New Media Labs as Key Technical Communication Instructional Support Spaces

By Rich Rice | Member

Writing centers play very important roles in the academy, supporting writing processes from brainstorming ideas to researching evidence to bolstering claims to presenting final deliverables. Purdue’s Online Writing Lab, for instance, is one of the most well-used support tools available for writing instruction (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl). Similarly, media labs support multimodal, divergent, and iterative design composing processes. And the ever-increasing use of new media and emerging technologies for technical communicators in the workplace suggests that students are underprepared if technical communication instructional programs do not support the creation, design, and delivery of new media content and knowledge in integrated and systematic ways.

Media labs differ from writing centers in other ways, too. A media lab is an ongoing experiment both in terms of its hardware and software as well as the intellectual ideas it produces, retooling and reutilizing and rebuilding resources as it can to maximize client needs. The experiment includes teachers, students, administrators, resources, timelines, and intended or real audiences or clients. Innovation and the need to compose either proof-of-concept or production-quality deliverables is central to a media lab, often building knowledge through iterative recursion and the successes and failures of every project that makes use of the lab. That innovation often comes from the bottom up, as well, and is negotiated through feedback loops between theory and practice. In addition to pens, pencils, paper, and computers, one might find screwdrivers, duct tape, scanners, and mobile recording devices in a media lab. A media lab is purposefully messy that way, challenging people to find the right tools in the right amount used in just the right way to create and present a successful composition for a client or project. Chaos is embraced, disruptions incorporated, false starts recognized as iterative processes, bugs featurized. In a media lab, digital technology crashes into media, recorded liveness, culture, rhetorical purpose, cost, time, and audience in order to explore ways in which a composition can impact society, afford communicative practices, invite interaction and reflective practices, promote collaborative learning that capitalizes on varied levels of expertise, maximize usability, and prioritize accessibility. A new media lab is an intensely interactive and responsive support space.

When we think about media labs as support spaces, we often look to notable models like the MIT Media Lab (www.media.mit.edu), the NYC Media Lab (www.nycmedialab.org), the UC San Diego Media Lab (http://mediaservices.ucsd.edu/web/medialab), Media Lab Helsinki (http://mlab.taik.fi), the UT Digital Media Production Labs (http://communication.utexas.edu/technology/dml), and the ISU Studio for New Media (http://newmedia.engl.iastate.edu). And we think of electronic performance support systems and facilities that are integrated with curriculum and content management. (See, for instance, Geoffrey Sauer’s compelling description of Iowa State’s Studio, “Multimedia Labs as Content Incubators,” elsewhere in this issue.)

Media labs are indeed incubators that foster multimedia production. They scaffold the work students and faculty do in order to build theory-supported, audience-driven content. A good media lab does not necessarily need to have a million-dollar annual budget, does not need the most state-of-the-art equipment, and does not take from the services offered elsewhere in the department. Like all things rhetorical, it needs to analyze the integrated teaching, research, service, and grant-writing praxis of its constituents, and it needs to develop a plan for creation, growth, and sustainability. If you’re thinking of creating a lab or working to sustain one in more developed ways, work to build in internal and external grant-writing and paid client projects into the mission of the lab, of course, and also think closely about the assignments teachers in your courses want and need to teach.

The list on the preceeding page and above describes a selection of undergraduate and graduate courses typically found in technical communication and rhetoric programs (see www.english.ttu.edu/tcr for longer lists). Consider ways in which new media labs as support spaces strengthen such courses in your program; consider ways in which students are underprepared for the academy or the workplace without such support.

Of course, much of the support for the work in these courses comes from the faculty who teach them and from professional journals and trade magazines and research students are required to do, but increased time-on-task using new media tools and small group collaboration and attention to software complexity outside of the course is needed to do quality work. For many students this attention requires a supportive “just-in-time” learning environment. A new media lab can serve as an excellent support mechanism for other courses, too, such as Foundations in Technical Communication, Information Design, Advanced Composition and Research, Ethics in Technical Communication, History of Rhetoric, Advanced Web Design, Interaction Design, Technical Reports of Manuals or Editing, Online Publishing, Document Design, Empirical Research or Field Methods, and Writing for Publication. Think about the courses in your program and how a new media lab can help support assignments, goals, and objectives. Think about types of new media-rich assignments that could be taught with a new media lab supporting students and faculty.

Dr. Rich Rice (rich.rice@ttu.edu) is a member of STC and an associate professor in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric program at Texas Tech University where he directs the Multiple Literacy Lab and teaches face-to-face, hybrid, and online courses in new media and rhetoric, technical communication, and composition.