Stuart Selber, associate professor of English at Penn State, has published a book that examines technology’s intersection with teaching and learning and recommends strategies for collaboration between academic information technology (IT) units and college writing and communication programs.
“Institutional Literacies: Engaging Academic IT Contexts for Writing and Communication” was released by the University of Chicago Press this summer.
“Institutional Literacies” argues that writing and communication teachers and program directors should collaborate more closely and engage more deeply with IT staff as technology projects are planned, implemented, and expanded. The book explores six ways teachers can intervene in the academic IT work of their own institutions: maintaining awareness, using systems and services, mediating for audiences, participating as user advocates, working as designers, and partnering as researchers. With these strategies in hand, educators can be proactive in helping institutional IT approaches align with the professional values and practices of writing and communication programs.
Selber is a researcher and teacher in the overlapping fields of technical communication, computers and composition, and human-computer interaction. Combining the most productive aspects of humanist critical traditions and social science methods, he studies the applications and implications of digital technologies for writing and communication purposes.
Within the Department of English, Selber serves as director of digital education and director of The Penn State Digital English Studio. Outside of his home department, Selber is a faculty fellow in the Teaching and Learning with Technology unit and an affiliate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Selber can be reached at 814-863-8032 or selber@psu.edu.