I am looking for participants to help me with survey responses for my dissertation. The online survey asks questions regarding technology training for graduate students, faculty, and new teachers. It also asks how graduate programs incorporate/implement (or not) venues and opportunities for graduate students and new teachers to learn how to use digital technology in the composition classroom. The survey can take as little as 10 minutes (depending on whether you elaborate on your responses) or as long as 30 minutes. Of course elaboration in the text-boxes would be most helpful. Thank you for your help. I am open to any feedback you may offer. Please drop me a line with questions/suggestions:
rhet@comcast.net

The survey is located here:
Technology Survey

Thank you all for your help and support. Do not forget to click the "SUBMIT" button at the end of the survey.

Tony Atkins

Department of English

Ball State University

Enculturation has come out with a new issue fairly recently (well, since the last time I checked :)). The theme of the special issue is "Rhetoric/Composition: Intersections/Impasses/Differends." I'm not crazy about the three-pop-ups design, or the fact that in the table of contents, we only see authors' names and not titles, but there I go being picky. The issue, as the editors' introduction explains, is about the terms "rhetoric" and "composition"--is "rhetoric" subsumed under "composition"? What are the intersections? Or is rhetoric, as Krista Ratcliffe suggests in her article, "just hiding out"? The editors ask us to continue the conversation:

BJ Fogg of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University has created a learning module for evaluating the credibility of web sites:

Learning objectives

In this module students will:

• Learn the meaning of credibility and captology – and how they relate to each other.

• Understand why designing websites for credibility is important.

• Become familiar with guidelines for credible website design.

• Learn about research insights relating to Web credibility.

The first time I visited Jakob Nielsen's useit.com:useable information technology I remember being impressed with the content, but not with the display. Couldn't a web guru offer a little more eye candy?

Well, seems like I'm not the only one. In the spirit of Zen Gardens, usability fans have put their CSS talents to use in designing a new CSS for Nielsen's site. The winner will be announced tomorrow, and you can see the contestants' contributions. Below is my favorite design, Minimal Use