Jason Swarts

1. Teaching |
2. Research |
3. Service |
4. Personal

I am an associate professor of technical communication at North Carolina State University. I teach courses on information design, communication networks, writing
for the web, and technical writing.

My research is on mobile information technology, small screen devices, cooperative work, and technological mediation.

Curriculum Vitae [pdf]

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Teaching

• ENG 314 - Technical Document Design and Editing [cat]
• ENG 317 - Designing Web Communication [cat]
• ENG 331 - Communication for Engineering and Technology [cat]
• ENG 350 - The Internship [cat]
• ENG 421 - Computer Documentation Design [cat]
• ENG 508 - Usability Studies for Technical Communication [cat]
• ENG 512 - Theory and Research in Professional Writing [cat]
• ENG 519 - Online Information Design and Evaluation [cat]
• ENG 583 - Analysis of Verbal Data (masters section) [doc]
• ENG 675 - Projects in Technical Communication [cat]
• ENG 798 - Analysis of Verbal Data (doctoral section)
• ENG 801 - Directed Readings (Computer Mediated Communication) [doc]
• CRD 703 - Communication in Networked Society [cat]

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Research

• New Technological Literacies: Thinking and Doing Across Multiple Modalities (w/ Loel Kim) -- Proposal for a special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly [Summer 2009] See the CFP [pdf] [doc]


• Writing with Recycled Content: Reusing and Repurposing as Rhetorical Acts [IPCC 2008]
• How Technology Shapes and Organizes Technical Communication
• Writing as Remix -- CCCC 2007 Presentation [slides] [paper]
• Annotations of Classroom Artifacts [white paper and grant proposal in development]

Updates!

• [Now Available] Together with Technology: Writing Review, Enculturation, and Technological Mediation. Baywood Publishing Company. [order a copy]


• [forthcoming] Information Technologies as Discursive Agents: Methodological Implications for the Empirical Study of Knowledge Work, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
• [March/April 2008] Effective Information Design for PDAs in Veterinary Medical Education (w/ Maggie VanNorman), Journal of Veterinary Medical Education
• [forthcoming] Usability in the Writing Classroom: Testing Non-Instrumental Texts, Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Miller-Cochran, S. and Rodrigo, R., Eds.) New Dimensions in Computers and Composition
• [out] Mobility and Composition: Architectures of Coherence in Non-Places, Technical Communication Quarterly

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Service

• Communication, Rhetoric & Digital Media Program Committee [2002-present]
• Masters of Science in Technical Communication Program Committee [2002-present]
• Science Technology and Society Program Program Faculty [2004-present]
• NC State Grievance Committee [2005-present]

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Personal

In 2002 I finished a PhD in Communication and Rhetoric from the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. I arrived at RPI with an interest in Rhetoric and Composition and technology. When I left RPI I had combined those interests with a study of human computer interaction, technological mediation, and new media development. I now do research that explores the mediating effects of technology on information-rich, cooperative work practices.

My current work is on mobile information technology and the way that it is used to coordinate improvisational and cooperative uses of information. This current branch of my research is leading me to question the stability of categories such as "writers" and "readers." I am investigating the ways that these categories are starting to collapse into one another. Readers in information-saturated work places interact with the complex streams of multimodal information around them. They write their own texts by selecting and arranging the information that is pertinent to their needs and interests.

I live in Raleigh with my wife, daughter, two cats and a dog. You can frequently find us paddling down the Neuse River in our kayaks.

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Updated: 10.17.07