Scholarship most broadly defined is evidence of a life committed to learning, and so goes hand-in-hand with the life of teaching, critical enquiry, and investigation. Chaucer famously describes his Oxford Scholar as a master of both: “Sounding in moral vertu was his speeche, / And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.” As I entered graduate school at Baylor, English departments across the country were beginning to champion not only graduate teaching but graduate scholarship, presenting at conferences on authors you were just introduced to the previous semester. Now after a decade in the classroom, I’ve come to understand that teaching and learning are not separate and distinct states but parts of an ongoing—sometimes recursive—process, requiring equal parts attention and humility. Scholarship then is better understood as a path or a journey than as a list of achievements but the following sections from my vita offer a quick survey of scholarly work “available for review, inspection, and criticism.”
PUBLICATIONS
“This I Believe College Writing Curriculum.” With Cole Bennett. This I Believe.org. 2007.
“Old Wine in New Wineskins? Hybrid Teaching and the Humanities.” Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2007. Ed. C. Crawford. Chesapeake, VA: AACE, 286-90.
“A Thousand Years in Thirty Virtual Days: Summer Online Courses and the Sophomore Survey.” The Texas Journal of Distance Learning 2.2 (2005): 36-43.
“A Thousand Years in Thirty Virtual Days: Summer Online Courses and the Sophomore Survey.” Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2005. Ed. C. Crawford. Chesapeake, VA: AACE, 351-7.
Tucker, G., R. Ashlock and K. Dickson. “Using a Brain Research Based Learning Cycle Model to Engage the Online Learner.” Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2005. Chesapeake, VA: AACE, 635-38.
CONFERENCES
National and international juried papers designated with an *asterisk.
*Conference of College Composition and Communication, New Orleans April 2008
“Teaching the Audio Essay: Podcasting and Praxis in the This I Believe Curriculum”
*Conference of College Composition and Communication, New York March 2007
“Framing the Other: Satirical Analysis from Swift to Colbert”
*Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, San Antonio March 2007
“Old Wine in New Wineskins? Hybrid Teaching and the Humanities”
Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Abilene September 2006
Chair, “The Future of Literature and Composition Online”
South Central Modern Language Association, Houston October 2005
“Between the Garden and the City: Pope’s ‘Ode on Solitude’”
*Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, Phoenix March 2005
“A Thousand Years in Thirty Virtual Days: Summer Online Courses and the Sophomore Survey”
Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Oklahoma City October 2004
“‘To Eclipse the Phoenix’: Christian Pedagogy in Online Courses”
South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Santa Fe February 2004
“Fiddlers, Bricklayers, and Poets: Scriblerian Patronage in the Shadow of Burlington House”
*Literary London: Representations of London in Literature, London July 2002
“Housing the Poet: Gay’s Trivia and the Topography of Patronage”
*American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, New Orleans April 2001
“Approaching the Metropolis: Immigration in the Development of Post-Fire London”
South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Shreveport February 1999
“Gay’s Descent into the City: The Epic Journey of Walking across the Street” 24th Annual
Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Dallas October 1998
“Sir Epicure Mammon: Classical and Christian Satire in The Alchemist”
South Central Renaissance Conference, Waco April 1998
“Commodifying Eden: The Intrusion of Colonial Commerce into Marvell’s ‘Bermudas’”
South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, San Antonio February 1998
“Hypocrisy Unmasked: Cosmetic Layers in The Man of Mode” 23rd Annual
Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago November 1997
“Mountebanks of the Market and Brokers of the Stage: Men of Business in Volpone”
PRESENTATIONS
Adams Center, “Exploring Podcasting at ACU” August 2007
Adams Center Podcast, “Potential in Podcasting Pedagogy,” iTunes U May 2007
Adams Center, Summer Stipend Report February 2007
“Beyond the Hype of Hybrid Teaching”
Adams Center, Podcasting Pilot December 2006
“This I Believe: Podcasting Belief”
English Department, TechTeaching Lunch November 2005
“Palm PDA Training for English Faculty”
University Faculty Meeting, with Carol Williams October 2004
“Distance Learning at ACU”
Adams Center, Distance Education panel, with Rodney Ashlock October 2004
“Creating an ACU Summer Online Course”
Adams Center, Summer Stipend Report March 2004
“Teaching Abroad: Instructor’s Notebook for Humanities in Oxford”
English Department, TechTeaching Lunch October 2003
“Life after the Lab Upgrade”
English Department, TechTeaching Lunch December 2002
“Plagiarism and the Challenge of Digital Integrity”
English Department, TechTeaching Lunch April 2002
“Teaching Comp and Lit in a Smart Classroom”
Conferences Overview
One part of my own scholarly pilgrimage then lies in a series of promising beginnings. During my time here at ACU, I’ve presented regularly at regional, national, and international conferences on topics ranging from eighteenth-century poetry to online pedagogy. Not surprisingly, my early work upon arriving ABD has followed the final stages of research and writing for my dissertation on the satirist John Gay, but more recently has followed my reading and study of distance education.
Presenting papers at conferences, both on literary and pedagogical research, has provided one stimulus to develop my thinking and expertise through interaction with other scholars. I’ve received both encouragement to further work and publication as well as public challenges of claims or assumptions in these venues. Presentations in my dissertation area have put me in touch with leading scholars in the field. Lunch conversations with colleagues that had previously been only names in a bibliography provide a more immediate sense of contributing to a larger discussion within the discipline.
In 2003 Nancy Shankle encouraged me to attend my first Conference of College Composition and Communication to hear sessions focused on writing and technology. The CCCC (or the 4 Cs) proved to be an innovative group of instructors at all levels eager to share approaches to teaching and reflect on the changing state of the discipline. Since this is also a conference typically attended by others in the department, it has also provided me the opportunity to travel with colleagues and reflect on our teaching sitting in sessions as well as over lunch or waiting for a plane. In September I received word that next spring I’ll again be presenting at the CCCC with Cole Bennett on the curriculum we developed for the national This I Believe website.
Finally, I’ve appreciated opportunities to attend and present at national and international conferences on technology and teaching like EDUCAUSE and SITE. My first involvement with the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education came through Gary Tucker and the encouragement of the Adams Center after my first semester as Researcher in Residence. In addition to presenting papers, I have been able to attend energizing sessions on online gaming and literary instruction and hybrid teaching alongside less conventional ones promoting electronic textbook distribution for cell phones and the like. Looking back on so many of these conferences, I can identify large and small ways each has shaped my approach to teaching and scholarship. I have included successful proposals of recent work in both areas in Appendix M chosen in open, peer-reviewed calls for papers and panels.
Literary Research
Highlights from my first eight years include the opportunity to participate with scholars in my primary research area at the first international Literary London Conference in Greenwich in 2002 and the previous year at the national conference for the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) in New Orleans. The first focused on “interdisciplinary studies in the representation of London” across periods medieval to postmodern, while the annual ASECS meeting is equally interdisciplinary in approach within the bounds of the “long eighteenth century,” roughly 1650-1800. I’ve also committed to longer-term involvement with regional conferences in my discipline, the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SCSECS) and the Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, acting as the Local Arrangements Co-Chair for the SWCCL in Abilene in the fall of 2006 (see sample conference paper in Appendix N).
One tension I’ve noticed in my literary research is between my specialized disciplinary training in the work of an author or literary approach and the generalist focus of my teaching at ACU. As I finished my dissertation, reading John Gay’s poetry against the explosion of urban development in London after 1666, I was part of a similar surge of interest mapping London’s cultural and literary topographies. The conference in London revealed that much of the most exciting work in my area depended on significant travel allowances or proximity to archives in Britain. Teaching a single class in my area every two years didn’t seem sufficient to continue contributing meaningfully in my dissertation area. The recent resurgence of our graduate program in English along with the emergence of digital archives of primary documents may resolve this tension in the near future.
Pedagogical Research
After completing my dissertation, I have pursued a secondary interest in pedagogical research on teaching with technology and distance education. My personal interest in technology led me to investigate Blackboard its first semester at ACU in 2000 and experiment with moving reading journals and response essays online in 2001. However, it wasn’t until my work with Summer Online in 2004 that I began to see the scholarship of teaching as a viable direction for future research. At a school the size of ACU, I would be able to share research with the campus and a growing audience of wired educators rather than writing articles for a couple dozen specialists worldwide.
Institutional support for this scholarship has been available by way of the Researcher in Residence position with the Adams Center in 2004 and a Summer Stipend in 2006. In my role with the Adams Center, I presented research on the function of time in the online environment at the national Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education that then appeared in the conference proceedings. Following our second summer teaching 221 Online, I updated this article and it appeared in 2005 in the Texas Journal of Distance Learning, a peer-reviewed publication sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) (see article in Appendix O). My 2007 presentation at SITE on research into hybrid teaching has been expanded and sent to TJDL and is currently under review (see manuscript in Appendix O).
My on-campus presentations also center on teaching and technology. In a series of departmental round-tables beginning in 2002, I’ve presented to the English faculty and our graduate students on the explosion of full-text resources available for literary and pedagogical research as well as technology topics more directly related to teaching, including training in Blackboard and teaching in our smart classrooms and labs. Over the same period, my research into distance learning theory has led to a number of presentations for the university faculty and second-generation course designers in the Summer Online program (see slides from hybrid presentation in Appendix Q).
One other curious beginning in my interest in online learning was a 2005 entry in the Blackboard Bbionic Course Contest. As the process of course development and revision for moving Major British Writers I online took almost an entire calendar year, writing both the curriculum and designing accompanying learning objects, I was eager to assess how our efforts compared to best practices in the larger distance education community. In January of 2005, Blackboard, Inc. sponsored the Bbionic Course Contest “to help cultivate innovations in e-learning and . . . recognize and reward faculty and instructional designers who create technologically rich and pedagogically sound online courses.” Before leaving to teach in Oxford that spring, I prepared the contest application with the help of George Saltsman. In March, I was informed that after a review by a panel of “experts in the field of e-learning” our course had been named a finalist (see abridged contest entry and Adrian Alleyne letter in Appendix R).
I don’t want to press this too hard as “scholarship”; however, the peer review mechanism offers some external verification of the quality of our product. As the Adams Center’s definition of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning concludes, “The scholarship of teaching and learning opens the classroom door and creates a culture that values teaching. Like traditional research, it is made public, subjected to peer review and used by other members of the scholarly community.” As a result of the Bbionic contest, I was invited to the 2005 Blackboard Users Conference where our course would be honored at a reception as one of the finalists (I was unable to attend due to depleted travel funds). Then in 2006 and 2007, I have been asked to evaluate other exemplary courses and provide feedback on course design and overall effectiveness to participants.
One other publication that may need some context is the This I Believe College Writing Curriculum I co-wrote with Cole Bennett (see Appendix P). In the fall of 2006, as I taught the essay for the first time, I contacted This I Believe, Inc. to solicit permissions, if needed, for a series of podcasts based on the program. The Outreach Director was very encouraging in this project and early work with KACU on airing these essays locally. One out-growth of that first conversation was my offer to produce a college-level curriculum to complement assignments and materials already online for high school teachers. When Cole Bennett later asked about teaching the essay in the spring, I suggested he work with me on the curriculum as well, bring ing his background in composition theory to the project. The following spring we developed the curriculum and worked with TIB, Inc. this past summer to prepare it for online publication, which should appear this fall <http://thisibelieve.org/educationoutreach.html>. The collaborations with Cole and Mary Jo Gediman, the outreach director, have been invaluable and the three of us are looking forward to formally launching this curriculum in a CCCC presentation in the spring (see Gediman letter in Appendix P).
Ongoing Research and Support
Finally, this academic year I will be serving again as Researcher in Residence in the Adams Center. I’ll lead the Podcasting Support Team as I work with 10 colleagues to finalize projects and begin developing content to support teaching, training, and spiritual formation across campus. My broader focus will be to communicate research into best practices in learning object design to faculty interested in developing course content for distribution on iTunes U. This process began in May with an interview for the Adams Center podcast Potential in Podcasting Pedagogy emphasizing my work on audio essay assignments. Over the next year, I will continue to meet with the iPhone advisory team led by Kevin Roberts to consider future implications of faculty research into podcasting and the iPhone.