scholarship (e.g., Todd Taylor vs. Bump Halbritter) Lee & Selfe article//WVU English rewrites

Updated Guidelines (2013)for institutionsfor committeesfor T&P candidatesMLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Mediahttps://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital

Like AHA recently did, all of these organizations semi-regularly update their guidelines to accommodate changes in genres, technologies, and processes used in digital scholarship.

> GO briefly to MLA site

Documenting & Explaininga sample video

- story of digital portfoliochange in tenure guidelinesworking AGAINST MLA wiki genres

Remaining issues in T&Prhetorical & aesthetic reading practicestechnological understanding (from readers)contracting valid external readerstenure guidelines that favor print-like workpeer-review locations for media-rich projectsdesign-editing knowledge & platforms for digital projects

i can talk at length about rhetorical reading strategies. (most of my scholarship)

Vegahttp://vegapublish.com

Cheryl E. Ball@s2ceballhttp://ceball.comThank you

job portfolio @ MTU 033rd-year review & job portfolio @ USU 06tenure portfolio @ ILSTU 09

At each school, I had a different need for presenting my materials for the job market and for tenure committees.

redesign of tenure portfolio, post-tenure & again on the 2012 job market

And, because I couldnt resist playing up my personality even amidst making the design more professional and updated to mid-2010s design standards,

I have 6 head shots that rotate, each with different expressions. I have always said that people need to know what theyre getting when they get me, and my portfolio is how I express my work all in a single place.