Research Focus

Lately my research focus has broadened. For the past 8 years I've been mainly focused on written communication and technology. In recent years I've been moving slowly to the educational issues involved with technology, and written communication has provided me with an interesting angle to pursue that research. Even more recently, and this goes back to my days studying technical communication, I've been looking at educational elements found in presentations. "Presentations" is a broad term here and I need to work on defining that for all of the different genres that can be found under this term. Traditionally we think of a presentation as something done either in a classroom or at a business meeting with handouts, etc. This is, indeed, one important type of presentation. However, those of us with a regular teaching schedule rarely think of our weekly lectures as a presentation. It may do us some good in starting to think that way--or maybe it would do me some good to start thinking that way. Because, it makes sense that in the traditional term of a "presentation," the presenters practices the speech several times and coordinates the rhetorical moves that he or she will use. With teachers we sort of conduct an on the fly sort of presentation based on hundreds of hours of experience dealing with students and the topic we're presenting on. After looking back over some research articles I've accumulated, it doesn't appear that the overlap with these different types of presentations readily exists--and it should. Those who provide traditional presentations may learn quite a bit from those who perform presentations on a weekly basis and vice versa. Outlining the rhetorical moves found in all types of presentations would definitely be of value. I haven't found that yet, and if you know of a good resource, please let me know. Otherwise, that may be a good next project.