Teaching Overview

My ped­a­gog­i­cal inter­ests mir­ror my research inter­ests. I’m inter­ested in teach­ing mod­ern web devel­op­ment prac­tices that encour­age my stu­dents to build new infor­ma­tion infrastructures—to build new ways of under­stand­ing the world with web tools. I see web devel­op­ment as a mod­ern form of rhetoric, and I view my stu­dents as mod­ern rhetoricians.

The scope of this teach­ing ranges from research meth­ods, to copy­writ­ing, to data­base design, to pro­gram­ming, to crit­i­cal the­ory. Below are lists of classes and work­shops I have taught or helped teach. My teach­ing phi­los­o­phy is also included.

Classes Taught

The Infor­ma­tion Society

Infor­ma­tion Divides and Dif­fer­ences in a Mul­ti­cul­tural Society

Pub­lic Rela­tions for Infor­ma­tion Agencies

Pub­lic Speaking

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Theory

Infor­ma­tion Architecture

JavaScript and Doc­u­ment Object Model Script­ing for the Web

Online Tools for Universities

Teach­ing Philosophy

Dur­ing my time as an instruc­tor, I have moved away from pre­scrib­ing one teach­ing phi­los­o­phy to any class­room. The dif­fer­ences of each unique group of stu­dents, instruc­tors, and envi­ron­ments call for a flex­i­ble approach to teach­ing that rec­og­nizes the sit­u­at­ed­ness of each classroom—different stu­dents (and instruc­tors) have dif­fer­ent needs. Per­haps I believe this is so because of the vari­ety of classes that I have enjoyed teach­ing: classes that span sub­ject areas from pub­lic speak­ing to infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy to media design. As such, my pri­mary goal is to enter each class­room with flex­i­bil­ity. Yet as an instruc­tor of both prac­ti­cal and crit­i­cal skills, I have tended to value ped­a­gogy in two areas. The first pro­vides stu­dents with a rhetor­i­cal sen­si­bil­ity that pro­motes adapt­abil­ity to a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions. The sec­ond asks stu­dents to develop a crit­i­cal appa­ra­tus which val­ues active engage­ment with civic problems.

The first area—providing a rhetor­i­cal sensibility—emphasizes the impor­tance of incul­cat­ing skills that encour­age stu­dents to appre­ci­ate and react to the sit­u­at­ed­ness of a vari­ety of prob­lems. In this area, I imag­ine skills allied with applied com­mu­ni­ca­tion: like pub­lic speak­ing and writ­ing. Here, I strive to teach skills that can be adapted to a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances. Dur­ing one for­mer class, I was charged with teach­ing a vari­ety of infor­ma­tion design skills. I empha­sized tech­niques that could be uses to solve infor­ma­tion design prob­lems rather than pro­vide ready-made solu­tions to context-specific prob­lems. For exam­ple, in addi­tion to learn­ing how to develop an effec­tive web-based pre­sen­ta­tion, stu­dents learned how to reverse engi­neer exist­ing web-based pre­sen­ta­tions. Instead of sim­ply pro­duc­ing one pre­sen­ta­tion, stu­dents were given an adapt­able tech­nique that could be altered and adapted in the future. I value this approach when teach­ing prac­ti­cal skills because it encour­ages stu­dents to respond to an unpre­dictable future.

The sec­ond area—developing a crit­i­cal apparatus—provides a com­ple­men­tary phi­los­o­phy. While I believe that stu­dents need to be equipped to respond to a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions, I also believe that they should also be able to cri­tique the nature of those sit­u­a­tions. I imag­ine teach­ing skills that enable stu­dents to ask ques­tions about why their rhetor­i­cal sen­si­bil­ity is effec­tive. In other words, stu­dents should be able to ques­tion the cul­tural log­ics that enable effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For instance, I imag­ine a class­room in which we might dis­cuss how the abil­ity to craft effec­tive speeches in a work­place simul­ta­ne­ously depends on an insti­tu­tion that val­ues clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the sake of eco­nomic effi­ciency. I imag­ine a class­room in which we dis­cuss how those same speeches are then ana­lyzed and rewrit­ten in ways that would sup­port val­ues and beliefs that reflect morals that are more civi­cally grounded. I believe this sec­ond skill is impor­tant because it helps pro­mote an active com­mu­nity: a com­mu­nity pre­pared to envi­sion how we live together as human beings. Not one that sim­ply goes through the motions of engag­ing in soci­ety, but one that con­tin­u­ally engages soci­ety anew.

I see myself as an active par­tic­i­pant in these class­rooms and not just as an instruc­tor. I rec­og­nize and appre­ci­ate the fact that my stu­dents bring insight and valid per­spec­tives with them into the class­room. One of my goals is to encour­age these insights so that my classes, as a group, can engage and learn more from each other. This is not to say that I don?t rec­og­nize the respon­si­bil­ity of pro­vid­ing direc­tion and rec­og­niz­ing my own exper­tise as an instruc­tor. But I believe I teach my classes bet­ter because I want to learn from my stu­dents in order to con­tinue my own devel­op­ment as a par­tic­i­pant in a civi­cally engaged com­mu­nity. For instance, as some­one who teaches rapidly evolv­ing technology-centered classes, I know that many of my stu­dents bring valu­able expe­ri­ence to the class­room beyond my knowl­edge. I learn from them as I simul­ta­ne­ously incul­cate a rhetor­i­cal sen­si­bil­ity and a crit­i­cal apparatus.

These two areas are cru­cial parts of a mod­ern edu­ca­tion. Indeed there are oth­ers. But my expe­ri­ence has pre­pared me to han­dle these areas with effec­tive­ness, care, and diligence.